These archaeologists and local workers had been working together for a long time. Immediately, someone jumped into the pit with a special container, carefully put the freshly unearthed cat mummy into the container, and brought it up for Hans to see.
Zhang Zian, who saw a cat mummy for the first time, was surprised. He even felt Richard's claws on his shoulder shrink slightly, which showed that it was also deeply shocked.
So were the other elfins who followed him.
The body and limbs of the cat mummy were wrapped in a woven mat-like linen fabric. Only the head was exposed, and the overall shape looked like a bowling pin.
Just from the exposed head, it was difficult to tell that it was a cat, because the face was blurred, and even one of its ears was missing. Rather than a cat's head, it was more like a pig's head. Only the outline of the cat could barely be seen from the paint.
Hans was already used to it. He waved his hand to signal for the mummy to be taken away and stored carefully.
"Are you surprised? People who see a cat mummy for the first time all have the same expression as you. There are at least tens of thousands of mummies like this buried under the ruins of the temple, "Hans said with a shrug.
According to Hans, the underground tomb of Bastet's Holy Temple was first discovered by a local farmer in 1888. About 19 tons of various mummies were unearthed, piled up into a layer 60 meters long and 21 meters thick. Most of them were cat mummies, a total of 80,000, but there were also cat mummies, dog mummies, and fox mummies. The farmer sold most of the mummies and ground them up for fertilizer. Only a small part was preserved and transported to the British Museum.
The pit that Hans and the others worked in was another smaller underground tomb. Only a few mummies were found — the so-called "scattered" was relative to the numbers of 80,000 and 19 tons.
In ancient Egypt, when a cat died, the owner would send the cat's body to Bubastis as soon as possible. The priests would make the cat's body into a mummy and bury it as a tribute to the goddess Bastet. In order to prevent the cat from starving in the underworld, the cat mummies were often buried with mouse mummies and wooden fish-shaped toys.
Over time, no one knew how many cat mummies were buried around Bastet's Holy Temple.
"Do you think I came here to look for murals and reliefs? No, we are looking for these mummies. It is also because of the existence of these mummies that this cooperation between the three countries has been facilitated. "Hans laughed.
Zhang Zian still didn't quite understand. "What are these mummies for? I mean other than being a cultural relic. "
These mummies may have a certain archaeological value, but for Wei Kang and the scientific research team, what use were mummies? After all, they were looking for a living cat, not a dead one.
The process of making a cat mummy was similar to that of a human mummy. First, the cat's body was immersed in a special saltwater to dissolve the grease and wash off the skin and hair. After 40 days of soaking, the body was taken out and dried. The body was then embalmed. The abdominal cavity was filled with spices and the body was coated with gum to prevent the body from being exposed to air. Finally, the body was wrapped in linen.
His brain and internal organs had already been taken out and placed in the burial urn for permanent preservation.
It was precisely because of the washing process that the skin of these cat mummies was washed off that the appearance of these cat mummies was not flattering. It was also because of this that it was impossible to judge the evolution of the fur color of Egyptian cats from the mummies.
So, what was the significance of the cat mummy to the scientific research team?
Hans smiled mysteriously. "The answer is — DNA."
Zhang Zian seemed to understand a little.
Egypt's hot and dry climate, coupled with the special method of making mummies by the ancient Egyptians, often allowed the body to be preserved very well. Even after thousands of years, DNA could still be extracted from the mummies.
There was an article published in Nature magazine — "Paleogenetics of the Spread of Cats in the Ancient World." Scientists studied the migration process of cats through the DNA in more than 200 cat mummies or remains.
These mummies and remains came from Europe, North Africa, East Africa, and Southwest Africa, spanning the Middle Stone Age to the 20th century.
But considering such a long time span, the number of samples was actually still a little small.
The true spirit of science was reasonable doubt and not blindly following authority. This was the foundation for science to advance with each passing day.
Hans and the others were skeptical of the conclusion of this article. They thought that the number of samples in this article was not enough to support the corresponding conclusions.
Local scholars in Egypt also expressed dissatisfaction with the conclusion of this article, because the article said that domestic cats were first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent, not in ancient Egypt.
In line with the principle of fighting if they were dissatisfied, Hans and the others hit it off with the Department of Biology at Cairo University. They cooperated to carry out the same research, also through the study of DNA in the mummies, intending to find a more reasonable explanation for the domestication and migration process of domestic cats.
Humans did not have the tradition of using cats as food, so it was difficult to find cat remains in ancient human settlements, which brought great difficulties to research. However, Egypt's unique climate and geographical advantages, as well as ancient customs, preserved a large number of cat mummies and naturally formed mummies, which became the source of Hans's confidence. They thought that as long as time passed, they would be able to overturn the conclusions of that article.
Coincidentally, after Wei Kang contacted the Department of Archaeology at Cairo University, he learned about this research and was overjoyed. Because through the DNA in the mummies, the evolution of cat fur color could be discovered.
The fur color of African desert wildcats was relatively fixed, so how did they evolve into hundreds of fur colors of domestic cats in later generations?
It might be hard to believe, but science had flourished to this point, and even the genetic mechanism of cat fur color had not been fully understood.
The genetic mechanism of cat fur color was extremely complex. It was an anomaly among mammals, and it was completely different from most other mammals.
For example, the calves born from two black-and-white cows must be black and white, but the location of the patches may be different.
But the offspring of two reddish-brown cats may be a litter of tortoiseshell kittens — of course, they were not cuckolded.
Two Siberian forest cats with key colors may also give birth to a litter of kittens whose fur color was different from that of their parents.
Therefore, it was very difficult for pet breeding experts to breed new breeds of domestic cats. It often took several or even more than a dozen generations of bloodlines and solidification to give birth to a new breed with stable fur color genes.
Although Wei Kang was not engaged in pet breeding, as an expert on cats, he was very clear about this, so he sent an invitation to Hans and asked them to provide the corresponding DNA research report. He wanted to find the key nodes of the evolution of the original Egyptian cat from the cat mummies.
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