Oldest pet cemetery

The oldest known pet cemetery was discovered by a team of Polish archaeologists on the outskirts of Berenike (aka Berenice Troglodytica), a ruined ancient seaport on the Egyptian Red Sea Coast. The cemetery, thought to date from the 1st or 2nd century CE, contained the remains of 536 cats, 32 dogs and some other animals including several small monkeys and a juvenile baboon. There were no contemporaneous human burials on the site, and the animals showed signs of human care and affection both in how they lived and how they were buried.

The initial findings of this archaeological expedition, which began in 2011, were published on 7 September 2018 by Marta Osypińska and Piotr Osypiński of the Polish Academy of Sciences. On 25 January 2021, the same team published an update with details of many more burials and analysis of the remains.

The site of the cemetery was located close to the town's trash heap, but the animals were not simply dumped there. The graves were dug quite deep into the underlying sediment and the animals were laid out with care – arranged as if sleeping, or wrapped in fabric shrouds. Some were buried with mementoes that speak to their role as household pets including decorated collars and a dried cow's tail that was presumably a toy for the cat it was buried with.

None of the animals showed signs of having been intentionally killed, and several had evidence of long-term injuries or illnesses that would have made them useless as working animals. Crucially there was no evidence of religious ritual in the burials, as has been seen in other animal grave sites such as they Ashkelon Dog Cemetery in Israel, where the social role of the animals in life and the purpose of their burials is still unclear.