Cats hold a special place in the tapestry of ancient Egyptian art and culture. While lions, panthers, and jungle cats roamed the wild landscapes of Egypt, smaller felines integrated themselves into human life, becoming essential partners in controlling vermin within homes and granaries. This close proximity allowed the Egyptians to deeply observe and appreciate the complex, dual nature of cats. They recognized a fascinating blend of grace, fertility, and nurturing behavior alongside inherent traits of aggression, speed, and potential danger. These captivating qualities led the Egyptians to associate felines with certain deities, often depicting these gods with feline characteristics. However, it’s crucial to understand that the Egyptians did not directly worship cats themselves. Instead, they revered ‘feline’ deities, believing these powerful figures embodied the admirable traits they observed in these animals.
Bastet: The Quintessential Cat Goddess
Perhaps the most renowned feline deity from ancient Egypt is Bastet. Initially envisioned as a fierce lioness, Bastet’s iconography evolved by the 2nd millennium BCE to predominantly feature a domestic cat or a woman with the head of a cat. While embodying both nurturing and fierce aspects, Bastet’s protective and maternal qualities were typically emphasized in Egyptian beliefs and art. Countless representations of seated cats, goddesses with cat heads, or cats accompanied by kittens, have been discovered bearing dedicatory inscriptions addressed to Bastet. By commissioning and offering these inscribed images, individuals expressed heartfelt wishes for blessings such as good health and fertility, or more broadly, for life itself and divine protection.
These insights formed a cornerstone of the exhibition Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt, curated at the Brooklyn Museum. The inspiration for this insightful show arose from an exploration of the museum’s storage rooms. During this exploration, a gilded wooden statuette depicting a goddess with a lioness head and a woman’s body captured the curator’s attention. Its striking beauty, elegance, and the intriguing combination of feline and human features sparked immense curiosity. Despite being part of the Brooklyn Museum’s collection since 1937, this remarkable piece had remained largely unseen by the public due to its delicate condition.
This particular goddess, distinguished by her feline head and lion-like ears, is adorned with a tripartite wig. Evidence of a missing peg atop her head suggests that a separately crafted sun disk once graced her brow, likely securing a bronze uraeus in place. She is depicted in a crouching posture on a floral base, with her feet and buttocks resting on the ground and her knees drawn towards her torso. Her feet are notably bound together, potentially linking her symbolically to the underworld, reminiscent of a mummy. Her arms are bent at the elbows, with her right hand clenched into a fist and her left palm extended beside her left knee. The base, painted black and resembling a papyrus umbel, features an opening at the stem’s end. Intriguingly, a small cat mummy was originally concealed within the hollow interior of this figure. This discovery raises compelling questions: What was the purpose of this hidden mummy? To which deity was this unique offering intended?
Unraveling the Mystery of Feline Goddess Statuettes
While the Brooklyn statuette incorporates elements commonly found in Egyptian art, its specific combination of features renders it highly unusual and initially perplexing. For instance, the crouching or squatting pose of this goddess is typically observed in two-dimensional representations of deities found within temples, tombs, and on funerary papyri. However, lion-headed female divinities depicted in three dimensions are more frequently shown standing, striding, or seated on thrones. Furthermore, the umbel base of the statuette evokes papyrus scepters often carried by feline goddesses and papyrus-form columns adorned with cats dedicated to Bastet. Yet, floral-shaped bases are uncommon for wooden figures of gods of this size (just over a foot tall) and are rarely encountered as containers for animal mummies. Such bases are more typical in smaller bronze pieces and amulets or in larger stone sculptures. Finally, containers designed for cat mummies generally do not take the form of a crouching feline goddess. Instead, animal mummy containers shaped like a lion-headed woman usually represent the goddess Wadjet seated on a throne and bearing her name inscription. Adding to the complexity, Wadjet containers were traditionally used for ichneumons (mongooses), not cats.
Despite these unusual characteristics, certain details offer clues to the identity of the Brooklyn statuette. Numerous powerful goddesses shared similar visual attributes, making definitive identification challenging without an inscription. Bastet, Sekhmet, Mut, Tefnut, Shesemtet, Pakhet, Mafdet, Wadjet, and others were all depicted as lionesses or women with lion heads, often adorned with a sun disk. Each of these goddesses was considered a daughter of the Sun God and the embodiment of the Eye of the Sun. The Egyptians associated cats with the sun for several symbolic reasons. They perceived the reddish and yellowish fur of cats and lions as mirroring the colors of the sun itself. Cats’ love for warmth and sunbathing further strengthened this solar connection. Crucially, mirroring the contradictory nature of felines themselves, the sun possesses a dual nature, acting as both a life-giving source of warmth and a scorching, dangerous force in the desert. Consequently, many formidable and protective daughters of the sun god were imbued with leonine traits.
The Cat Mummy and Divine Favor
Within Egyptian mythology, the duality of feline goddesses, encompassing both terrifying and nurturing aspects, is most prominently represented by Sekhmet and Bastet, alongside other daughters of the Sun who embody similar qualities. For example, the myth of Hathor-Tefnut in Philae describes her as one who “rages like Sekhmet and is friendly like Bastet.” All these goddesses can be understood as facets of a single, powerful, feline, female force that wielded the sun’s fiery power to destroy, burn, and deter threats, yet transformed into a maternal divinity when appeased.
The cat mummy discovered inside the Brooklyn figurine provides a crucial insight into the statuette’s purpose. Cats were among the most frequently mummified animals in ancient Egypt. Each mummified animal was linked to a specific deity and offered as a votive to that god, expressing hopes for divine favor or as a symbol of gratitude. Egyptians specifically dedicated cat mummies to Bastet, the goddess embodying both nurturing and fierce protection. Bubastis, a city in the Nile Delta, served as the central hub for Bastet’s worship and the origin of vast quantities of cat mummies. These mummies were typically placed within rectangular or cat-shaped coffins or wrapped in linen and painted to resemble a cat. Thus, the mystery surrounding the Brooklyn Museum’s figurine is largely resolved: it served as an exceptionally elaborate cat mummy container, likely intended as a particularly fervent attempt to invoke extra favor from Bastet, the powerful Cat God.
