Bastet: The Egyptian Cat Goddess, from Lioness to Household Protector

Who was Bastet?

Bastet was a protective goddess who began as a fierce lioness and gradually became the gentler cat goddess familiar today. She is attested from the Second Dynasty (about 2800 BC) and in the Pyramid Texts appears as a nurse and protector of the king. Her name is often explained as "she of the ointment jar", from the Egyptian word for a type of perfume jar written in her name, though that etymology is not certain.

Her rise to national prominence came in the Third Intermediate Period, when the 22nd Dynasty kings of Libyan descent, such as Shoshenq I and Osorkon II, ruled from or favoured her city of Bubastis in the eastern Delta. It is from roughly this time that the cat form dominates her images. The Greeks, who arrived in numbers under the Saite and Ptolemaic kings, identified her with Artemis.

Bastet and Sekhmet: one goddess, two moods?

Egyptian theologians paired Bastet with Sekhmet, the raging lioness, as two aspects of the same dangerous power: Sekhmet was the goddess angry, Bastet the goddess calmed. Both were called the daughter and the "Eye" of the sun god Ra, a female force sent out to defend him.

The best-known version of the angry Eye story is the Book of the Heavenly Cow, inscribed on a gilded shrine of Tutankhamun and in the tomb of Seti I. Ra sends his Eye, as Hathor-Sekhmet, to punish rebellious humans; she slaughters so eagerly that Ra floods the fields with beer dyed red with ochre, she drinks it, becomes drunk and the massacre stops. A separate group of myths, usually called the Distant Goddess, has the Eye storming off south into Nubia as a lioness and being coaxed home by Thoth or Shu, returning pacified. Bastet is not the heroine of these texts, which centre on Hathor and Sekhmet, but later sources treat her as the soothed, homecoming form of the same goddess. Be wary of modern retellings that make Bastet herself the beer-drinking destroyer.

What happened at the festival of Bubastis?

According to Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century BC, Bastet's festival at Bubastis was the biggest party in the country. He describes men and women sailing downriver in crowded boats, playing castanets and flutes, singing and clapping, and pulling in at every town to shout jokes at the women on the bank. At Bubastis itself, he says, about 700,000 people gathered, not counting children, and more wine was drunk during the festival than in the rest of the year.

The numbers are Herodotus's and probably exaggerated, but music and drunkenness fit what Egyptian sources say about the festivals of lioness and cat goddesses. Herodotus also admired the temple, set on an island formed by two canals and surrounded by trees. Little of it stands today: Tell Basta, on the edge of Zagazig about 80 km north-east of Cairo, is a field of toppled granite blocks with a small open-air display, worth a detour only for enthusiasts.

Did the ancient Egyptians worship cats?

Not exactly: cats were treated as sacred animals of Bastet, and killing one could be punished, but the goddess was the object of worship, not every cat. Domestic cats were valued from early times for keeping snakes and rodents away from grain, and appear in New Kingdom tomb paintings sitting under their owners' chairs.

The evidence for reverence is strong. The Greek historian Diodorus says that around 60 BC he saw an Egyptian mob kill a Roman who had accidentally killed a cat, even though officials of Ptolemy XII tried to intervene. But the cat cemeteries tell a more complicated story. Radiography of temple cat mummies shows that many were young animals, bred in temple catteries and killed, sometimes by a broken neck, so that pilgrims could buy and dedicate them to Bastet. Reverence for the species and mass sacrifice of individuals sat side by side; our guide to animal mummies explains how this trade worked.

One popular story should be treated with caution: that the Persian king Cambyses won the Battle of Pelusium in 525 BC by putting cats in front of his army so the Egyptians would not shoot. It comes from Polyaenus, writing some 700 years later, and most historians regard it as legend.

How to recognise Bastet

Look for a slim, seated cat with an alert, upright posture, or a woman with a cat's head carrying a sistrum (a rattle used in temple music) and a small basket or aegis. Late Period bronze figures sometimes show kittens playing at her feet, a nod to her role as a protector of mothers and children. Many bronze cats wear gold earrings or a nose ring, and some have a winged scarab or an Eye of Horus engraved on the chest.

• Lioness head: on earlier monuments the same goddess may still be lion-headed, so check the inscription before assuming it is Sekhmet.
• Aegis: a broad collar topped by her head, a common Late Period amulet and temple object.
• Bastet vs Mafdet: another early feline goddess, Mafdet, punished snakes and scorpions; she is far rarer and usually shown as a cheetah or leopard-like animal.

Where to see Bastet in Egypt today

Bastet's best images are in museums, because her great temple at Bubastis is ruined. The Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square has bronze cats and an animal-mummy room with mummified cats in their decorated wrappings, and the Grand Egyptian Museum displays Late Period bronzes; collections move between the two, so check what is on show before you go.

• Saqqara: the Bubastieion, a temple and cemetery of Bastet cut into the escarpment, has yielded thousands of cat mummies and cat statues; in 2019 the antiquities ministry announced further finds there, including mummified lion cubs. The galleries are an excavation area rather than a visitor site, but your guide can point out the area.
• Mummification Museum, Luxor: includes a mummified cat in its row of animal mummies.
• Beni Hasan: nearby is the Speos Artemidos, a rock-cut temple built by Hatshepsut for the lioness goddess Pakhet, whom the Greeks, like Bastet, called Artemis.
• Gayer-Anderson Museum, Cairo: the house of the collector who owned the famous bronze "Gayer-Anderson Cat", now in the British Museum.