Four Million Birds

Worship of Thoth left behind a logistical problem archaeologists are still working on. Between roughly 650 and 250 BCE, mummified ibises were offered in numbers that are hard to account for: something on the order of four million at Tuna el-Gebel, over a million and a half at Saqqara. Birds were certainly reared and tended near the cult centres — the installations and the temple paperwork survive. What recent genetic work rules out is the tidy version of that, a few closed flocks bred over generations. The mummies carry wild-population diversity instead, and the question of how the supply was organised stays open.