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Could an Egyptian mummy be hiding in a field? (ad-free) (Patreon)

Published:
2026-06-16 05:10:01
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Helen Geake answers questions from Time Team members. You'll learn the archaeological significance of ditches, ponder whether climate change might destroy our buried ancient past and consider the possibility that ground up ancient Egyptian mummies might've been scattered across British fields!

There's also Helen's Find. This time Helen's looking at two objects from the Portable Antiquities Scheme:1) https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/5121402) https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/912922

Comments

Chris

Thanks for the links. What a wonderful source of information this database Is.

Michelle Selway

Bethany Hughes reported they were cat mummies….

Wessex-Wyvern

Kind of begs the question... How many cat mummies does it take to fertilise a field?

Michelle Selway

The 1890 Liverpool AuctionThe Discovery: In 1888, an Egyptian farmer uncovered massive catacombs filled with thousands of mummified cats at Istabl Antar (near Beni Hasan).The Shipment: A British company purchased a massive 19.5-ton lot consisting of an estimated 180,000 cat mummies. They were shipped to Liverpool, England, on a steamship named the Pharos.The Fate: On February 10, 1890, the shipment was auctioned off. The mummies were subsequently pulverized by fertilizer merchants (such as Leventon & Co.) and spread across farmlands to enrich the soil.

Wessex-Wyvern

I tried to find the Dig Village book but it seems to be out of print.

steve

On ditches: there are ditches as in ditch and bank as found around henges, and an artifact of them. Field boundaries, self explanatory and precinct ditches. They are thus demarkations of property. Field drainage, self explanatory. Around round houses, but tend to be shallower. They become repositories for all kinds of stuff, including inhumation. Because of the stratigraphy, they can give valuable dating evidence. So valuable resources for study. Technically we are in an inter-glacial, but we humans have so changed the world, that we have made the earth warmer than it should be, and are thus holding back the natural cycles of the earth. Scary really. Incidentally, apparently mumia, was a kind of medicine sold in the Victorian era, that was made from yes, ground up mummies.

steve

Cat mummies. There were industries producing millions of animal mummies.

steve

There is now a company that produces breakdowns of landscape, which covers all this. Name escapes me. Saw it on Is Finds, (who is a Thames mudlarker) recently.

Fiona D

Don't forget your local library!

Del Thomas

Great podcast as always. Quick question re Helen's finds. If we can't use carbon dating due to the detioriation then how were the voles teeth originally dated? What was used to date these teeth so we can date other things against the voles teeth?

Kathy Carlson

That was brilliant! The last question intrigued me, partly because here in the US, we don't have the layers of archaeology that you have. But we do have Indian mounds. Where we spend part of our time, most of the land once "belonged" to Indians, and people do find arrowheads. But here and there, we do see mounds that tantalize our imaginations. My dad had a nice-sized one on his property, but we knew that we could never dig it. Thanks for feeding my imagination.

Cheryl Warren

I happened to watch a show on Egyptian Mysteries last week that mentioned the cat mummies. Its a bizarre story.

Cathryn Manners

On the ground up Mummies. From what I've understood is there was a mummy brown artist pigment which had to stop being produced because the demand out stripped the supply so I would very much doubt it would have been wasted on fertilizer.

Julied123

Brilliant episode, thank you.

Maggi Einars

Mann its not until you get to busy to fallow the time team media that you relise how much contant they put out. Had exstremly busy time from july u til mars. That i could not watch a typing. It was not until now im cought up took me 3 months :D...well as i write this another video droped. Good job time team :D

Chef Tess

Im Maine, USA, between 1886 and 1891, the Whaleback Shell Middens were mined, crushed, and sold as fertilizer and poultry food. Only a fraction of the original deposit remains. Though it makes me wonder if artifacts ended up in a field or a poultry yard!

Kathryn Phelps

If it gets too hot and earth dries out, we lose the preservation of sites like Flag Fen. Wooden artifacts like the post alignments will not be preserved if the waterlogged earth dries out.