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. 2019 Nov 13;14(11):e0223964.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0223964. eCollection 2019.

Mitogenomic diversity in Sacred Ibis Mummies sheds light on early Egyptian practices

Sally Wasef  1   2 , Sankar Subramanian  1 , Richard O'Rorke  1 , Leon Huynen  1 , Samia El-Marghani  3 , Caitlin Curtis  1 , Alex Popinga  4 , Barbara Holland  5 , Salima Ikram  6   7 , Craig Millar  8 , Eske Willerslev  9   10   11 , David Lambert  1
Affiliations

Mitogenomic diversity in Sacred Ibis Mummies sheds light on early Egyptian practices

Sally Wasef et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

The ancient catacombs of Egypt harbor millions of well-preserved mummified Sacred Ibis (Threskiornis aethiopicus) dating from ~600BC. Although it is known that a very large number of these 'votive' mummies were sacrificed to the Egyptian God Thoth, how the ancient Egyptians obtained millions of these birds for mummification remains unresolved. Ancient Egyptian textual evidences suggest they may have been raised in dedicated large-scale farms. To investigate the most likely method used by the priests to secure birds for mummification, we report the first study of complete mitochondrial genomes of 14 Sacred Ibis mummies interred ~2500 years ago. We analysed and compared the mitogenomic diversity among Sacred Ibis mummies to that found in modern Sacred Ibis populations from throughout Africa. The ancient birds show a high level of genetic variation comparable to that identified in modern African populations, contrary to the suggestion in ancient hieroglyphics (or ancient writings) of centralized industrial scale farming of sacrificial birds. This suggests a sustained short-term taming of the wild migratory Sacred Ibis for the ritual yearly demand.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Mummified Sacred Ibis.
A Scene from the Books of the Dead (The Egyptian museum) showing the ibis-headed God Thoth recording the result of the final judgement. B and D Example of the millions of votive mummies presented as offerings by pilgrims to the God Thoth. C Pottery jars containing ‘votive’ mummies stacked in the North Ibis catacomb at Saqqara.
Fig 2
Fig 2
A Location of ancient catacombs sampled. Modern populations sampled; brown shading indicates the current distribution of Sacred Ibis. We thank Vivian Ward for drawing this figure. B Median-joining network derived from modern (orange shades) and ancient (purple shades) mitochondrial genome sequences. Circle size indicates number of samples. REF represents the Sacred Ibis mitochondrial reference genome shown in pink. Samples taken from captive Ibis at the Cairo Zoo are shown in red. C Principal Coordinates Analysis of distances between aligned mitogenomes of ancient (triangles) and modern (circles) Ibis. The ordination captures a very high proportion of variance in genetic distances (78.4%), with axis 1(horizontal) representing 63.2% and 15.2% for axis 2 (vertical). The asterisk denotes the reference sequence and the crosses denote Cairo Zoo. Colours in B and C correspond to the locations in A.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Ancient inscriptions on a pottery jar of a mummified Ibis from Tuna el-Gebel.
This inscription recorded the date the mummy was offered to Thoth, by whom, where it was bought from and the name of the priest. From Mahmoud Ebeid, BIFAO 106 (2006), p. 57–74.
Fig 4
Fig 4. A Bayesian summary tree.
The x-axis is years before present, and the edges are labelled with posterior clade probability. M_ indicates modern samples from Africa. A_ indicates Ancient Sacred Ibis mummies. Samples’ code used in the tree are listed in Table 1.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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