River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1890-04-10
MUMMIFIED CATS.
Feline Cemetery in Central Egypt Rob-
bed of Its Dead.


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 1917 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-
signment in question, described with
commercial crispness as "a parcel of
embalmed cats" consists exclusively of
feline mummies, aptly, but accidental
ly, culled from a catacomb in Central
Egypt. There are no fewer than $780,
900 of these swathed and spiced remains
in the parcel" that reached this coun-
try few days ago, and they have al
ready been sold for fertilizing purposes
to a Liverpool manure merchant, the
auctioneer who disposed of them using
one of the deceased cats heads as
hammer wherewith to knock down the
lots
According to a correspondent, IL has
long been believed in Egyptolog ical cir
cles that huge cat cemetery was in ex-
istence somewhere about on the left
bank of the Nile. One day last autumn
a fellah husbandman, while engaged in
the agricultural pursuit of digging at
place called Benz Hassan. discovered
this ancient burial ground by very
simple process. The soil which he was
turning into pit which, on further ex-
animation, proved to be spacious sub
terranean cave, tenanted by uncounted
legions of dead cats. Every one of these
corpses had been sedulously embalmed,
and swaddled so to speak, in cloth ccre-
ments. in the very best STYLE of the un-
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 fiOcked to the newly-opened cave,
and set to work with might and main to
disinter its venerable occupants. Why
these cats had been mummihed, 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, 1.-The sort of things no
fel an could understand" but the peas
ants of the Nile are keenly alive tc the
commercial value of embaimed eats
and dogs, and each obscener beast, to
which Egyptian dotards once did bow"
either as high-class manure or as
peculiarly quick and fragrant COM
bustible. With exemplary promptitude
ari dispatch, therefore, they dug up
some hundreds of thousands of mum
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
speculative turn of mind, shipped them
off to Liverpool ION sale or return"
where they fetched trifle less than 81
a ton. Thus, for matter of three
ponies or so, a British "bone-buyer"
has become the sole possessor of nearly
200, 900 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 to the rites of Memphis, Blu
bastis and Thebes, sin that case made
and provided. London Telegraph.