CATS! WILD TO MILD | EGYPT AND DOMESTICATION

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"Whoever kills a cat in Egypt is condemmed to death, whether he committed this crime deliberately or not. The people gather and kill him. An unfortunate Roman, who had accidentally killed a cat, could not be saved, either by King Ptolemy of Egypt or by the fear which Rome inspired."

(From Diodorus Siculus)

Thou art the Great Cat, the avenger of the gods, and the judge of words, and the president of the sovereign chiefs and the governor of the holy Circle; thou art indeed...the Great Cat.

Inscription on the royal tombs at Thebes

Egyptians mummified many animals, including vultures, mongooses, and cats, in the same way they did humans. The bodies were embalmed, wrapped in linen, and sometimes decorated. Thousands of cat mummies were preserved in a huge temple at Bubastis, devoted to the cat goddess, Bastet.

Although the Egyptians worshiped cats, it is untrue that they never killed them. An X-ray study of fifty-five mummified cats shows that nearly all were less than one year old and that several had broken necks. Temple priests may have killed kittens to control the temple cat population and then sold their mummies as offerings to the goddess Bastet.

The cat mummy is from a tomb in the Beni Hasan region of Egypt, Old Kingdom Period, Fourth Dynasty, 2500 BCE.

Cat Sarcophagus

from Cairo, Egypt
Late Period
760 B.C. - 330 B.C.
on loan from the Harer Family Trust

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This page was made possible by a grant from Friskies PetCare Company and the National Science Foundation.

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Drawing of Roman by Rick Roe, © Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Foundation

Cat mummy on loan from the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California. The Rosicrucian Order studies natural and metaphysical laws. For more information, please call the Rosicrucian Order at 1-800-882-6672. Photographs by Jim Angus, © Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Foundation

Cat sarcophagus on loan from the Harer Family Trust. Photographs by Jim Angus © Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Foundation

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