Nearly 2,000 years ago, in the Egyptian port city of Berenike, wealthy Roman military officials were importing macaque monkeys from thousands of miles away—and burying them with surprising ceremony when they died.
Archaeologists excavating an ancient animal cemetery have uncovered the remains of at least 36 Indian rhesus macaques among nearly 800 graves, according to research published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology. For the first time, this provides clear evidence that Rome's elite were systematically importing primates across vast distances, not just keeping the occasional exotic pet.
The Monkey's Afterlife
What makes these burials remarkable isn't just that the monkeys were imported—it's how they were mourned. While only around 3% of the cemetery's cat and dog graves contained burial goods, 40% of the monkey burials included items like food, collars, and iridescent shells. Some macaques were even laid to rest alongside kittens and piglets, suggesting these may have been companion animals gifted by their owners. Picture a Roman general deciding his pet monkey needed its own pets.
We're a new kind of news feed.
Regular news is designed to drain you. We're a non-profit built to restore you. Every story we publish is scored for impact, progress, and hope.
Start Your News DetoxBut the burials also reveal the practical challenges of keeping primates in a remote port city 480 miles southeast of Cairo. Two macaque skulls showed signs of malnutrition, likely from diets lacking sufficient vegetables and fruit. The owners probably weren't cruel—they simply couldn't source proper food in such an isolated location. A monkey's dietary needs, it turns out, were harder to meet in the ancient world than a general's ego.
These monkeys represent something deeper than just wealth display. They show how far Rome's networks of trade and influence extended, and how the people at the top of that system used exotic animals to signal their place in it. The cemetery itself is a window into the lives of military officials stationed at the empire's edges, trying to recreate the comforts and status symbols of home in an unfamiliar place.
The Berenike findings suggest that importing primates from the Indian subcontinent was more organized and deliberate than previously thought—not a rare curiosity, but a practice sustained enough to leave archaeological traces centuries later.
