On the evening of July 27, 200 well-dressed pet cats, led by the "shovel officers", gathered at the site of the "Top of the Pyramids: Ancient Egypt Civilization Exhibition" at the Shanghai Museum to participate in the museum's first "Museum Meow Night" activity.
According to the official WeChat introduction of the Shanghai Museum, 200 "pet tickets" with cats to see the exhibition in the first event were sold out in 1 second.
The scene of the event (according to the official WeChat of the Shanghai Museum)
Who wouldn't want to bring their cat to experience the scene of the first civilization in human history to use cats as pets?
The ancient Egyptians were as famous for their cats as their pyramids. However, did the first cats also come out of Africa like their human ancestors? How did they spread across the globe and become inextricably linked to humanity?
The origin of cats
The earliest feline was called the Proailurus lemanensis, which was about the same size as the bobtail. 它的腿很短，但毫无疑问是一只猫科动物。
About 20 million years ago, the cats split into two branches, one of which gave rise to many saber-toothed tiger species, and the other branch, the "cone-toothed" cat, which included all the cats of today.
Research shows that the common ancestor of all today's cats lived about 11 million years ago. This ancestor then diverged into two lineages, the big cat (leopard subfamily), which contains 7 species, and the small cat family, which contains all the remaining species (cat subfamily).
Desert cats from North Africa and the Middle East (according to Picture Bug Creative)
In addition to big cats such as lions, tigers and cheetahs, the small cats we are familiar with are mainly divided into several categories such as North Africa wildcats, South Africa wildcats, Asian wildcats, European wildcats and desert cats.
The ancestors of modern domestic cats were wild cats in North Africa – so yes, Egyptians did breed the first domestic cats.
In 2004, France archaeologists found the bones of a cat used to accompany the burial in a prehistoric tomb in Cyprus. The two tombs are about 9,500 years old, and in one of the graves lies a man, less than half a meter from the man's feet is the second, smaller tomb, which contains a cat about 8 months old, carefully placed sideways and well preserved.
Tomb excavation site (above) and restoration map (according to the archaeologist's official website)
Buried with the owner of the tomb is a pile of precious burial goods, including axes, polished stones, and ochre. This shows that this cat is also considered a treasure.
Despite its young age, the cat is not small, belonging to a newly domesticated wild cat species, and it also indicates that it had a good life during its lifetime, so archaeologists believe that it may have been a tamed family animal, or even a beloved pet of the owner.
The intimate coexistence of humans and cats has been around for nearly 10,000 years.
Once an ancient Egypt dynasty was destroyed by cats?
Ancient Egypt, which has a long agricultural civilization and is located in the tropics, insects, rats and snakes are all troubles for human settlements, and the cats of ancient Egypt are not only good at catching rats, but also can catch snakes. The ancient Egyptian sun god Ra was able to transform into a cat and enter the underworld to fight and kill the snake demon Apophis, who deliberately caused chaos.
The cat is just one of the transformations of the sun god. The ancient Egyptians also had their own unique cat goddess: Bastet. She is the god who rules over the family, women's secrets, and fertility. The ancient Egyptians believed that the goddess Basteit could protect the family from evil spirits and diseases, especially those that endangered women and children.
The famous Gaia · Anderson bronze cat in the British Museum
Perhaps for this reason, women in ancient Egypt were particularly fond of cats. Women wishing to have children wear special amulets of the goddess Bastet, which have a kitten motif, and the number of kittens in the pattern is generally the number of children the woman wishes to have.
Judging from the artifacts found so far, the image of a cat in Egypt reliefs and frescoes appeared as late as the 4th Dynasty (c. 2500 BC) at the latest. By the 12th Dynasty (c. 1900 BC), the image of the cat as a family pet became more apparent in relief paintings and artifacts.
In a tomb fresco from around 1250 BC (above), the family of Ipuy, an ancient Egypt royal sculptor, is depicted as Ipuy and his wife sit on their knees and receive bouquets of flowers from their children. An adult cat sits under his wife's chair, while the other kitten sits on Ipui's lap and is coquettish.
There is also an older mural in the tomb of Nebamun (1350 BC), now in the British Museum, by Nebamun, the clerk of the ancient Egypt temple. Nebammon is shown hunting in a swamp overgrown with papyrus, and from the water to the sky, it is full of dense, lifelike birds and swimming fish. A sturdy cat jumped up and bit the wings of a wild duck, with its front and hind paws pressing two birds respectively.
Frescoes in the tomb of Nebamon
During the New Kingdom period (16th century BC ~ 11th century BC), cat and mouse motifs also appeared in a large number of papyrus documents, pottery shards, and tomb murals. A papyrus text of the New Dynasty that analyzes dreams also has this description: "If a person dreams of a cat, it is a sign of good fortune coming to him." ”
Near the outskirts of the Egypt city of Zagazig in the eastern Nile Delta, there are ruins of red granite. It is the site of Bubastis, the "ancient city of the Holy Cat". This ancient city is famous in the West thanks to the account of the famous ancient Greece historian Herodotus.
When Herodotus visited Egypt in the 5th century BC, he vividly described Bubastiz and the cult of the goddess Bastet. "There is a very noteworthy temple in this city, and although there are other temples in the city, this is the most majestic and expensive one, and it is truly breathtaking."
The ruins of the "Ancient City of the Holy Cat" Bubastis
In his magnum opus Histories, he recorded the great importance that ancient Egypt attached to cats: if a cat was deliberately killed, it was punishable by death; In the case of accidental manslaughter, the corresponding money should be compensated according to the priestess's demand; If the family's pet cat dies, the whole family should shave their eyebrows as a sign of mourning, otherwise the goddess Bastet will come to disaster......
At the height of the worship of the goddess Basted, thousands of Egyptians made an annual pilgrimage to Bubastis, held a celebration for the goddess, and bought cat mummies to honor the goddess. Many kittens were killed and mummified as a result of this – and human worship led to their early deaths.
Cat mummy
Cats have become in short supply, so much so that many of the mummies that look like cats don't actually have cats inside, and are filled with clay or even dried fish.
It is not only the cats that suffer because of worship, but also the ancient Egypt themselves.
In 525 BC, during a war with the Persians, the Persian soldiers painted the head of the goddess Bastet on their shields, causing the Egyptian soldiers to dare not use bows and arrows and swords and spears on them, and they were defeated.
The "recovery map" of the battle drawn by later generations
Having tasted the sweetness, the Persian army "went on the extra mile" and collected all the cats they could find in the area, launching a "cat attack" against the Egypt defenders - throwing live cats at the Egypt defenders one by one...... In front of the overwhelming cats thrown over, the Egypt army completely lost its fighting spirit.
After the defeat, the pharaoh abandoned the city and fled to Memphis, and eventually Memphis was also captured by the Persian army, and the 26th Dynasty of Egypt was declared extinct, and the Persian Empire became the titular 27th Dynasty of ancient Egypt. And this battle of Berusia is regarded by later generations as the first recorded psychological war in human history.
Was Tang Seng the first celebrity to bring a cat back to China?
Although the ancient Egyptians were famous for their love of cats, the appearance of domestic cats is also recognized as the earliest occurrence in ancient Egypt. However, the earliest archaeological evidence that can fully explain the symbiotic relationship between cats and humans so far comes from China.
The cat mummy on display at the Shanghai Museum this time
From the 50s of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century, archaeological experts carried out three archaeological excavations in Quanhu Village, Huaxian County, Shaanxi Province. In that 1997 excavation, eight bones from at least two cats were unearthed, which were skeletally measured, dated and isotopically analyzed.
Isotopic analysis showed that the settled people living in Quanhu Village at that time and their dogs and pigs ate millet-based food, as did the cats. Their diet consisted of a combination of plant and animal matter, and one of the cats in particular had a plant-based diet with little evidence of animal protein intake.
Cat bones excavated from Izumigo Village
You know, cats are super carnivores in nature. Cats in the wild only eat the flesh of animals. This is a strong indication that these cats in Quango Village are domesticated by humans.
The second clue is even a little touching: the cat's plant-based diet has teeth on its jaws that are worn out, indicating that it has entered its twilight years. Although animals in the wild sometimes live to old age, the more likely explanation in this case is that the owner of the old cat took good care of him.
The history of Chinese cat breeding is at least 5,300 years. In the past, it was believed that Chinese domestic cats were introduced from the European continent more than 2,000 years ago, but now we can infer that the domestication of cats may have occurred independently in several different parts of the world, and that Chinese cats were not all transmitted from the West.
Song "Tanuki Slave" (collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei)
However, until the Qing Dynasty, many Chinese people still believed that cats only began to exist in the Tang Dynasty - they believed that all cats came from ancient India and were brought back by Master Xuanzang.
There is such a passage in the Qing Dynasty's cat love notebook "Cat Ride": "There are no cats in China, and they are from the Western Tianzhu country, and they are not subject to the gas of China." Shi Shi because of the rat bite the Buddhist scriptures, so the animal. Tang Sanzang went to the West to learn scriptures, and brought them back to raise, which is a relic. "The Chinese literati believe that in order to prevent rats from biting the Buddhist scriptures, Master Xuanzang brought back cats from Tianzhu Kingdom.
A lacquered food plate painted with a raccoon cat unearthed in Mawangdui
Xuanzang traveled westward, and a long section of the route was the Silk Road of the Tang Dynasty, and the Silk Road was first opened up in the Han Dynasty.
One of the strongest pieces of evidence is the lacquerware excavated from the Mawangdui Han Tomb – these cats were painted on lacquered food plates with mackerel patterns (all of the earliest domestic cats were found in this pattern), and there were more than 100 of them in total, with no two cats being the same—some looking pampered, some looking wild.
Some of the raccoon cat patterns on the cultural relics unearthed in Mawangdui are illustrated
From wild animals to domestic pets, the relationship between cats and humans also reflects the development of civilization – initially to protect precious food, paper and silk from rodents, and then to develop emotions and attachments to each other, shelter and companionship.
A civilization that does not emphasize practicality and naturally exudes warmth is the civilization that people yearn for.
Source: Red Star News