The Egyptian ibis, a sacred animal

White ibis mummy. Greco-Roman period. Museum of confluences, Lyon • MUSEUM OF CONFLUENCES

Pharaohs weren't the only ones mummified in ancient Egypt. Animals fulfilling a sacred role were also embalmed and buried in the tombs to accompany the deceased:monkeys, cats, crocodiles and birds, especially ibises. These long-beaked white and black migrants were the emblem of Thoth, god of Letters and Justice. Placed as an offering in the necropolises of the Nile Valley, they allowed the deceased to obtain the favors of the gods during his passage to the afterlife. But how did the Egyptians get so many birds? Because it is not a few thousand specimens that have been found in this way, but millions! It is between 450 and 250 BC. J.-C. that the sacrifice of ibis knows its apogee:for the only necropolis of Touna el-Gebel, in Middle Egypt, the archaeologists discovered 4 million. And 1.75 million in that of Saqqara.

A meal under scrutiny

Did the Egyptians raise them for the purpose of sacrificing them or did they harvest them wild from the wild? Scientists from the CNRS, the University of Lyon 1 and the Center for Research and Restoration of Museums of France carried out analyzes to answer this question. They used the mummies of 11 ibises and 9 raptors, kept at the Musée des Confluences, in Lyon, from which they took tiny fragments of feathers and bone; they studied its isotopic composition, that is to say the relative abundance of chemical elements such as oxygen, sulphur, carbon, nitrogen. If these birds were farmed, their food would have been homogeneous. However, the isotopic composition presented a very significant variability, indicating that the birds consumed a varied food and regularly migrated out of the Nile valley. It is obvious, therefore, that they were wild and hunted to meet the needs of the necropolises. These results confirm those of another study carried out in 2019 by an Australian team, which analyzed the DNA of mummified ibises and discovered a great genetic diversity. She had also concluded that the ibises could not come from farms.