Remains of 2,000-year-old monkeys buried like sleeping children reveal Romans and ancient Egyptians imported them from India as household pets

The First News ^ | August 24, 2020 | Joanna Jasinska

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Ancient Romans and Egyptians imported monkeys from India as household pets, Polish archaeologists have discovered.

By examining the skeletons of monkeys buried in the animal cemetery in the Red Sea port of Berenice researchers found that the primates were rhesus macaques endemic to India, rather than some local species.

Archaeologists from the Warsaw University's Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology were in the process of excavating a vast animal cemetery when they came across the monkey skeletons.

For years they assumed they belonged to guenon species, quite common in this area.

It was only by using 3D scanners and comparing the bones with others that they made the incredible discovery.

Professor Marta Osypinska, a zooarchaeologist from the Polish Academy of Sciences, said: "We believe that the influential Romans who lived in Berenice, a faraway outpost, in the first and second, wanted to make their time pleasant with the company of various animals. Among them were also monkeys."

The pets were carefully buried in an animal necropolis and arranged like sleeping children.

Additionally, one of them was covered with a woolen fabric. The other had two large shells by their heads, including one coming from the Indian Ocean or south-eastern shores of Africa. On both sides of the animal, there were amphora fragments. In one of them there was a piece of cloth, and in the second one - a skeleton of a very young piglet, and next to it three kittens.

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