Media reports published in March 2021 stated that Polish Zooarchaeologist Marta Osypinska has found enough evidence to that a 2,000-year-old animal burial site in Egypt’s Berenice is, in fact, the world’s oldest pet cemetery. The burial ground is filled with well-loved animals, including the remains of cats and monkeys still wearing collars stringed with shell, glass, and stone beads. Unlike some mummified animals that were interred at other sites, sometimes through starvation or a snapped neck, none of the creatures in this cemetery – located on the outskirts of the Red Sea port of Berenice – showed signs that they had died at the hands of people.
About 90 percent of the animals buried at the site were cats. Many of the felines wore iron collars or necklaces decorated with glass and shells. One was laid to rest on the wing of a large bird.
Dogs, meanwhile, made up about 5 percent of the burials. The canines had often lived into old age, losing teeth or suffering from gum disease and worn-out joints—conditions that probably would have made it impossible for them to fend for themselves. Some of the dogs had also recovered from injuries sustained long before their eventual deaths.
“We have individuals who have very limited mobility,” Osypinska tells Science. “Such animals had to be fed to survive, sometimes with special foods in the case of the almost-toothless animals.”
The cemetery, which dates to the first and second centuries A.D., was located just outside the city walls. Osypinska and her colleagues found it in 2011, buried below a Roman trash dump. In 2016, they published findings regarding the first 100 skeletons they were able to examine, but at the time, some experts questioned whether the site was actually a cemetery or a rubbish dump containing animal bones. The new study includes further analysis of the burials, including input from a veterinarian who helped analyze the animals’ diets and health.
Credit : Smithsonian
Picture Credit : Google
