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02 November 2017

Dr Campbell Price is at the forefront of research into ancient Egypt.

Dr Campbell Price examines an Egyptian sarcophagus

Originally from Milngavie, he is now at Manchester Museum where he looks after one of the biggest collections of ancient Egyptian artefacts in the world.

It’s a job he loves. “The feeling of adventure, the feeling of seeing something no-one else had seen in 2000 years is quite thrilling”, says Campbell.

And, as he told Bryan Burnett on , uncovering secrets from history is becoming much easier as technology improves.

It’s also far less gruesome!

“In the past Egyptologists would unwrap mummies to see what was inside. But nowadays we use hospital scanning technology.

“We’ve used CT scanning in Manchester museum to look inside 20 of our human mummies and 50 of our animal mummies.

“It’s really exciting to go to the hospital and in a matter of seconds, you see inside the mummy’s wrappings.”

Campbell’s research is shedding light on bizarre rituals from history, and changing our perceptions of the past in the process.

He says, “There’s a common idea that the Egyptians were great animal lovers. In a way that’s not true; very few ancient Egyptians had pets”.

A scan of a cat mummy

Millions of preserved animal mummies from ancient Egypt have been discovered, however Campbell believes they were made as gifts to the gods.

“The ancient Egyptian gods could take the form of any animal you can imagine”, he says. “If you wanted your prayer to be heard by the gods you gave them a gift.

“So if you wanted to get in touch with the cat goddess Bastet you’d give a cat. If you wanted to send your prayer to Sobek the crocodile god, you’d send a crocodile.

“But when we looked inside the mummies, most of them didn’t contain the animal you’d expect. And some people think this is a con, but probably the Egyptians thought what was inside - it might have been feathers or mud, or broken eggshell - was magical.

“And as long as the mummy looked like a form of the god on the outside, it was a suitable gift to give to give to the particular god you wanted to get in touch with.”

From a 21st Century perspective it may seem rather odd behaviour, but Campbell thinks it’s important for us to understand.

“Different people have different religious ideas.

“The ancient Egyptians may seem very weird and strange but when you take the time to look at a different culture of the past you understand more about that people and it makes you more open to different ways of thinking.”