Ancient techniques for preserving entire or parts of animals and humans were secret arts, frequently associated with religious ceremonies and mystical rites. Protecting the dead from decay was variously understood as a means of easing the transition of the spirit between this world and the next, harnessing supernatural forces, or accessing knowledge of the natural and supernatural worlds. Preserved body parts were links to the after world and were appropriately revered as symbols of strength and worldly representations of unworldly powers. In an effort to ensure abundant harvests, the Maori sometimes placed the skull, bones, and dried heads of ancestors around cultivated lands to recruit symbolically ancestral aid. Some North American First Nations peoples were known to use the preserved heads of porcupines, foxes, raccoons, and eagles to decorate their clothing and equipment. In the Ecuadorian and neighboring Peruvian Amazon, members of the Jivaro Tribe wore the shrunken head, or tsanta, of their enemy as trophies to harness the powers of the victim's spirit and to enhance the wearer's prestige and. If the head of a slain warrior was not obtainable, the Jivaro substituted the head of a tree sloth, which many of the tribes in the region believed to be a direct ancestor of humans and endowed with human qualities.

Image: the Cathedral of Seville, taken from Ramon Jackson's
website: A Crocodile, Elephant Tusk and La Giralda

The Western Christian tradition also revered relics of the deceased. Bodily fragments of saints displayed in early Christian churches were venerated by pilgrims for their power to heal and alleviate suffering and physical pain.  Medieval Christian also frequently hung preserved exotic items from the rafters of churches to evoke awe at the wondrous variety of God’s creations. In 1260 a crocodile was given to King Alfonso X by the Sultan of Egypt. When the animal died, its body was dried and hung in the Portal of the Lizard (named for the reptile) which leads from the cloister to the Cathedral of Seville. The crocodile eventually decayed, however, and was replaced by a wooden replica.

 

Image: from the National Library of Medicine's online gallery,
Dream Anatomy

Even early natural history collections, the precursors to modern day scientific institutions, had religious overtones. Nature was God’s creation, and as such reading the book of Nature was a means of knowing His works and ways. Collections of body parts were used a moral exemplum. Fredrick Ruysch (1638-1731), for example, sculpted pieces of human bodies – kidney stones, gallstones, dried organs – as landscapes on which tiny skeletons enacted various emotional scenes of piety, despair, and tribulation.