St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1890-05-24
MUMMIFIED CATS.


A feline Cemetery In Central Egypt Rob-
bed Of Its Dead.
A cat four thousand years old is not
altogether a familiar object to English
men. and can scarcely be regarded as an
everyday visitor to these shores The
arrival, therefore, Of lat. tons of such
cats in Liverpool is an incident that can
not hut lay a heavy strain upon the
British capacity for experiencing amaze
ment. Not the least astonishing feature
Of this unique event is that the con-
signmen. in question, described with
commercial crispness as "a parcei Oh
cmbalmed cats" consists exclusively OF
feline mummies. aptly, but
ly. cullcd from a catacomb in Central
Egypt. There are no fewer than lSO.-
900 of these swathed and spiced remaiis
in the parcel" that reached this coun-
try a few days ago, and they have al
ready been sold for fertilizing purposes
to a Liverpool manure merchant the
a~uctioneer who disposed of them using
one of the deceased cats heads as a
hammer wherewith to knock down the
s.lots."
According to a correspondent. 1t mas
long been believed in Psychological CIR
Giles thai a huge cat cemetery was In ex-
istence somewhere about" on the lett
bank of the Nile. One day last autumn
a fellah husbandman, while engaged in
the agricultural pursuit OF digging at q
place called Beni Hassan. discovered
this ancient burial ground by a very
simple process. The soil which he was
turning into q pit which, on further cX-
animation. proved to be a spacious sub
terranean cave. tenanted by u~ncounted
legions of dead cats. Every one Of these
corpses had been sedulously embalmed.
and swaddled-so to speak, in cloth cere-
ments. in the very best STYLE of the I'M
dertaker's craft, as practised in the land
of the Pharaohs some twenty centuries
before the commencement of the Chris
tian era.
The news of this strange discovery
spread swiftly through Benz Hassan and
the adjoining districts. whence laborers
soon flocked to the ncwly-opened a
and set to work with might and main to
disinterf its venerable occupants. Why
these cats had been mummified. and
when they had come to be arranged SO
systematically in their subterranean
quarters, were secondary considerations.
naturally enough, to the bucolic Egyp-
tian mind-in fact the sort of&hings no
fellah could understand" but the peas
ants of the Nile are keenly alive to the
commercial value Of embalmed eats
and dogs, and each obscener beast, to
which Egyptian dotards once did bow"
either as high-class anu or as a
peculiarly quick and fragrant COM
bustible. With exemplary promptitude
and dispatch, therefore, they dug up
some hundreds of thousands of num-
mics, several ..lots" of which were pur-
chased on the spot by local farmers,
while others found their way down river
to the storehouses Of an Alexandria
merchant This worthy, being of a
speculative tuup of mind. shipped them
off t o Liverpool ION sale or return"
where they fetched a trifle less than 81
a ton. Thus, for a matter of three
ponies or so. a British ''bonc-buyer"
has become the sole possessor Of nearly
200. 600 fine old crusted Egyptian cats,
each of which, at the time of its de-
cease, had been deemed worthy Of spe-
cial embalment and honorabl sculpture,
according t. the rites of Memphis, Blu
bastis and Thebes, lin that case made
and provided. London Telegraph.