THE CAT GODDESS

Bast was the goddess of life and family and of the domestic cat, although she sometimes took on the war-like aspect of a lioness. She is depicted enthroned as the cat-headed incarnation of Isis or, alternately, as the seated Sacred Cat, often holding the sacred rattle known as the sistrum. Related to Neith, the Night Goddess, Bast symbolized the moon in its function of making a woman fruitful, with swelling womb. She was also the Egyptian goddess of pleasure, music, dancing and joy, and associated with the "eye of Ra", acting as the instrument of the sun God's vengeance.

The ancient Egyptians held cats in the highest esteem and the penalties for injuring or killing one was severe. A protectress of cats and those who cared for cats, Bast was an important deity in the home and also important in the iconography since the serpents which attack the sun god were usually represented in papyri as being killed by cats.

The main center for the worship of Bast was the city of Bubastis in the delta region of northern Egypt. Bubastis possessed Egypt's greatest temple and the priests maintained large catteries. Thousands of small cat sculptures, probably left with offerings to the temple by devotees, have been recovered at Bubastis and a vast cemetery of mummified cats was excavated nearby. The festival honoring Bast was described as one of the largest and most enthusiastically celebrated in all of Egypt by the visiting Roman writer Herodotus (see chapters 59 and 60).

Perhaps the earliest recorded feline Egyptian goddess was Mafdet, who is described in the Pyramid Texts as killing a serpent with her claws. A representation of Mafdet (possibly translated as "runner") found on a stone vase in a tomb at Abydos (approx. 2800 BC) shows a large cat, probably a cheetah or leopard. While the Egyptians had several other feline Goddesses, such as the lioness-headed Sekhmet, only Bastet was represented by the domesticated cat.

HOW CATS BECAME DEMIGODS

Before too long, ancient Egyptians progressed from villages into cities and from a simple nature-oriented pantheism led by the village shaman into a hyper-complex system of gods and goddesses with a set of elaborate rituals carefully governed by a priest class. The kingship secured itself, as has often been done, by claiming a right to rule as ordained by the gods. This divine right of Kings eventually gave way to a royal demi-godhood, then a full godhood: the King became Pharaoh, the God-King. Since Pharaoh was one of their own, this concept was strongly encouraged by the priests. Egypt had become a firmly entrenched theocracy.

Since the food requirements of a city are much greater than those of a village, grain was confiscated as taxes and stored in the royal granaries. These granaries were simply windowless storage buildings and, like all buildings, were not secure against nature's smaller creatures, the mice and rats. With all that grain piled in such great heaps, the vermin had a field day and bred like rabbits only wish they could. This became such a problem that Pharaoh needed all the cats he could muster to combat the vermin, so he appropriated all the cats in the land.

Taking people's cats, especially beloved cats, posed a problem that even Pharoah didn't want to face. Being divine himself, presumably with divine wisdom, he solved this problem by leaving all the cats where they were but making them demigods: all the cats in Egypt, all at once. There were suddenly tens of thousands of small, furry, purring divinities running around. Of course, a mere human could not own a demigod, only a God could, and who was the only God around? The Pharoah, that's who. A human could, though, provide a home and food for a demigod, and this they did, bringing them to their assigned granary each night and picking them up each morning. As compensation for this service, they would receive a tax credit - in essence, claiming their cats as dependents.

Since all cats were the property of divine Pharaoh, to kill or injure one, even by accident, was a capital crime. If a house caught fire, the cats were saved first, then, if there was time, the people. People were, after all, only human. Whenever a cat died in the normal course of events, the whole of its human household went into elaborate ritualistic mourning, often shaving off their eyebrows, chanting, pounding their breasts, and demonstrating other outward signs of grief at their loss. The body of the cat had to be carefully wrapped in linen and brought to the priests, who would check it carefully to be certain its death was natural. When the priests were done, the body was taken to the embalmers, who made a cat mummy of it. There were far more cat mummies than people mummies in Egypt. Over 300,000 of them were found in the diggings at Beni-Hassan alone.

The ritualism and mythology concerning the cat spread far beyond their vermin-control capabilities. The people soon believed that the cats had a direct influence upon health, marriage, fortune, and other non-cat aspects of life. Bast, the Goddess of life and family, who had a woman's body and a cat's head, was often depicted as holding in her left hand an amulet of the all-seeing sacred eye, the utchat, believed to have magical powers. The utchat itself was everywhere in society, as decoration in home shrines, worn as jewelry, etc. It was often depicted as being the eye of a cat, sometimes with cats within the eye itself. An utchat at the door kept a watchful eye out for thieves and vandals, protecting the home. An utchat over the lintel kept a watchful eye over all who dwelt within, preserving them from disease and accident. An utchat worn around the neck kept its watchful eye upon the road and protected travelers from harm. An utchat showing a mother cat with many kittens given as a wedding present meant many children. The beliefs were legion.

To remove one of the divine cats from Egypt was to steal from Pharaoh, a capital crime. As a result, it took a while before many domesticated cats turned up elsewhere in the Near East.