The deified baboon

In Tomb KV51 of the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, a baboon mummy was found. Researchers believe it was once a much-loved royal pet. (Photo courtesy of Global Sciences)

At the British Museum in London, England, there is a mummy with the number "EA6736" hanging. It was found at the Temple of Khons in Luxor, Egypt, dating back to the New Kingdom period (1550-1069 BC). After careful examination by researchers, the identity of EA6736 finally appeared. It was once carefully wrapped in linen, but now it has spread out in some places, revealing fur and sturdy toenails. X-ray images show that it has a skeletal morphology unique to primates and a skull with a long nose. The researchers speculate that this was the Arab baboon (Papio hamadryas), the object of worship of the ancient Egyptians.

In the more than 3,000 years of the ancient Egyptian kingdom, baboons are timeless themes of art and religion, with a large number of paintings, reliefs, sculptures and jewelry works: a statue of an Arab baboon bearing the name of King Narmer dates from 3150 to 3100 BC; One of the necklaces of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun was decorated with the pattern of baboons worshipping the sun, and the western wall of his tomb is also painted with 12 baboons, representing the 12 hours of the night, which can also be traced back to 1332 BC to 1323 BC.

The ancient Egyptians revered the baboon as the embodiment of Thoth, the moon and the god of wisdom. But in ancient Egyptian culture, the baboon was not the only animal that was worshipped: the jackal represented Anubis, the god of death, the falcon represented Horus, the god of the sky, and the hippopotamus represented Taweret, the god of fertility. But the ancient Egyptian preference for baboons still seems very strange. On the one hand, for most people, baboons are dangerous and harmful animals; On the other hand, it is the only animal associated with the ancient Egyptian gods that did not live native to ancient Egypt.

Why did the Arabian baboon have such a prominent place in ancient Egyptian culture? Archaeologists have long been plagued by this problem. In recent years, my colleagues and I have made some discoveries. We have proposed some biological explanations for this cultural phenomenon, thus demonstrating how these amazing animals reached ancient Egypt. Most interestingly, our study of the origin of the baboons also provides clues to another unanswered mystery: the possible geographic location of the legendary Kingdom of Ponte.

Strange "God"

"Baboons!" At any 6-year-old's birthday party, the term is not popular. At that time, my family was still living in Kenya in eastern Africa, and 20 baboons broke into my backyard with a big swing, frightening the children into screaming and scattering. The invaders went straight to the table— neatly lined with cupcakes, cut fruit, and boxed juices that were like carbohydrate lottery tickets that took only a few minutes to get a lot of nutrients that people used to make for hours. To make matters worse, I saw two male baboons "yawning" at me — as a primatologist, I knew the "yawning" was a red flag, showing sharp canine teeth that could bite off the bones of the limbs in one bite. At the moment, however, this action does not seem to represent a threat or intimidation, but a show off after a full stomach.

When I tell this story to my colleagues in Kenya, they will nod their heads and utter the proverb: "Not all baboons entering the cornfield are satisfied". Like many African proverbs, this phrase has a deeper meaning: it alludes to the fact that these baboons are inherently evil and will plunder crops insatiably. Professor of Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom, Catherine M. Catherine M. Hill found that in western Uganda, the devastating destruction of baboons has cut crop yields in half for some households. In Africa, many farming families are fed and fed, and baboons are the most important threat to their livelihoods. In fact, Africa's culture of aversion to baboons has a long history, which also explains why there are basically no baboons in the artworks and traditional cultures of sub-Saharan Africa. But on the exact opposite, the ancient Egyptians greatly worshipped this creature — baboons were ubiquitous in their art— and it's puzzling.

It is worth noting that the extant baboons are divided into 6 species, all of which are endemic to living in sub-Saharan Africa and southwestern Arabia, and the vast majority of locals consider them to be harmful. Researchers have found from archaeological remains that both the olive baboon (Papio anubis) and the Arabian baboon were transported to ancient Egypt, but the ancient Egyptians only worshiped the Arabian baboon as the embodiment of the gods. So a key question is, why did the ancient Egyptians worship only the Arabian baboon and not the olive baboon?

In the process of answering this question, scholars noticed that the baboon in ancient Egyptian art had two iconic postures: the first, the male baboon sat on the ground with his hips on the ground, his hands on his knees, his tail bent to the right, and a disc representing the moon on his head; The second is that the male baboon raises his arm and palms toward the ancient Egyptian sun god Ra, a gesture that represents worship. In many ancient Egyptian texts, baboons are associated with the god Ra. For example, in the Pyramid Texts, which recorded ancient Egyptian funerals, it is described that baboons were the oldest or most beloved son of The God Ra. The Egyptian Book of the Dead records that in order for the dead to be born again, it should be chanted: "I used to sing the sun god and pray to him; I used to cheer to the morning sun with the baboons that heralded the sunrise. ”

To explain this connection between baboons and ra gods, the egyptologist Elizabeth Thomas proposed in 1979 that ancient Egyptians might have seen baboons facing the sunrise for warmth and thought they were greeting the sun. As an argument, the late Egyptologist Herman te Velde focused on the call of baboons accompanying this behavior, which he considered to be a greeting of the sun by baboons, and this study led to Thomas's theory being greatly popularized a decade later. There is a record of the Karnak temple complex near Luxor, Egypt, describing how baboons "proclaimed" the appearance of the god Ra: "They danced for him, jumped for him, sang for him, and cried out for him." In Felder's view, the ancient Egyptians considered baboons sacred because it seemed to communicate directly with the god Ra, and he speculated that the ancient Egyptians regarded the cheers and mysterious language of baboons as a religious belief.

This idea sounds fascinating, but is it really credible? Do baboons really pay special attention to the rising sun? Is this habit unique to Arabian baboons? Neither Thomas nor Felder knew enough about primate behavior, nor did primatologists provide more evidence to support it. But recently, scientists have made new discoveries on these issues.

Many animals are warmed by the sun, and most biologists believe that this is a way for animals to recover their body temperature with the least amount of energy after a cold night. For example, the ring-tailed lemurs of Madagascar often bask in a yoga-like lotus-like posture towards the rising sun in the early morning, but their legs are straight. The late primatologist Alison Jolly once pointed out that Malagasy legends refer to lemurs worshipping the sun, praying with their arms outstretched. In 2016, Elizabeth Kelley, executive director of the Saint Louis Zoo's Wild Care Institute, found that the sunbathing behavior of ring-tailed lemurs was clearly associated with low temperatures at night. Kelly and colleagues also found that the lemurs had more melanin than the skin on their chest and abdomen than on their backs, which is the opposite of the common pattern of pigment distribution in mammals. Melanin absorbs light, and there is more melanin in the abdomen, which is not only convenient for heating, but also aids digestion.

Primate studies in recent years have shown that baboons have reaped similar benefits from "sunbathing." Microbes in primate guts are essential for digesting plants, and elevated body temperatures stimulate and make them active, speeding up the absorption of nutrients in the gut. Therefore, basking in the sun in the morning is a simple and effective way to wake up the microorganisms in the body. This has a double benefit: first, digestion itself can produce heat, which can also warm the cold body after a night; Second, cold nights slow down digestion during sleep, so primates need to digest the previous day's food before embarking on a new day's feeding task.

Therefore, it is reasonable to think that some primates are more sun-loving than other species, which may have something to do with where they live and what they feed on. The range of Life of the Arabian Baboon extends from the Horn of Africa (Northeast Africa) to parts of the Arabian Peninsula, with the western edge in Ethiopia's Awash River Valley bordering the eastern edge of the Olive Baboon range. In these two different habitats, scientists have conducted long-term comparative studies of the differences in ecology and behavior of baboons. Observations have found that Arabian baboons eat more leaves than olive baboons, which means that Arabian baboons have higher levels of fiber in their food.

Theoretically, the types and numbers of microorganisms within the digestive systems of Arabian baboons and olive baboons should also vary because of food differences. Recently, Steven Leigh, a biological anthropologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and several co-investigators, including me, studied the gut microbiota of these two baboons. We found that Arabian baboons have more cellulose decomposition bacteria (this bacterium can break down and digest the cell walls of plants) than olive baboons to maintain a higher fiber content diet. These findings suggest that The Arabian baboons seem to reap more benefits from sunbathing in the morning.

Our research on the gut microbiome confirms Thomas's hypothesis and explains why the Egyptians worshipped The Arabian baboons over the olive baboons: It was the Arabian baboons' diet and habits that created the act of "welcoming" the sunrise, which happened to resonate strongly with the religious beliefs of the ancient Egyptians.

The Lost Kingdom

Whatever the reasons why the ancient Egyptians worshipped the Arabian baboon, they spared no effort to obtain the living Arabian baboon, and the trade routes spawned by the demand for this animal and other luxuries (such as gold, spices and ivory) influenced the development of world history.

In 1906, the American lawyer and financier Theodore M. Theodore M. Davis found five Mummies of Arabian baboons in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, unearthed from the tombs of Amenhotep II or King Horemheb, both of whom lived in the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom, a very prosperous era. The tomb of Thutmose III, the father of Amenhotep II, also unearthed the skull of an unscrapped Arabian baboon, apparently discarded by the stolen tomb robbers. Although baboons appeared in earlier Ancient Egyptian art, these mummies are the earliest known Arabic baboons in ancient Egypt. These accidental discoveries of Arabian baboons in human tombs illustrate that baboons were introduced to ancient Egypt at great cost. Salima Ikram, a professor of paleoethology at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, believes that these baboons are precious pets and status symbols. They appeared in the tombs of the royal family and were wrapped in extra-long linen cloth, making high-quality mummies. Only the richest people in ancient Egypt could afford such a high level of funerary services.

To determine where the baboons of ancient Egypt came from, my colleagues and I analyzed the chemical composition of two baboon mummies, one of which was specimen EA6736. The two mummified specimens were purchased in 1816-1827 by Henry Salt, British Consul General in Egypt, and later acquired by the British Museum. Judging from the way the linen was wrapped and where it was unearthed, the two mummies were most likely made during the New Kingdom.

Texts and inscriptions from the New Kingdom period show that the Egyptians ventured out from the port of Mersa Gawasis to the mysterious kingdom of Punt. It is a distant kingdom that is said to exist in the "land of God" and has a large number of luxuries. In human history, Ponte was a key location for the development of trade: the British historian John Keay believes that Ponte was the first stop on the road to the maritime spice trade – a trade network that has promoted the development of navigation technology and shaped the geopolitical situation for nearly a thousand years. But the problem is that, as archaeologist Jack Phillips proposed in 1997, Ponte was neither marked on any map nor found any confirmed archaeological remains, or even only provisionally named Ponte.

If the Arabian baboons of ancient Egypt were transported from Ponte, the source of this mummy may indicate to us the location of this legendary kingdom.

Fortunately, by examining the chemical composition of baboons' body tissues, we can reconstruct their lifelong trajectory of activity. My colleagues and I mainly examined strontium because the composition of strontium isotopes varies from region to region. Strontium is contained in both soil and water, and when animals eat local plants and water, these strontium enter their bodies. Analyzing the strontium in the teeth of animals with earlier development can reveal their place of birth. The strontium in the bones and hair shows the trajectory of an individual's lifelong activity.

We compared the strontium isotopes in mummified bones and teeth with the strontium isotopes in baboons living in different parts of Africa. The results of the spatial analysis show that the animals were born in the southern Region of the Red Sea outside Egypt, including present-day Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia. Excitingly, historians have previously suggested that these areas may have been home to Ponte, based on written records and patterns of flora and fauna on the walls of ancient Egyptian temples and tombs. And this confirms our research, and Ponte is likely to be within the natural habitat of the Arabian baboon.

Baboons were transported alive from the southernmost tip of the Red Sea to ancient Egypt, a discovery that proves that ancient Egyptian sailors had amazing seafaring abilities more than a thousand years BEFORE. On a ship without keels, rudders, and closed cabins, a voyage of at least 1,300 kilometers must be a dangerous journey. The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, one of Egypt's most famous literary works, tells the story of an ancient Egyptian sailor who was washed up on a magical island in the Red Sea, which may also reflect what really happened.

More insight into the religious beliefs and trade of ancient Egypt is yet to be learned. As we progress, analyzing the sunrise behavior and melanin distribution patterns of the Arabian baboon will also provide useful information to determine whether this supports the hypothesis that the species is particularly dependent on the sunrise, thus helping us to solve the mystery. We also stress that it is also important to search for archaeological evidence from Eritrea and neighboring countries, such as confirming the existence of objects from ancient Egypt. Such evidence may tell us exactly where Punt is located.

Curiously, what did merchants from Ponte think of the ancient Egyptian mania for baboons? We might guess that merchants were happy to trade these nasty animals for ancient Egyptian trade products, but thanks to this cultural idiosyncrasy, it illuminated one of the most important trade routes in human history.

(Authorized publication of ScientificAmerican Chinese edition of Global Science, translated by Yin Lijie)

Nathaniar Nathaniel J. Dominy