In our modern world, there are now as many people who have a cat in their homes are there are with dogs. But this love of cats is not a recent phenomenon and one of the civilizations with the greatest passion for their cats was Ancient Egypt.
Sacred
For the Ancient Egyptians, the cat was called Mau and were considered to be sacred. DNA tests have shown that these ancient house cats were first domesticated in the Middle East from a subspecies of the Wildcat there, around 10,000 years ago. Some thousands of years later, the pet cat had made its way to Egypt where both Upper and Lower Egypt treated them as part of the religion of the land.
In fact, Egypt had a number of gods and goddess that were represented as a cat, or in a cat type form. These included Mafdet, the goddess of justice and execution who was shown with a lion's head and the more famous Bast, the cat goddess who came to represent protection, fertility and motherhood.
Bubastis
Bubastis became the center of worship for Bast in the New Kingdom, an important city on the east of the Nile Delta. Here Bast became associated with the positive aspects of the sun and its god Ra and the cult gained a huge following with thousands of pilgrims travelling each year to the city. Bubastis became another name for the goddess.
The marketplace at Bubastis also became key for the trading of images of the goddess and these were usually in the image of cats. Bronze sculpture and amulets were commonly created for worshipers while the image of a cat and kittens was made into a fertility amulet for women trying to conceive. Their prayer would be that Bast gave them the same number of children as kittens on the amulet.
The annual celebration of Bast held in the city was one of the most popular events in the calendar and Greek historian Herodotus wrote about it. Pilgrims would travel down the Nile in barges, celebrating until they arrived at the city where feasts were held in the goddess honor and sacrifices made.
Mummification
Because cats were viewed as sacred, some of them were given the same mummification rituals after death as humans. One tomb found near the town of Beni Hasan had 80,000 cat mummies inside, dating from 1000BC onward. Mummified cats were seen as being given in offering to the cat goddess Bast.
Herodotus also noted that many cats, when they died, were taken to Bubastis to be mummified. Not all cats were mummified and Swiss Egyptologist Edouard Naville found a burial site near the city that held over 720 cubic feet of cat remains, including bones in burial pits that had been burned.
Everyday life
There were two types of small cat that made their home in Egypt; the Jungle Cat (Felis chaus) and the African wild cat (Felis silvestris libyca) and it was the latter that became domesticated from the Predynastic Period. They first came to the attention of people due to their preying on vermin such as rats that ate from the royal granaries as well as for killing venomous snakes.
Cats were often shown in reliefs as sitting beneath the chair of a woman due to their connection with fertility.
Lions were also a popular motif in Ancient Egypt, with lions being found in the south of the country in the Predynastic Period. The lion came to represent the royal authority because of their powerful and aggressive nature.
Conclusion
The worship of cats fell out of favor with the changing religion in Egypt and was officially banned in 390AD. Ownership of cats as pets fell after this but they were still prized for their pest catching abilities. They have still some specific significance in modern Egypt as cats are revered to some extent in Muslim traditions.
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