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The Ibis bird was sacred to and associated with Thoth the God of wisdom and writing. Thoth was often represented in the form of a man's body with the head of the Ibis and was the patron of the educated scribes who were responsible for the administration of Egypt.

As a sacred animal the Ibis on death was embalmed and put inside the hollow body of the figure you can see here. Alternitavely, the mummified remains were placed in pottery jars and deposited in vast underground galleries. Hundreds of thousands of such burials have been discovered at Sakkara, near Memphis the ancient capital of Egypt.