Journal

Ancient cordage and a mummified crocodile

I promised in a Studio Bee that I would go back to MANN, the archaeological museum in Naples, and take some photos of the mummified crocodile there — to show you how the string used to bind its wrappings is exactly the same at heart as the string we made in Threaded at the end of last year.

Cordage rarely survives. It’s organic material and it rots. What we usually find at archaeological sites is an impression in clay or a stain in soil. To see the actual thing, still holding its twist after two thousand years, is unusual.  This crocodile dates from 664-332 BCE.

These crocodiles were offerings to Sobek, the crocodile god - present in the Egyptian pantheon from the Old Kingdom right through to the Roman period. He was seen as the creator of the Nile, a god of fertility and water, believed to have risen from the primordial dark to bring order to the world. His nature was deliberately double: dangerous and protective at once. The crocodile was feared and revered for exactly the same reasons.  Live, jewellery bedecked, crocodiles were kept in some temples.

Crocodile priests wrapped these animals with the same care used for human mummies. The wrapping was ritual work - linen, palm leaves, and rope, wound carefully around the body. In this particular mummified crocodile there are six different kinds of weave in the bandages and two baby crocodiles included as symbols of fecundity.

In some cases the cordage had served an earlier purpose too: gruesomely, some mummies show evidence that the crocodiles were tied and left in the sun to die before being prepared for burial. 

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