HOW CATS CAME TO BE
WORSHIPPED IN EGYPT

Egypt, a land in the desert, a land of fiery spirit, of Pharaohs
who with great courage fight their enemies, of golden temples and golden sands. Egypt, what better object of worship could
be considered for that land, than the Sun? And what animal
better to represent the Sun than the feline?

Bast is one of the most complex deities in one of the most
complex belief systems in the world. However she was so popular, and still is today especially with cat lovers.

The appearance of Bast as a cat headed goddess immediately
followed the introduction of the domestic cat into Egypt.
How this new species was created is still a matter of hot
debate and is unimportant to this discussion. Before the
introduction of the domestic feline, the Egyptians had been
worshipping other felines, such as the lion and the ocelot, as
solar deities. This association beween felines and the solar divinities appears, for instance, in the Sphinx (an effigy of the
sun god as a human-headed lion), Sekhmet (the lion-headed
goddess, symbolising the destructive/purificating powers of
the sun) and Mafdet, (a lynx or ocelot goddess, who defends
humans against snakes). Even Ra (a sun god, later considered the
father of Bast) is called a cat in The Book of the Dead,
as he is said to take the shape of a solar cat
and kill the serpent under the persea tree. Thus light
triumphs against darkness. And Bast herself was originally a
lion goddess, before she was worshipped as a cat, though it
was the latter form of her which became immensely popular
in Egypt.

The Pictures, from top to bottom are: a woman worshipping Bast, Bast in her
half-human form, and a beautiful artist's interpretation of how the sun
goddess must have been.