World News for Students of English

07-10-2015 07:00

The Ancient Egyptian practice of mummification led to dead bodies being preserved. And now the Manchester Museum has put together an exhibition showing how the Egyptians also included animals in that practice. Some of the pieces on show are, to say the least, unexpected, like a mummified crocodile with several heads.

The exhibition explores how images of animals, whether pictures, statuettes or mummies, were used to communicate with the gods. Sixty mummified specimens are on show, alongside cultural artefacts such as stone and bronze sculptures. Animal mummies and bronzes statuettes are the most common offerings created as gifts to the gods.

The exhibition shows the weird and the wonderful of the British fascination with how animals were mummified.

Crocodiles were sacred to Sobek, god of the Nile, and were associated with the life-giving properties of its waters. They are among the most common animal mummies found in museum collections in the UK.

Difficult words: several (a few), statuette (a very small statue), specimen (a single example of something), artefact (a historically important thing), weird and wonderful (very strange but very interesting), sacred (greatly respected; relating to a god), associated (connected).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com