8 million mummified dogs found in Egypt

Scientists made a shocking find while digging through the catacombs of ancient Egypt.

A team of researchers from Cardiff University in Britain has stumbled on a mass grave with 8 million dogs while digging through the catacombes of Anubis near popular archaeological site Saqqara — the sheer size of which has stunned the research team.
It’s not uncommon to come across a mass burial of animals due to how common animal cults are in ancient Egypt, but the massive size of this grave with 8 million mummified animals is what really raised eyebrows in the scientific community — and is leading to questions that scientists don’t yet have the answers to, according to a CNN report.
Paul Nicholson of Cardiff University, who led the research team, said that this was a surprising and very pleasing find, as they had not expected to uncover such a huge amount of animals.
Why dogs? Egyptians were devoted to the god Anubis, who they believed to be the gatekeeper to the afterlife. Anubis is often depicted as having the head of a dog and the body of a man. He first turned up in ancient texts as early as 3100 B.C., although this particular burial dates between 750 and 30 B.C. This was about the time when Egyptian society was modernizing and becoming more connected to Rome and Greece.
But the unanswered question is why were there so many buried in this one place. Nicholson hopes to conduct a more complete study that would delve into the Saqqara site much more thoroughly in search of other animal catacombs. Finding out more about these animals and where they came from could help scientists better understand
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k.jagadeesh