One of the daughters of the sun god sent out as his Eye, in her fiercer lioness form
The 'distant goddess' who must be lured home from Nubia with music and beer.
Myth · Egyptian
Bastet
Egyptian mythology — cat goddess of home, fertility and protection
The cat goddess of Bubastis. Originally a fierce lioness like Sekhmet, she softened over the centuries into the domestic cat — protector of the household, of women in childbirth and of the king, but still one of the dangerous daughters of the sun god. Her festival was, on Herodotus's account, the rowdiest and best attended in Egypt.
How to spot them
- ▸A cat, or a woman with a cat's head, often carrying a sistrum and a basket of kittens
- ▸The goddess of the city the Greeks called Bubastis, in the eastern Delta
- ▸Began as a lioness and became domesticated in art from the Third Intermediate Period
- ▸Quiz clue: 'sistrum', 'aegis', 'Eye of Ra', 'the Gayer-Anderson bronze'
Stories & episodes
Herodotus describes her Delta festival as the largest and most riotous in Egypt
Histories II.59-60: boatloads of pilgrims, clappers and enormous quantities of wine.
Her temple city gave its name to a Twenty-second Dynasty line of Libyan pharaohs
The Bubastite kings, whose gateway survives at Karnak.
Vast cemeteries of mummified cats were dug up at her cult centre and shipped to England as fertiliser
Nineteenth-century sales of votive cat mummies by the ton.
A famous hollow-cast bronze cat in the British Museum, with gold earrings, represents her
The Gayer-Anderson Cat, Late Period.
Her gentler cat form is contrasted with the raging lioness of Memphis
Sekhmet is the warlike counterpart; the two are sometimes a single goddess in two moods.
Quick-fire facts
- •Her name is also written Bast; the earlier form Bastet is the one Egyptologists prefer
- •Her cult centre was Bubastis (Egyptian Per-Bastet, modern Tell Basta) in the eastern Delta
- •She often holds a sistrum, a rattle used in the worship of Hathor as well
- •The Greeks identified her with Artemis
- •She is called a daughter of Ra and is counted among the 'Eye of Ra' goddesses
- •Her son is Mahes (Maahes), a lion god
- •Herodotus says her festival drew 700,000 people and more wine than the rest of the year together
- •The Gayer-Anderson Cat in the British Museum is the best-known image associated with her
- •Millions of votive cat mummies were buried at Bubastis and Saqqara
Drill it — 9 cards
1 / 9new card
Sources
- Richard H. Wilkinson — The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
- Herodotus — The Histories, Book II