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In ancient Egypt, cats were represented in social and religious scenes dating as early as 1980 BC. [2] Several ancient Egyptian deities were depicted and sculptured with cat-like heads such as Mafdet, Bastet and Sekhmet, representing justice, fertility, and power, respectively. [3] The deity Mut was also depicted as a cat and in the company of ...
The Obsequies of an Egyptian Cat, by John Reinhard Weguelin (1886). Ancient Egyptian religion was characterized by polytheism, the worship of multiple deities. [4] Prior to the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, there were a tremendous number of these deities, each patron of a different element of the natural world. [5]
Egypt was one of first places where cats were domesticated. Animal burials were performed in ancient Egypt since at least the predynastic period. Cats in ancient Egypt were revered, though cat cemeteries at archaeological sites such as temple necropolises usually have mummified cats. [4]
Animal sacrifice was general among the ancient Near Eastern civilizations of Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia, as well as the Hebrews (covered below).Unlike the Greeks, who had worked out a justification for keeping the best edible parts of the sacrifice for the assembled humans to eat, in these cultures the whole animal was normally placed on the fire by the altar and burned, or ...
The Cats of Ancient Egypt". The Dawn of Art in the Ancient World: An Archaeological Sketch. New York: Macmillan and Co. pp. 172−185. Cooper, JC (1992). Symbolic and Mythological Animals. London: Aquarian Press. ISBN 1-85538-118-4. Engels, D.W. (2001). Classical Cats. The Rise and Fall of the Sacred Cat. London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415 ...
At the Bubastis temple, some cats were found to have been mummified and buried, many next to their owners. More than 300,000 mummified cats were discovered when Bastet's temple was excavated. Turner and Bateson suggest that the status of the cat was roughly equivalent to that of the cow in modern India. The death of a cat might leave a family ...
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Some animal mummifications were performed to serve as sacred offerings to the deities who often took the form of animals such as cats, frogs, cows, baboons, and vultures. Other animals were mummified with the intention of being a food offering to humans in the afterlife. Mummy of a peregrine falcon c. 2000–1001 BCE