1900-present: British Egyptologists and Archaeologists

Alongside the tourist collection of Egyptian antiquities, the 1800s witnessed the first scientific excavations in Egypt. At many sites, British archaeologists encountered animal mummies but paid little attention to them at first. Discovered included hundreds of crocodile mummies from the site of Hawara, excavated by Flinders Petrie and funded by Manchester industrialist Jesse Haworth, and fish mummies from the site of Esna, excavated by John Garstang. As the scale of animal mummy burials became clear, archaeologists began to record them as important artefacts.