High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Animal mummies were started by Egyptians. They mummified various animals. An enormous part of Egyptian culture, not only in their role as food and pets, but also for religious reasons. They were typically mummified for four main purposes — to allow beloved pets to go on to the afterlife, to provide food in the afterlife, to act as offerings to a particular god, and because some were seen as physical manifestations of specific gods that the Egyptians worshipped. In 1888, an Egyptian farmer digging in the sand near Istabl Antar discovered a mass grave of felines, ancient dogs that were mummified and buried in pits at great numbers.