Nearly two millennia ago at an ancient port on the Red Sea, elite Roman officers seem to have kept some unusual primate pets—and loved them dearly.
In a Roman animal cemetery at the port of Berenike, located in what’s now Egypt, researchers encountered three dozen burials mostly consisting of Indian macaque monkeys, or rhesus macaques. They dated the remains back to the first two centuries A.D. High-ranking Roman military members were documented to live in Berenike around that time, when the port was a bustling trade center. It was built to import African war elephants to beef up general Ptolemy I’s army, and other animals seemed to stream in over time, including monkeys.
The recently analyzed monkeys appeared to be treasured companions, according to items placed in their graves including collars, shiny shells, food, and small pets of their own, discoveries detailed in the Journal of Roman Archaeology. This finding offers the “the richest source to date of zooarcheological and archeological knowledge on primates kept as pets in antiquity,” the authors wrote. Cats and dogs were found at the same burial site, but only around 3 percent of those graves contained such goods, compared to about 40 percent of the monkey graves.
Previously, the site was thought to be an Early Roman trash dump, until researchers characterized it as an animal burial ground in 2011—one of the oldest pet cemeteries found around the globe.
Archeologists have previously unearthed evidence of ancient Romans keeping pet monkeys. For example, researchers excavating sites in Pompeii found a skeleton belonging to a monkey that died during the eruption of Vesuvius. Some Roman monkey burials may have been associated with military members, like a grave discovered in the foothills of the Pyrenees from the fifth or sixth century. This particular macaque was buried with belt buckles and bronze plaques, both considered Roman military decorations.
All of these previously studied primate companions seem to have come from Africa, so the new findings suggest this is the first clearly documented instance of the organized movement of non-human primates overseas. It also highlights the Roman Empire’s “intensive contacts with India during the Early Imperial period.”
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Despite their glamorous graves, these pet monkeys seem to have lived tough lives—two of the macaque skulls suggested that the animals experienced malnutrition due to a diet with little to no fresh vegetables and fruit. It was tricky to source these foods in Berenike, which was highly isolated, and they were probably fed the seafood that their human companions ate. But the Romans do seem to have tried to treat the monkeys for certain health conditions—one monkey’s feet were covered with tree resin, which may have been used as a painkiller or general healing remedy.
The officers thought to have owned these precious primates were part of legions that explored Africa and the Near East, and they may have helped spark an exotic animal trend that persisted over the following centuries among the Roman elite.
Ultimately, the authors wrote, the “ancient Romans valued animals for their psychological and social qualities rather than their economic value, and in this sense, they assigned primates an almost semi-human status.” 
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Lead image: Shantanukaps / Wikimedia Commons
