Unlike cult animals, these animals had no intrinsic divinity--they were just gifts to the god. The most famous catacombs are Tuna el-Gebel, sacred to Thoth whose animals were the ibis and baboon; Abydos with ibis burials and burial of dogs and jackals for Khentiamentu and Wepwawet, canid deities; Bubastis, sacred to the goddess Bast, filled with cat mummies, some of which were exported to Europe in the nineteenth century as fertilizer; and Saqqara, with catacombs for several deities, all containing different animals.

Fish, most often Nile perch, were mummified and placed in cemeteries. The mummies vary in size from a few centimetres to almost two metres. Early excavators suggested that they were plunged into a natron solution, air dried, and then wrapped, sometimes with the eyes indicated in paint. They might have been packed in dry natron and then wrapped; it is quite difficult to determine. Some of them are slit down their bellies, thus indicating evisceration, and filled with mud and sand to hold the shape. Fish mummies are especially interesting as they are sometimes of species that no longer exist in the Egyptian Nile.

This period in Egyptian history saw every imaginable creature embalmed: cows, bulls, sheep, cats, dogs, baboons, jackals, ibises, falcons, hawks, fish of all varieties, crocodiles, shrews, scorpions, snakes, and a Greek text even mentions a necropolis of lions at Saqqara. The most curious sort of animal mummies from this period consist of eggs of birds and reptiles!

The various methods of mummifying and wrapping these animals are quite interesting, and by no means uniform. Late Period mummies of hawks and other birds of prey used to be identified as mummies of children until they were unwrapped. This was because the embalmers wrapped the mummy with a lot of bandages so that it looked baby-sized, and covered the head area with a cartonnage mask of a human face. The use of a human mask ceased in the latter part of the Graeco-Roman Period.

Ibis mummies and mummies of birds of prey were often mummified using the same technique. The birds were grasped by the feet and plunged into a vat of liquid resin, before being wrapped elaborately in bandages, then perhaps sold to the pilgrims who wished to give these as offerings to the gods, and put into ceramic jars, often three or four to a jar, which were then placed in the catacombs. Lengths of palm-rib were often used to make the mummies rigid, as was done with some human mummies of the period. A few ibis mummies were eviscerated, but this does not seem to be the rule. It is estimated that at Saqqara alone there were over 10,000 birds buried annually in the ibis and falcon catacombs.

The quantity of sacred mummies produced by these cults was quite large. The vast numbers of sacred animals buried by these cults, often within the space of a year, indicates that some were undoubtedly bred on the site as offerings, specifically for mummification.

One of the project research questions is to determine how the these animals were killed and prepared. With the ibis and birds of prey it is possible that they were killed by being immersed in the vats of molten resin, while the fish would have died just by being removed from water. However, it is still to be determined how the dogs, baboons, and other animals were disposed of. The only mammals (exclusive of the AMP) whose mummies have been closely examined are cats. Ptolemaic cat mummies in the collection of the British Museum (now in the Natural History Museum, London) that have been X-rayed show that some of them were strangled as their necks were broken. Some of these cats show evidence of natron or salt, while several indicate the use of resin.

Further studies on the already excavated animal mummies (like work on the AMP) as well as the ones currently being excavated in Saqqara and Tuna el-Gebel should provide a great deal of information on whether the animals were wild or domesticated, and how they were killed.