By Mark Gill, CEO, Petasure
Long before Instagram, viral cat videos, or luxury cat beds that are invariably unused, there were the ancient Egyptians. They worshipped cats, mourned them, mummified them in their millions and, according to some accounts, may even have lost a battle because of them. If you have ever suspected that your cat believes it is a god, the Egyptians would have agreed. Let’s visit the fascinating world of ancient Egyptian cats.
From pest control to sacred companion
The story begins not with temples and gold, but with grain stores and mice. Along the fertile banks of the Nile, one of the world’s earliest civilisations unwittingly laid the foundations for a relationship that would endure for thousands of years.
The African wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica), a small, striped and largely solitary hunter, was drawn to the growing settlements of the Nile Delta by the one thing no self-respecting cat can resist: an easy meal. Where humans stored grain, rodents followed. Where rodents gathered, wildcats appeared. And where wildcats proved useful, humans let them stay.
Archaeological evidence suggests this relationship was well established by the Predynastic period. Excavations at Hierakonpolis, once the capital of Upper Egypt, have uncovered cat remains showing signs of human care and possible veterinary attention dating back to around 3700 BCE. This places the relationship between cats and humans nearly two thousand years earlier than the Middle Kingdom period traditionally associated with cat domestication.
What began as a practical arrangement – you catch the mice, we’ll let you sleep indoors – gradually evolved into something far deeper. It is a pattern repeated throughout human history. Animals first valued for their usefulness often become something far more meaningful.
Cats were not simply tolerated. They were welcomed into Egyptian homes, depicted in tomb paintings sitting beneath chairs, eating from plates and wearing ornamental collars. The Egyptians even had an onomatopoeic word for them: ‘miw’, meaning “he or she who mews”. Some things, it seems, never change.
Bastet: the goddess with a cat’s head
No account of Egypt’s feline obsession would be complete without Bastet. Originally depicted as a fierce lioness, the warrior daughter of the sun god Ra, Bastet’s image softened over the centuries. By the first millennium BCE, she was increasingly shown with the head of a domestic cat, a transformation that scholars believe mirrors the domestication of the cat itself.
As goddess of the home, fertility, joy and the protection of children, Bastet became one of the most beloved deities in the Egyptian pantheon. Her cult centre at Bubastis, in the Nile Delta, drew pilgrims from across Egypt. During religious festivals, the city filled with music, feasting and processions, becoming one of the most celebrated destinations in the ancient world. Visitors purchased bronze statuettes of Bastet and mummified cats to leave as offerings at her temple. When the volume of gifts became too great, priests buried them in specially dug trenches to make room for more.
The scale of this devotion is difficult to comprehend today. In the late nineteenth century, more than 200,000 mummified cats were discovered at a single cemetery at Beni Hasan in central Egypt. Millions more are believed to have been created across the country – some beloved household pets, others purpose-bred as votive offerings. It was, in the most literal sense, an industry built on cat worship.
Mourning, law and the shaved eyebrow
The reverence did not stop at temples. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, writing around 450 BCE, when a household cat died of natural causes, every member of that household would shave off their eyebrows as a visible sign of grief – a mourning period that lasted until the eyebrows grew back. The cat’s body would then be embalmed, wrapped in fine linen and, in many cases, taken to Bubastis for burial.
Herodotus also recorded that if a house caught fire, the Egyptians would not attempt to put out the flames until they had first ensured the cats were safe. He noted that people positioned themselves around the building specifically to watch over the animals. The fire, apparently, could wait.
Harming a cat, even accidentally, was considered a serious crime. Multiple ancient accounts suggest that killing a cat could be punishable by death. There are even recorded instances of mobs attacking foreigners who had inadvertently caused the death of one. Modern cat owners may feel a certain sympathy with that level of devotion.
When cats went to war
Egypt’s devotion to cats may even have altered the course of history.
In 525 BCE, the Persian king Cambyses II marched on Egypt and met the forces of the young Pharaoh Psamtik III at the strategically vital city of Pelusium, on the eastern edge of the Nile Delta.
According to the ancient writer Polyaenus, Cambyses – who understood Egyptian culture and knew exactly where to strike – ordered his soldiers to paint images of the goddess Bastet on their shields and drive cats and other sacred animals ahead of the advancing Persian lines. The Egyptian archers, unwilling to risk harming the animals and offending the gods, hesitated. It was enough. The Persian forces broke through, and Pelusium fell.
It should be noted that Herodotus himself does not mention this particular tactic, and some historians regard the cat element of the story with caution. But the broader point remains. Egypt’s spiritual devotion to cats was so well known across the ancient world that an enemy general believed it could be turned into a weapon. Whether or not every detail is true, the story tells us something remarkable about how deeply cats were woven into Egyptian identity.
A legacy that never left
The Egyptians did not simply keep cats. They elevated them into art, religion, law and the most intimate rituals of grief and devotion. They gave the first known cat a name, Nedjem, meaning “sweet”, painted them into tomb murals alongside their families and built entire economies around their worship.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Egypt’s feline obsession is how familiar it still feels.
The ancient Egyptians understood something many cat owners recognise instinctively. Cats are neither servants nor companions in quite the way dogs are. They occupy a category all of their own: independent, enigmatic and seemingly indifferent to the attention lavished upon them.
Five thousand years after the first wildcats slipped into the grain stores of the Nile Valley, the relationship remains remarkably unchanged. We still photograph them endlessly. We still rearrange our homes around them. We still forgive them almost everything.
The Egyptians simply took that devotion to its logical conclusion.
To find out more, or to register your pet with Petasure, visit www.petasure.co.uk.
Collaborative content
