Of these species, hamadryas baboons were more revered and mainly depicted in ancient Egyptian art, but importing baboons from two places may have been to ensure their supply, Van Neer said. Physical analysis showed the mummies from Gabbanat el-Qurud descended from baboons from two regions: the large olive baboon ( Papio anubis) from what's now Sudan, and the smaller hamadryas baboon ( Papio hamadryas) from the Horn of Africa. So they needed to import these sacred animals. But baboons were 'the only animal in the Egyptian pantheon that is not native to Egypt,' he wrote. The ancient Egyptians also considered other animals sacred, including jackals, associated with the death god Anubis and falcons, which were associated with the sky god Horus. baboons as one embodiment of Thoth, god of the moon and of wisdom and adviser to Ra, god of the sun,' he wrote in Scientific American.
(Image credit: Bea De Cupere, CC-BY 4.0)īaboons appear in several roles in the ancient Egyptian religion, and the animals were typically mummified after their deaths, according to Nathaniel Dominy, an anthropologist at Dartmouth College who was not involved in the study. The study examined the skeletons of 36 sacred baboons entombed at an animal necropolis at Gabbanat el-Qurud, near Luxor in southern Egypt.
