Traveling to Egypt, you will often see the "cat god" of the cat-headed man in ancient Egyptian murals. At the British Museum, the bronze sculpture of the black cat wearing gold earrings and nose rings and a silver amulet around his neck is sure to impress you too. But perhaps the ones that move you the most are the cat mummies, right? You just had to respect the ancient Egyptians for "being a shovel officer in life, and a cat slave when you die" ... But when you learned that at that time, these cats usually did not start and end well, but were twisted off by someone, mummified, and called "sacred", do you still think that these shovel officers are true love for cats?
The ancient Egyptians had cats in their homes dating back to 3000-4000 BC, but cats at that time may have been docile feral cats rather than domesticated cats. From 1900 BC, the ancient Egyptians began to raise some domesticated cats, but most of the cats at this time were "African wild cats" (libyca). By 1450 BC, cats were a frequent member of Egyptian homes. This suggests to some extent: domestic cats originated in African wildcats.
Why did the ancient Egyptians have cats? Because having a cat has many benefits. Cats prey on mice, do not damage the food in the house, love to be clean, bury feces in the sand outdoors after domestication, and, in exchange for comfort and safety, cats are willing to give up some freedom. Cat-owning families have more food and fewer diseases.
In ancient Egyptian art, cats were often painted under the hostess's chair. In the tomb mural "Ipuy, Ipuy's wife and their cat" from around 1250 BC, Ipuyi and his wife are sitting on their backs, receiving bouquets from their children, only to see an adult cat sitting under his wife's chair and another baby cat sitting on Ipuy's lap. The little milk cat raised its front paws and was playfully patting Ipui's sleeve. The color and markings of the cats indicate that they may be African wildcats. "Cats under a woman's chair" has a special meaning. In ancient Egypt, people associated cats with sex and fertility, and the cat under a woman's chair symbolized a woman's strong fertility. The cat in the mural symbolizes that even in the afterlife, the vitality of the tomb owner will still be endless. A cat is drawn under a woman's chair, what is drawn under a man's chair? Sometimes, a puppy will sit under a man's chair. Well, the mating ability of male dogs is well known.
Tomb mural "Ipuyi, Ipuyi's wife and their cat"
Because cats are able to deal with animals that harm humans and protect families from evil and misfortune, they are quickly deified. The ancient Egyptians believed that cats had supernatural powers, and related legends were born. It is said that the ancient Egyptian mythological sun god Ra, the most powerful deity in the Egyptian pantheon, could turn into a cat, the "Great Tomcat". Every night, the sun god enters the underworld in the form of a cat, fights Apophis, a snake demon who deliberately causes chaos, and hacks him to death. The next morning the sun will rise as usual, indicating the triumph of the sun god. The confrontation between Ra and Apophis is depicted in ancient Egyptian burial chamber frescoes and papyrus The Book of the Dead, and most of the images go like this: Ra transforms into a cat and cuts off the snake's head with a knife. Sometimes, the legend is also depicted as a cat holding Apophis' head with one paw and decapitating it with a knife with the other.
Papyrus painting "The sun god Ra turns into a cat and fights the snake demon Apophis"
Cats also became the goddess of Buster for the ancient Egyptians. This goddess is the patron saint of the family, able to bring health and fight evil spirits. Sometimes she appears as the head of a cat, and sometimes directly incarnates as a cat. Ancient Egyptians often had statues of the goddess Buster in their homes to ward off thieves. People pray to the goddess Buster for the health of her family, and people also wear amulets in the shape of cats to summon the protection of the goddess Buster. Women who wish to have children wear special Buster amulets with kitten motifs, and the number of kittens in the pattern is also the number of children the woman wishes to have.
The most familiar shape of the goddess Buster is probably from the British Museum. This is a lovely bronze statue of the goddess Buster, and the goddess in the statue is a woman with a cat's head, she has large ears that stand up high, and she wears a striped tunic. The goddess holds in one hand the forkbell, an ancient Egyptian musical instrument, and in the other a collar decorated with a lion's head. And at her feet sits four kittens, which are said to appear often in ancient Egyptian art works of art that represent pleasure and act like Cupid in Baroque sculptures.
Bronze statue of the goddess Buster in the British Museum
Another statue of the British Museum's goddess Buster is also famous: a bronze statue of a black cat wearing a silver collar, gold earrings and nose rings. This black cat is also known as the "Gaia Anderson" cat. The bronze statue, which is about 2,300 to 2,600 years old, was unearthed in the Egyptian cemetery of Sakqqá and is named after British collector Robert Grenville Gayer-Anderson, the donor of the statue. The smiling "Gaia Anderson" cat has been developed into a variety of cultural and creative products, including almost identical replicas of the original statue. This replica costs £3,999 (about 37,000 yuan), is it the most expensive museum souvenir in the world?
"Gaia Anderson" cat at the British Museum
Probably also because of the goddess Buster, cats are more loved by their owners. In the homes of the rich, cats even wear gold jewelry and eat at the owner's table. In the times when the goddess Buster was most revered, the status of cats was held up to heaven, and the punishment for killing a cat was unimaginable - even if it was an accident, the perpetrator would be put to death!
Cats often appear in tomb paintings in ancient Egypt. The British Museum has a mural painting "Nebamun Hunting Birds" from around 1350 BC by Nebamun, the clerk of the ancient Egyptian temple. In the painting, Nebamon is standing in a swamp hunting, and the strong cat jumps up, bites and scratches, and catches three birds at once. Nebamon is going on an eternal journey with his family, and the house cat is naturally included. This clearly reflects the importance that the ancient Egyptians attached to cats. It is said that the ancient Egyptians would train cats to help them hunt, and people may actually use cats to drive birds, and then the hunters would hit the birds with throwing sticks, spears or arrows. So, can such a cat be called a "hunting cat"?
Tomb mural "Nebamon Hunting Birds"
Details of "Nebamon Hunting Bird"
The temples and burial chambers of ancient Egypt reveal a lot of information about that era, but this information is mainly about the rich and privileged. You know, most of the population is ordinary people, what is their attitude towards cats? An ancient Egyptian artisan village has been discovered in Deir el-Medina, Egypt, the home of craftsmen who built and decorated imperial tombs during the New Kingdom (circa 1550-1080 BC). Archaeologists believe that these artisans are highly skilled, have a high literacy rate and do not earn a low income ... There are a lot of graffiti they left behind, painted on pottery chips or limestone fragments. Archaeologists speculate that these sketches were exercises before the craftsmen formally painted, or painted for play. Interestingly, these craftsmen did not draw cats.
Among them, the most famous and common pottery painting about cats is "Tabby cat with goose". This pottery painting is now in the collection of the National Museum of Egypt. In the painting, a tabby cat stands on its hind legs, like a "shepherd". In front of the cat are six geese arranged in two layers. Above the goose is a nest full of eggs. The tabby cat carries a long stick with a hook at one end and a bag of food hanging from the hook. Tabby cats may have to go farther away to herd geese. In this picture, animals carry out human activities and predators graze their prey, which may be a plot from an Egyptian folktale or fable, or it may contain some kind of political irony, that is, in a world that is reversed, the role of nature is subverted, and everything is contrary to the situation in nature.
Pottery painting "Tabby cat with goose"
In another pottery painting, a seated fat mouse is served by a cat servant. I saw the cat standing on its hind legs, and it held a fan, a napkin, and offered a roasted goose to the mouse sitting there. The rat has a droopy chest, a round belly, a long dress, a flower on its forehead, a flower sniffing, and a plate ready to be roasted goose. The cat serving the mouse may present a story that is now lost, or some kind of humorous satire or some kind of humorous satires.
Pottery painting "Cat servant serving mouse"
Every craftsman must be disgusted by their work, but no amount of regulation can stop people from having a spirit of humor. Painting pottery in their spare time is probably how craftsmen express themselves. Cats are inherently funny, and in fact, their arrogant and proud character gives them a sense of humor. In addition to expressing humor, the craftsmen also seem to use cats to express dissatisfaction and suspicion about the current situation. Presenting animals for human activity can euphemistically condemn the ruling elite and is a relatively safe means. That is, this reversal scenario may reflect the disappointment of craftsmen with pharaohs and despotic rule, who may have hoped that their world would be upended upside down. By subverting the order of animals in nature, a comedic effect is achieved. These farcical scenes are mockery of the ruling class's failure to uphold fairness and justice.
Another empirical evidence of the popularity of cats in ancient Egypt is that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of cat mummies have been found in Egypt. At the time, mummifying cats was an act of "sanctifying" cats and was considered a sign of respect for pets. It seems that the cat slaves of ancient Egypt fervently hoped that their cat masters would travel with them to the afterlife. The procedure for making a cat's mummy is the same as the procedure for making a person's mummy, and some cats even have elaborate limestone coffins, or wood-carved cat-shaped coffins, bronze cat-shaped coffins, etc. The cat's shovel officers are also given preferential treatment. In ancient Egypt, adult males responsible for caring for cats were exempt from forced labor. A document from 242 BC shows that the guardians of the mummy and the inhabitants of Memphis, where the cats were buried, were exempt from irrigation. Unfortunately, many cat mummies were damaged in the 19th century, mainly crushed and used as fertilizer.
The mummy of the cat
A shocking finding from the study of the mummies of some of the surviving cats is that most of these cats did not die of natural causes, but died of violence - their necks were twisted. From the British Museum's study of cat mummies, most of them died at 2-4 months of age or 9-12 months of age. A common cause of death is a dislocated cervical spine, which occurs if a cat's head is forcibly twisted or its neck is broken. Some believe that these premature deaths are due to the fact that there are too many cats in the temple cattery, and the temple has to control the number of cats. This theory sounds plausible, but another explanation seems more plausible. Pilgrims who visit temples during religious festivals want to pay for mummified dead cats to show their piety, but the number of cats that die of natural causes is limited... In order not to disappoint the believers, they can only ask the cat to become an immortal early. Archaeologists speculate that the two age groups were chosen because the kittens were sized enough to bury their small containers, and because they could also regulate the number of cats by reducing the number of new adult cats.
This is reminiscent of the cat cemetery near the Temple of the Goddess of Buster – how many cats are buried there? The Egyptian city of Bubastis is the holy city of the cat goddess Buster, where the cat cemetery near the temple of Buster is one of the world's first large cat cemeteries, dating back to around 900 BC. In the 5th century BC, the ancient Greek writer Herodotus traveled to ancient Egypt and mentioned it here. He wrote: When a cat dies, the inhabitants of the house will shave their eyebrows as a sign of mourning. He said the dead cats would be taken to the city of Bubastis, where they would be embalmed and buried. What Herodotus did not write down is that it was also here that a large number of cats were twisted and their necks were mummified.
Love cats, honor cats, and mummify cats ... Such love is chilling.