(Ubasti, Pasht; G/R Bastet, Bubastis) - "Devouring Lady"
(from bas, to devour, with feminine ending);
One of the earliest-documented Names
with an appearance in Dynasty II,
Bast is first and foremost a protectress;
specifically of the royal house and the Two Lands.
During Dynasty IV, She was a
patron-Name of Lower Kemet,
paired with Hethert as a patron-Name of
Upper Kemet,
as Wadjet and Nekhebet are often
depicted in later times;
the Valley Temple of the Pyramid of
Khafra at modern-day Giza next to the
Sphinx had a "Portal of Bast"
as well as statues of Bast in the
company of the king.
Over time, Bast's image metamorphosed
to become more similar to
that of Hethert; eventually,
into the Greek period,
She would be equated with the virgin huntress
Artemis and considered the protectress of children
and pregnant mothers, musicians and a goddess
of all sorts of excess, especially sexual excess.
However, Bast's original visage did not
include the "cat as sex symbol" archetype.
(Incidentally, it is also from the
Greeks that the erroneous belief in
Bast as a daughter of Aset and Wesir derives;
Bast as Artemis had to have a twin brother,
Apollo (equated with Heru-sa-Aset by the Greeks).
) A play on words in Bast's name resulted
in Her being equated in Greco-Roman times
with the "soul of Isis" (ba-Aset),
probably in keeping with Aset's
gradual syncretism into the Roman Isis
of Ten Thousand Names.