catsuggest:

oupacademic:

Today is International Cat Day. Although in the 21^st century they are the beloved pets of many, cats have had a mixed history with a lot of mythology and superstition surrounding them. Cats have been associated with witchcraft, bad luck, and in Christian art have been used to symbolise sinful human nature.

However, in celebration of International Cat Day, the OUP Religion team wanted to focus on the culture which idolised cats the most: the Ancient Egyptians.

Below are 5 facts about cats and their role in the beliefs, deities, and myths of ancient Egyptian society.

1. Cats, large and small, were sacred to a number of Egyptian gods. The goddess Sekhmet was usually represented by a lioness, the goddess Pakhet by lions and cats.
2. Bastet (or Bast), the fertility goddess, is shown with a cat’s head. She is the oldest and best known of the Egyptian feline deities and although she originated from Bubastis, evidence exists to suggest that she was worshipped in various other places and associated with a number of different deities.
3. Feline deities are predominantly female, however there is one divine male cat often encountered in religious texts, one of the many manifestations of Re (or Ra), the deity of the sun.
4. The household cat is perhaps the most frequently studied creature in Egyptian iconography. There are sound reasons for thinking that its original home was Egypt, even if conclusive evidence is still lacking.
5. Since most cat owners in paintings seem to be women, it has been suggested that the cat may have had erotic connotations or was even a symbol of female sexuality.

Find out more about how cats were revered in the Egyptian household.

Image credit: Bastet Cat Egypt sculpture by Katzenfee50. Public domain via Pixabay.

know your hisstory allcat !