Ancient Egypt: 1,800 Years-old Pet Cemetery Filled With 100 Skeletons Discovered

Archaeologists working on Egypt’s Red Sea coast have discovered a pet cemetery nearly two millennia old containing the skeletons of 100 domestic pets including cats, dogs and monkeys.

The cemetery, dating from the first and second centuries A.D., was discovered in the Roman port town of Berenike, established in Ptolemaic Egypt between 285-246 B.C. The burial ground for the pets was uncovered as part of a larger excavation near the town and its temple to the Graeco-Egyptian god Serapis by the Polish Center for Mediterranean Archaeology at Warsaw University.

The dig, headed by Steven Sidebotham of the University of Delaware, began in 1994, continuing in fits and starts into 2017, the journal Antiquity reported.