This article is from Ancient Egypt issue 141
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Baboons played an important role in ancient Egyptian ritual and were considered sacred, but their treatment when alive was poor according to new research from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. The team analysed the bones of a group of baboons that had been interred in the so-called ‘Valley of the Monkeys’ (near the Valley of the Kings) and found signs of rickets, deformed limbs, lesions, shortened and bent snouts, undeveloped teeth, and arthritis, suggesting the animals were kept in poor conditions with little sunlight, and received inadequate nutrition. This ill-treatment may not have been deliberate, but may rather reflect a lack of knowledge about how to care for these wild animals.
