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As many as one-third of the animal mummies buried by ancient Egyptians turned out to be empty bundles of cloth, an X-ray analysis of 800 such specimens has shown, while another third were shown to contain eggshells, feather, and other animal-adjacent objects. Only a third of the animal mummies, which were said to be offered as sacrifices to gods, have intact animals. The analysis also shows that ancient Egyptians may have buried as many as 70 million animal mummies, and that the young age of such specimens shows that they were likely mass-bred for mummification.