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WalesOnline THEY have lain undisturbed for thousands of years, harbouring the grisly rituals of an ancient race. But the long-kept secrets of a vast network of underground animal catacombs is starting to unravel. A team of academics from Cardiff University have begun the process of exploring a labyrinth of underground desert tunnels in Egypt packed with the remains of millions of mummified dogs. The team led by Dr Paul Nicholson are excavating an ancient catacomb at Saqqara, in the desert beside the Nile Valley about 16 miles south of the famous Giza pyramids at Cairo. They claim it could contain up to eight million canine offerings. The findings reveal that some of the animals, which were considered links between Egyptian people and their revered jackal-headed god of the dead, Anubis, were killed just hours after birth. Dr Nicholson said: "The idea was that you, as a visitor to Saqqara, might dedicate a mummy as a thank-you for something good that happened to you, or that you are hoping something will happen. "It is tied up in the belief that mummies were the messengers between the people and the gods. "It was very important to the Egyptians and although from a modern perspective killing animals for mummification seems barbaric, the important thing was that you were doing it as a pious act and the animal was the living link with the gods." Academics suspect the scores of sometimes newborn puppies could have been drowned and older dogs could have been poisoned and were possibly produced en masse as part of puppy farms in the nearby city of Memphis. Pilgrims may have also paid for the dogs to be mummified as an offering to Anubis, accounting for the staggering number of offerings hidden within the three- metre high tunnels. It is thought that some of the networks date as far back as 747 BC. The slew of fragmented dog remains were similar to modern-day Australian dingoes but the haul also included remains of cats, falcons, jackals, foxes, bulls and a few Egyptian mongooses called ichneumon. The team, working in cooperation with Egyptian colleagues, are the first to reveal the secrets of the underground network built 2,500 years ago and will be working on the site for the next year. Members of the group work in sometimes unstable tunnels and use laser technology to pinpoint measurements without needing to go inside dangerous passageways. The project funded by the university's School of History, Archaeology and Religion and National Geographic and in co-operation with Egyptian colleagues hopes to map out the lengthy maze and better understand the practices of the ancient peoples. But the Cardiff team have discovered that it is likely that the labyrinth had been raided before with the seized mummies ground down and shipped out of the country to destinations in the UK and elsewhere, to be used as fertiliser in the 19th century. Dr Nicholson added: "The mapping gives us some understanding about how the animals were bred and treated and mummified. "But there are reports from the 19th century that mummies were being extracted for use in fertilisers. "We don't know where exactly they went, but there were reports of boatloads of cat mummies possibly received in Liverpool, and it's possible that the dog mummies were shipped out in the same way." Dr Nicholson has also been involved in excavations of other ancient Saqqara catacombs. This included a project that discovered around 1.75 million mummified ibises, another that unearthed around half a million falcons and other tombs for baboons, falcons, and bulls. The project has landed £2,000 for the Andante Travels Archaeological Award for 2011 for its work for having both archaeological significance and public appeal, which will help finance further work including radiocarbon dating of catacomb construction.
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