Which Egyptian god has a cat head?
Cats in ancient Egypt
Cats in ancient Egypt were represented in social and religious practices of Ancient Egypt for more than 30 centuries. Several Ancient Egyptian deities were depicted and sculptured with cat-like heads such as Mafdet, Bastet and Sekhmet, representing justice, fertility and power.
The deity Mut was also depicted as a cat and in the company of a cat.
That Darn Katz!
The next day, at Amy's defense at Mars University, her proposal is rejected, mostly due to Professor Katz' pet cat, who distracts her and stimulates her allergy to cats. Disheartened, the crew return to Planet Express, unknowingly accompanied by the cat. The crew—with the exception of Amy, who remains resentful, and Nibbler, who finds himself jealous of Leela's affection for the cat—finds the cat endearing and lavish him with affection. Amy and Nibbler become suspicious, rationalizing that no creature could behave so cute without an ulterior motive. They soon find that Professor Katz was merely a puppet controlled by his pet cat, Katz, the entire time, who is actually part of an alien race of highly intelligent talking space cats that invaded Earth during 3500 BC in ancient Egypt. The space cats' home planet, Thuban 9, began to lose its rotation, and they discovered that only Earth had the correct orientation and magnetic field with which to harness its rotational energy. They built the Great Pyramid of Giza—really an energy transfer antenna—and planned to send Earth's rotational energy to Thuban 9, but became distracted by their reverential treatment by the Egyptians, eventually forgetting their technology over the centuries and into the present day. Amy's thesis provided the space cats with their lost technology, allowing them to begin once again. Katz and his other colleagues place the crew under their influence with hypnotic "hyper-cuteness" and force them to build Amy's proposed invention.
Myotis alcathoe
The specific name, "alcathoe", refers to Alcathoe, a figure from Greek mythology who was turned into a bat when she refused the advances of the god Dionysus. She was associated with gorges and small streams, the preferred habitat of "Myotis alcathoe" in Greece. In their original description, von Helversen and colleagues described her as a nymph, and the common name "nymph bat" has therefore been used for this species. However, none of the classical sources speak of Alcathoe as a nymph; instead, she was a princess, the daughter of King Minyas of Orchomenos. Therefore, Petr Benda recommended in 2008 that the common name "Alcathoe bat" or "Alcathoe myotis" be used instead. Other common names include "Alcathoe's bat" and "Alcathoe whiskered bat".
Anubis
In Egypt's Early Dynastic period (c. 3100 – c. 2686 BC), Anubis was portrayed in full animal form, with a "jackal" head and body. A "jackal" god, probably Anubis, is depicted in stone inscriptions from the reigns of Hor-Aha, Djer, and other pharaohs of the First Dynasty. Since Predynastic Egypt, when the dead were buried in shallow graves, "jackals" had been strongly associated with cemeteries because they were scavengers which uncovered human bodies and ate their flesh. In the spirit of "fighting like with like," a "jackal" was chosen to protect the dead, because "a common problem (and cause of concern) must have been the digging up of bodies, shortly after burial, by jackals and other wild dogs which lived on the margins of the cultivation."
Islam and cats
Cats have been venerated in the Near East since antiquity, a tradition adopted by Islam, albeit in a much modified form. According to many hadiths, Muhammad prohibited the persecution and killing of cats.
One of Muhammad's companions was known as Abu Hurairah (literally: "Father of the Kitten") for his attachment to cats. Abu Hurairah claimed that he had heard Muhammad declare that a woman went to Hell for starving a female kitten and not providing her with any water, but this was disputed by Muhammad's widow Aisha. According to legend, Abu Hurairah's cat saved Muhammad from a snake. In gratitude, Muhammad stroked the cat's back and forehead, thus blessing all cats with the righting reflex. The stripes some cats have on their foreheads are believed to mark the touch of Muhammad's fingers.
Hathor
The Eye of Ra protected the sun god from his enemies and was often represented as a uraeus, or rearing cobra, or as a lioness. A form of the Eye of Ra known as "Hathor of the Four Faces", represented by a set of four cobras, was said to face in each of the cardinal directions to watch for threats to the sun god. A group of myths, known from the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC) onward, describe what happens when the Eye goddess rampages uncontrolled. In the funerary text known as the "Book of the Heavenly Cow", Ra sends Hathor as the Eye of Ra to punish humans for plotting rebellion against his rule. She becomes the lioness goddess Sekhmet and massacres the rebellious humans, but Ra decides to prevent her from killing all humanity. He orders that beer be dyed red and poured out over the land. The Eye goddess drinks the beer, mistaking it for blood, and in her inebriated state reverts to being the benign and beautiful Hathor. Related to this story is the myth of the Distant Goddess, from the Late and Ptolemaic periods. The Eye goddess, sometimes in the form of Hathor, rebels against Ra's control and rampages freely in a foreign land: Libya west of Egypt or Nubia to the south. Weakened by the loss of his Eye, Ra sends another god, such as Thoth, to return her to her benign form and bring her back to him. Once pacified, the goddess returns to become the consort of the sun god or of the god who brings her back. The two aspects of the Eye goddess—violent and dangerous versus beautiful and joyful—reflected the Egyptian belief that women, as Carolyn Graves-Brown puts it, "encompassed both extreme passions of fury and love."
Egyptian wolf
The animal head of the Egyptian god Anubis may have been based on the African wolf, rather than the golden jackal as was formerly believed.
Animal worship
According to Florance Waterbury, hawk worship was universal (Waterbury 1952, p. 26). This particular bird was "a heavenly deity; its wings were the sky, the sun and moon were its eyes" (Waterbury 1952, p. 26). The hawk is commonly associated with the Egyptian god Horus. The souls of former pharaohs were the followers of Horus and therefore, the hawk (Waterbury 1952, p. 26). Horus was depicted by the Egyptians as a human body with a hawk head after the Fourth and Fifth Dynasty, but before that he was represented as a hawk (Waterbury 1952, p. 27).
Elephantine
According to ancient Egyptian religion, Elephantine was the dwelling place of Khnum, the ram-headed god of the cataracts, who guarded and controlled the waters of the Nile from caves beneath the island. He was worshipped here as part of a late triad of Egyptian deities. This "Elephantine Triad" included Satis and Anuket. Satis was worshipped from very early times as a war goddess and protector of this strategic region of Egypt. When seen as a fertility goddess, she personified the bountiful annual flooding of the Nile, which was identified as her daughter, Anuket. The cult of Satis originated in the ancient city of Aswan. Later, when the triad was formed, Khnum became identified as her consort and, thereby, was thought of as the father of Anuket. His role in myths changed later and another deity was assigned his duties with the river. At that time his role as a potter enabled him to be assigned a duty in the creation of human bodies.
Cat
Several ancient religions believed cats are exalted souls, companions or guides for humans, that are all-knowing but mute so they cannot influence decisions made by humans. In Japan, the cat is a symbol of good fortune. In Norse mythology, Freyja, the goddess of love, beauty, and fertility, is depicted as riding a chariot drawn by cats. In Jewish legend, the first cat was living in the house of the first man Adam as a pet that got rid of mice. The cat was once partnering with the first dog before the latter broke an oath they had made which resulted in enmity between the descendants of these two animals. It is also written that neither cats nor foxes are represented in the water, while every other animal has an incarnation species in the water. Although no species are sacred in Islam, cats are revered by Muslims. Some Western writers have stated Muhammad had a favorite cat, Muezza. He is reported to have loved cats so much, "he would do without his cloak rather than disturb one that was sleeping on it". The story has no origin in early Muslim writers, and seems to confuse a story of a later Sufi saint, Ahmed ar-Rifa'i, centuries after Muhammad. One of the companions of Muhammad was known as "Abu Hurayrah" (Father of the Kitten), in reference to his documented affection to cats.
Bat (goddess)
Hathor's cult center was in the 6th Nome of Upper Egypt, adjacent to the 7th where Bat was the cow goddess, which may indicate that they were once the same goddess in Predynastic Egypt. By the Middle Kingdom, the cult of Hathor had again absorbed that of Bat in a manner similar to other mergers in the Egyptian pantheon.
Thomasina, the Cat Who Thought She Was God
When the funeral is over and Mary and her friends leave Thomasina's burial place in the hills, Lori appears, exhumes Thomasina's body and discovers the cat is still alive; the chloroform simply induced a deep sleep. Lori takes the cat to her own cottage to recover. When Thomasina wakes up, she thinks she is Bastet the Egyptian cat goddess, resurrected. The other animals at Lori's cottage don't believe her, especially when she tries to show her powers to them. Thomasina does not remember Mary or her former life. Lori renames her "Talitha" and keeps her.
Cats and the Internet
Cats have historically been associated with magic, and have been revered by various human cultures, the ancient Egyptians worshipping them as gods and the creatures being feared as demons in ancient Japan, such as the "bakeneko". 
Vogue magazine has suggested that the popularity of cats on the internet is culturally-specific, being popular in North America, Western Europe, and Japan. Other nations favor different animals online, Ugandans sharing images of goats and chickens, Mexicans preferring llamas, and Chinese internet users sharing images of the river crab and grass-mud horse due to double-meanings of their names allowing them to "subvert government Internet censors". While cats on the internet might be culturally-specific, cat content is increasing in its popularity in various cultures as a scientific study showed by looking at German, English, Italian, and Russian media.
Dogs in religion
The Ancient Egyptians are often more associated with cats in the form of Bastet, yet here too, dogs are found to have a sacred role and figure as an important symbol in religious iconography.
Gayer-Anderson cat
The Gayer-Anderson Cat is an Ancient Egyptian statue of a cat, which dates from the Late Period (around 664–332 BC). It is made of bronze, with gold ornaments.
Cats in ancient Egypt
By the end of the 10th century BC, domestic cats became popular. When they died, they were embalmed, coffined and buried in cat cemeteries. The domestic cat ("Felis catus") was regarded as living incarnation of Bastet who protects the household against granivores, and the lion-headed deity Sekhmet was worshipped as protector of Egypt.
Mummifying animals grew in popularity during the Late Period of ancient Egypt from 664 BC onwards. Mummies were used for votive offerings to the associated deity, mostly during festivals or by pilgrims. Catacombs from the New Kingdom period in the Bubastis, Saqqara and Beni Hasan necropoli were reused as cemeteries for mummies offered to Bastet.
In the mid 5th century BC, Herodotus described the annual festival at the Bubastis temple as the largest in the country, attended by several hundred thousand pilgrims.
Osiris myth
The Osiris myth contributed to the frequent characterization of Set as a disruptive, harmful god. Although other elements of Egyptian tradition credit Set with positive traits, in the Osiris myth the sinister aspects of his character predominate. He and Horus were often juxtaposed in art to represent opposite principles, such as good and evil, intellect and instinct, and the different regions of the world that they rule in the myth. Egyptian wisdom texts contrast the character of the ideal person with the opposite type—the calm and sensible "Silent One" and the impulsive, disruptive "Hothead"—and one description of these two characters calls them the Horus-type and the Set-type. Yet the two gods were often treated as part of a harmonious whole. In some local cults they were worshipped together; in art they were often shown tying together the emblems of Upper and Lower Egypt to symbolize the unity of the nation; and in funerary texts they appear as a single deity with the heads of Horus and Set, apparently representing the mysterious, all-encompassing nature of the Duat.
Hera
Her archaic association was primarily with cattle, as a Cow Goddess, who was especially venerated in "cattle-rich" Euboea. On Cyprus, very early archaeological sites contain bull skulls that have been adapted for use as masks (see Bull (mythology)). Her familiar Homeric epithet "Boôpis", is always translated "cow-eyed". In this respect, Hera bears some resemblance to the Ancient Egyptian deity Hathor, a maternal goddess associated with cattle.
Hadad
He was attested in Ebla as "Hadda" in c. 2500 BCE. From the Levant, Hadad was introduced to Mesopotamia by the Amorites, where he became known as the Akkadian (Assyrian-Babylonian) god Adad. Adad and Iškur are usually written with the logogram —the same symbol used for the Hurrian god Teshub. Hadad was also called "Pidar", "Rapiu", "Baal-Zephon", or often simply Baʿal (Lord), but this title was also used for other gods. The bull was the symbolic animal of Hadad. He appeared bearded, often holding a club and thunderbolt while wearing a bull-horned headdress. Hadad was equated with the Greek god Zeus; the Roman god Jupiter, as Jupiter Dolichenus; the Indo-European Nasite Hittite storm-god Teshub; the Egyptian god Amun.
Animal worship
In Ancient Egypt, the first known cat-headed deity was Mafdet. During the First Dynasty 2920–2770 BC, she was regarded as protector of the Pharaoh's chambers against snakes, scorpions and evil. She was often depicted with a head of a leopard. The lion-headed deity Sekhmet was considered a daughter of Ra and was worshipped as protector of Egypt. Mummifying small cats grew in popularity during the Late Period of ancient Egypt from 664 BC until the 4th century AD. Cat mummies were used for votive offerings to the deity Bastet, mostly during festivals and by pilgrims. Hundreds of thousands of cat mummies were excavated at cat cemeteries in Bubastis, Saqqara, Speos Artemidos and Gizeh.
Horned deity
The Egyptian god Ammon-Ra was depicted with ram horns. Rams were considered a symbol of virility due to their rutting behavior. The horns of Ammon may have also represented the East and West of the Earth, and one of the titles of Ammon was "the two-horned." Alexander was depicted with the horns of Ammon as a result of his conquest of ancient Egypt in 332 BC, where the priesthood received him as the son of the god Ammon, who was identified by the ancient Greeks with Zeus, the King of the Gods. The combined deity Zeus-Ammon was a distinct figure in ancient Greek mythology. According to five historians of antiquity (Arrian, Curtius, Diodorus, Justin, and Plutarch), Alexander visited the Oracle of Ammon at Siwa in the Libyan desert and rumors spread that the Oracle had revealed Alexander's father to be the deity Ammon, rather than Philip. Alexander styled himself as the son of Zeus-Ammon and even demanded to be worshiped as a god:
Mut
Alternatively, as a result of her assimilations, Mut is sometimes depicted as a cobra, a cat, a cow, or as a lioness as well as the vulture.
Before the end of the New Kingdom almost all images of female figures wearing the Double Crown of Upper and Lower Egypt were depictions of the goddess Mut, here labeled "Lady of Heaven, Mistress of All the Gods". The last image on this page shows the goddess's facial features which mark this as a work made sometime between late Dynasty XVIII and relatively early in the reign of Ramesses II (c. 1279–1213 BC).
Dwarfs and pygmies in ancient Egypt
In Ancient Egypt, peoples worshipped several dwarf deities, the most important of which was Bes. His cult is archaeologically attested since the 12th Dynasty (c. 1991–1802 BC). The cult is thought to have originated in Nubia, modern day Sudan. Bes was the god of dreams, luck, dancing, and he was the protector of the household and its belongings. He was also a god of birth and was worshipped in birth houses alongside the goddess Heqet. Bes is always depicted with a normal torso and head, shortened legs and arms and with the ears of a lion. His most unmistakable feature is his frontal depiction, rather rare in Ancient Egypt, making Bes particularly recognizable (and probably pointing to a foreign origin for his cult).
Heh (god)
Like the other concepts in the Ogdoad, his male form was often depicted as a frog, or a frog-headed human, and his female form as a snake or snake-headed human. The frog head symbolised fertility, creation, and regeneration, and was also possessed by the other Ogdoad males Kek, Amun, and Nun. The other common representation depicts him crouching, holding a palm stem in each hand (or just one), sometimes with a palm stem in his hair, as palm stems represented long life to the Egyptians, the years being represented by notches on it. Depictions of this form also had a shen ring at the base of each palm stem, which represented infinity. Depictions of Heh were also used in hieroglyphs to represent one million, which was essentially considered equivalent to infinity in Ancient Egyptian mathematics. Thus this deity is also known as the "god of millions of years".
Taweret
Taweret bears physical aspects of both a fertility goddess and a fearsome protective deity. She takes the form of a female hippopotamus, a highly deadly creature. She is also often seen with features from other predatory creatures, most notably being the tail of a Nile crocodile and the paws of a lioness. These features directly parallel those of other ferocious protective ancient Egyptian deities, most notably the crocodile god Sobek and the lioness goddess Sekhmet. These violent theriomorphic deities take on some of the aspects of the animals that they represent – both to the benefit and detriment of humans. Taweret's predatory form allows her to ward away evil from the innocent. Likewise, Taweret's nurturing aspects are also reinforced in her iconography, as she frequently is shown with a bloated pregnant belly, and pendulous human breasts. These breasts are shared by the god of the Nile inundation, Hapi, and signify regenerative powers. Taweret's riverine form allows her to participate in that which annually revives the Nile Valley: the inundation personified by Hapi. It is partly due to her role in this event that may share this iconographic feature with Hapy. She frequently is seen holding the "sa" hieroglyphic sign (Gardiner V17), which literally means "protection".
Taweret's image served a functional purpose on a variety of objects. The most notable of these objects are amulets, which protected mothers and children from harm. Such amulets, appearing before 3000 BCE, were popular for most of ancient Egyptian history. She also consistently appeared on household furniture throughout history, including chairs, stools, and headrests. Apotropaic objects became popular in the Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BCE) and are thought to have been used in rituals related to pregnancy and birth. As is aforementioned, ivory wands and knives showing long processions of deities became widely used in this period. These objects have been shown on tomb paintings in the hands of nurses and wear patterns on the tips indicate that these nurses likely used them to draw protective patterns in the sand. Taweret is featured on almost all known wands, as her powers were invoked particularly to protect children and their mothers. The other deities are almost exclusively deities that accompany the mature sun god in his nightly journey through the dangerous Amduat (underworld). Taweret's inclusion among this company suggests a protective solar role. This is supported by later Ptolemaic (c. 332–30 BCE) conceptions of the goddess, which state that she reared – and in some traditions, birthed – the young sun god (cf. Metternich Stela).
Ritual objects bearing Taweret's image were popular in Egyptian households for the remainder of Egyptian history. Vessels bearing Taweret's shape became popular in the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1069 BCE). These vessels presumably purified the liquid that was poured from it, as Taweret was considered to be "She of the Pure Water". Often these vessels had openings through the nipples, emphasizing Taweret's maternal aspects.
Hathor
Images of cattle appear frequently in the artwork of Predynastic Egypt (before c. 3100 BC), as do images of women with upraised, curved arms reminiscent of the shape of cow horns. Both types of imagery may represent goddesses connected with cattle. Cows are a symbol of motherhood and nourishment in many cultures, including ancient Egypt, because they care for their calves and supply humans with milk. The Gerzeh Palette, a stone palette from the Naqada II period of prehistory (c. 3500–3200 BC), shows the silhouette of a cow's head with inward-curving horns surrounded by stars. The palette suggests that this cow was also linked with the sky, as were several goddesses from later times who were represented in this form: Hathor, Mehet-Weret, and Nut.
Hades
One ancient source says that he possessed the Cap of invisibility. His chariot, drawn by four black horses, made for a fearsome and impressive sight. His other ordinary attributes were the narcissus and cypress plants, the Key of Hades and Cerberus, the three-headed dog. In certain portraits, snakes also appeared to be attributed to Hades as he was occasionally portrayed to be either holding them or accompanied by them. This is believed to hold significance as in certain classical sources Hades ravished Kore in the guise of a snake, who went on to give birth to Zagreus-Dionysus. While bearing the name 'Zeus', Zeus Olympios, the great king of the gods, noticeably differs from the Zeus Meilichios, a decidedly chthonian character, often portrayed as a snake, and as seen beforehand, they cannot be different manifestations of the same god, in fact whenever 'another Zeus' is mentioned, this always refers to Hades. Zeus Meilichios and Zeus Eubouleus are often referred to as being alternate names for Hades.
Bastet
Bastet or Bast ( "She of the Ointment Jar", ) was a goddess of ancient Egyptian religion, worshiped as early as the Second Dynasty (2890 BCE). Her name also is rendered as B'sst, Baast, Ubaste, and Baset. In ancient Greek religion, she was known as Ailuros ( "cat").
Amphisbaena
The amphisbaena (, plural: amphisbaenae; ) is a mythological, ant-eating serpent with a head at each end. The creature is alternatively called the amphisbaina, amphisbene, amphisboena, amphisbona, amphista, amfivena, amphivena, or anphivena (the last two being feminine), and is also known as the "Mother of Ants". Its name comes from the Greek words "amphis", meaning "both ways", and "bainein", meaning "to go". According to Greek mythology, the amphisbaena was spawned from the blood that dripped from the Gorgon Medusa's head as Perseus flew over the Libyan Desert with her in his hand, after which Cato's army then encountered it along with other serpents on the march. Amphisbaena fed off of the corpses left behind. The amphisbaena has been referred to by various poets such as Nicander, John Milton, Alexander Pope, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Aimé Césaire, A. E. Housman and Allen Mandelbaum; as a mythological and legendary creature, it has been referenced by Lucan, Pliny the Elder, Isidore of Seville, and Thomas Browne, the last of whom debunked its existence.
Harpocrates
Among the Egyptians, the full-grown Horus was considered the victorious god of the sun who each day overcomes darkness. He is often represented with the head of a Eurasian sparrowhawk, which was sacred to him, as the hawk flies high above the Earth. Horus fought battles against Set, until he finally achieved victory and became the ruler of Egypt. Thereafter, the pharaohs of Egypt were seen as reincarnations of the victorious Horus.
Cat o' nine tails
Variations exist, either named cat (of x tails) or not, such as the whip used on adult Egyptian prisoners which had a cord on a cudgel branching into seven tails, each with six knots, used only on adult men, with boys being subject to caning, until Egypt banned the use of the device in 2001.
Cultural depictions of cats
During the Middle Ages, many of Artemis's associations with cats were grafted onto the Virgin Mary. Cats are often shown in icons of Annunciation and of the Holy Family and, according to Italian folklore, on the same night that Mary gave birth to Jesus, a virgin cat in Bethlehem gave birth to a kitten.
Hecate
In Egyptian-inspired Greek esoteric writings connected with Hermes Trismegistus, and in magical papyri of Late Antiquity she is described as having three heads: one dog, one serpent, and one horse. In other representations her animal heads include those of a cow and a boar. Hecate's triplicity is elsewhere expressed in a more Hellenic fashion in the vast frieze of the great Pergamon Altar, now in Berlin, wherein she is shown with three bodies, taking part in the battle with the Titans. In the Argolid, near the shrine of the Dioscuri, Pausanias saw the temple of Hecate opposite the sanctuary of Eileithyia; He reported the image to be the work of Scopas, stating further, "This one is of stone, while the bronze images opposite, also of Hecate, were made respectively by Polycleitus and his brother Naucydes, son of Mothon." ("Description of Greece" 2.22.7)
Hieracosphinx
The Hieracosphinx has the head of a hawk and the body of a lion. The name was coined by Herodotus to the hawk-headed sphinxes that he saw in Egypt (the other being the ram-headed sphinx which Herodotus called Criosphinx ()).
Cats in ancient Egypt
Flinders Petrie excavated 17 cat skeletons in a tomb at the necropolis Umm El Qa'ab dating to the 12th Dynasty 1991–1783 BC. Next to the skeletons stood small pots that are thought to have contained milk for the cats.
The first known indication for the mummification of a cat was found in an elaborately carved limestone sarcophagus dated to about 1350 BC. This cat is assumed to have been Prince Thutmose’s beloved pet.
Sekhmet statues
The statues leave people in awe with their fiery eye of Re and jaw structure of the goddess Sekhmet. The statue is a zoomorphic form of a lioness. Egyptian artists were great at putting human and animal forms together in equal power and truth. The head of the statues have a sun disk and Uraeus on the top which is connected by a dove tail groove. The sun disk would've been placed in the back pillar. There are rare depictions of the statue wearing a double crown representing the fusion of Sekhmet and Mut. The statues are made in pieces and we know that from the fragments and unfinished statues. The statue wears a tight fitting gown/garment and the bodice rises up to the breasts. The upper body is nude. There is a broad collar on the shoulders and it is visible between the dress straps. The aegis is represented in the metal collar. The gown is tight all the way down to the legs below the hem and it's wide. The dress is meant to be the color red and would represent mistress aspect and symbolize lower Egypt and warlike nature. Sekhmet statues have accessories like ankle bands and bracelets. The dress is conservative for the time period. There is a daisy over each breast. This daisy can be seen on Queen Tia, Queen Tiy and on the private people of Amenhotep III. The large rosette over the greats are meant to reflect patterns in the shoulder hair of lions and another theory is that they reflect astronomical symbolism of the shoulder star of the constellation Leo in Egyptian astronomical paintings.
Winged cat
Pantherines with wings, especially winged lions, are a common theme in ancient religious and mythological art of the Sumerians and other Mesopotamians, Akkadians, Persians, and Scythians, and other peoples with whom they came into contact and shared ideas in the Middle East, Near East, and Europe. These sometimes also feature a winged cat's body with a bird's head (e.g., the gryphon) or human face (e.g. the lamassu and sphinx). It is hardly a unique, biologically impossible, artistic conceit in works of Classical Antiquity; Greco-Roman, Egytian, and other works also often depicted winged horses (Pegasus), animal-headed human figures (the Minotaur, and many Egyptian deities like the cat-headed Bastet and Sekhmet), half-human and half-horse figures (the centaur), and other mythological part-cat beasts, such as the Chimera. Art of this sort featuring felids dates back to the Upper Paleolithic era, to 40,000 BCE, though it is uncertain when winged felines in particular were first represented.
Ammit
Ammit (; , "devourer of the dead"; also rendered Ammut or Ahemait) was a demoness and goddess in ancient Egyptian religion with a body that was part lion, hippopotamus and crocodile—the three largest "man-eating" animals known to ancient Egyptians. A funerary deity, her titles included "Devourer of the Dead", "Eater of Hearts", and "Great of Death".
Ammit lived near the scales of justice in Duat, the Egyptian underworld. In the Hall of Two Truths, Anubis weighed the heart of a person against the feather of Ma'at, the goddess of truth, which was depicted as an ostrich feather (the feather was often pictured in Ma'at's headdress). If the heart was judged to be not pure, Ammit would devour it, and the person undergoing judgement was not allowed to continue their voyage towards Osiris and immortality. Once Ammit swallowed the heart, the soul was believed to become restless forever; this was called "to die a second time". Ammit was also sometimes said to stand by a lake of fire. In some traditions, the unworthy hearts were cast into the fiery lake to be destroyed. Some scholars believe Ammit and the lake represent the same concept of destruction.
Cats in ancient Egypt
The deity Bastet is known from at least the Second Dynasty 2890 BC onwards. At the time, she was depicted with a lion ("Panthera leo") head. Seals and stone vessels with her name were found in the tombs of the pharaohs Khafra and Nyuserre Ini, indicating that she was regarded as protector since the mid 30th century BC during the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties.
A wall painting in the Fifth Dynasty’s burial ground at Saqqara shows a small cat with a collar, suggesting that tamed African wildcats were kept in the pharaonic quarters by the 26th century BC.
Cultural depictions of lions
The earliest tomb paintings in Ancient Egypt, at Nekhen, c. 3500 BC, classified as Naqada, possibly Gerzeh, culture include images of lions, including an image of a human (or deity) flanked by two lions in an upright posture. Among ancient Egyptians, from prehistoric times through well documented records, the war goddess Sekhmet, a lioness, later depicted as woman with a lioness head, was one of their major deities. She was a sun deity as well as a fierce warrior and protector. Usually she was assigned significant roles in the natural environment. The Egyptians held that this sacred lioness was responsible for the annual flooding of the Nile, the most significant contributing factor to the success of the culture. Sometimes with regional differences in names, a lioness deity was the patron and protector of the people, the king, and the land. As the country united, a blending of those deities was assigned to Sekhmet.
Similar regional lioness deities assumed minor roles in the pantheon or, when so significant in a region, continued local religious observance in their own right, such as Bast. Offspring of these deities found niches in the expanding pantheon as well.
Cattle in religion and mythology
In ancient Egyptian religion, bulls symbolized strength and male sexuality and were linked with aggressive deities such as Montu and virile deities such as Min. Some Egyptian cities kept sacred bulls that were said to be incarnations of divine powers, including the Mnevis bull, Buchis bull, and the Apis bull, which was regarded as a manifestation of the god Ptah and was the most important sacred animal in Egypt. Cows were connected with fertility and motherhood. One of several ancient Egyptian creation myths said that a cow goddess, Mehet-Weret, who represented the primeval waters that existed before creation, gave birth to the sun at the beginning of time. The sky was sometimes envisioned as a goddess in the form of a cow, and several goddesses, including Hathor, Nut, and Neith, were equated with this celestial cow.
Abyssinian cat
The Abyssinian is a slender, fine-boned, medium-sized cat. The head is moderately wedge shaped, with a slight break at the muzzle, and nose and chin ideally forming a straight vertical line when viewed in profile. They have alert, relatively large pointed ears. The notably expressive eyes are almond shaped and are gold, green, hazel or copper depending on coat color. The legs should be long in proportion to a graceful body, with small oval paws; the tail is likewise long and tapering.
Animal worship
In Greece, Italy, and Egypt, the goat was worshipped in both goat form and phallic form (Neave 1988, p. 8). This type of worship has sometimes been said to have originated from the goat's increased sex drive. One male goat was capable of fertilizing 150 females (Neave 1988, p. 8). The Greek god Pan was depicted as having goat characteristics, such as hooves, horns, and a beard. Along with Pan, the goat was closely related to Dionysus during the Roman era (Neave 1988, p. 8). To honor Dionysus, Romans would tear apart a goat and eat it alive. The goat was commonly associated with dark arts and the devil. This association was amplified in Egypt during the Middle Ages (Neave 1988, p. 8).
Taweret
In Ancient Egyptian religion, Taweret (also spelled Taurt, Tuat, Taouris, Tuart, Ta-weret, Tawaret, Twert, Thoeris and Taueret, and in Greek, Θουέρις – Thouéris and Toeris) is the protective ancient Egyptian goddess of childbirth and fertility. The name "Taweret" ("Tȝ-wrt") means "she who is great" or simply "great one", a common pacificatory address to dangerous deities. The deity is typically depicted as a bipedal female hippopotamus with feline attributes, pendulous female human breasts, and the back of a Nile crocodile. She commonly bears the epithets "Lady of Heaven", "Mistress of the Horizon", "She Who Removes Water", "Mistress of Pure Water", and "Lady of the Birth House".
Snake worship
Wadjet was the patron goddess of Upper Egypt, and was represented as a cobra with spread hood, or a cobra-headed woman. She later became one of the protective emblems on the pharaoh's crown once Upper and Lower Egypt were united. She was said to 'spit fire' at the pharaoh's enemies, and the enemies of Ra. Sometimes referred to as one of the eyes of Ra, she was often associated with the lioness goddess Sekhmet, who also bore that role.
Ihy
Ihy is a god in ancient Egyptian mythology who represents the ecstasy of playing the sistrum. His name may mean "sistrum player", referring to his function, or "calf". This is in allusion to his relationship with the cow goddess Hathor who was often said to be his mother. Other goddesses might be called his mother, however, including Isis, Sekhmet, and Neith. The god Horus is Ihy's father. Ihy was depicted as a child holding a sistrum or as a nude child with his finger in his mouth. He was worshiped alongside Horus and Hathor at Dendera. Hathor was his mother and Horus as his father
Black cat
In contrast, the supernatural powers ascribed to black cats were sometimes viewed positively; for example, sailors considering a "ship's cat" would want a black one because it would bring good luck. Sometimes, fishermen's wives would keep black cats at home too, in the hope that they would be able to use their influence to protect their husbands at sea (see Ship's cat). The view of black cats being favorable creatures is attributed specifically to the Egyptian goddess Bast (or Bastet), the cat goddess. Egyptian households believed they could gain favor from Bastet by hosting black cats in their household. This view was held in the early 17th century by the English monarch Charles I. Upon the death of his treasured pet black cat, he is said to have lamented that his luck was gone. True to his claim, he was arrested the very next day and charged with high treason.
Bat (goddess)
Although it was rare for Bat to be clearly depicted in painting or sculpture, some notable artifacts (like the upper portions of the Narmer Palette) include depictions of the goddess in bovine form. In other instances she was pictured as a celestial bovine creature surrounded by stars or as a human woman. More commonly, Bat was depicted on amulets, with a human face, but with bovine features, such as the ears of a cow and the inward-curving horns of the type of cattle first herded by the Egyptians.
Apedemak
Apedemak or Apademak was a lion-headed warrior god worshiped by the Meroitic peoples inhabiting Nubia. A number of Meroitic temples dedicated to this deity are known from the Western Butana region: Naqa, Meroe, and Musawwarat es-Sufra, which seems to be his chief cult place. In the temple of Naqa built by the rulers of Meroe Apedemak was depicted as a three-headed leonine god with four arms, and as a snake with a lion head. However, he is usually depicted as a man with a lion head.
Eye of Ra
These goddesses and their iconographies frequently mingled. Many combinations such as Hathor-Tefnut, Mut-Sekhmet, and Bastet-Sothis appear in Egyptian texts. Wadjet could sometimes be depicted with a lion head rather than that of a cobra, Nekhbet could take on cobra form as a counterpart of Wadjet, and a great many of these goddesses wore the sun disk on their heads, sometimes with the addition of a uraeus or the cow horns from Hathor's typical headdress. Beginning in the Middle Kingdom, the hieroglyph for a uraeus could be used as a logogram or determinative for the word "goddess" in any context, because virtually any goddess could be linked with the Eye's complex set of attributes.
Time Cat: The Remarkable Journeys of Jason and Gareth
Jason learns that his cat, Gareth, is able to talk and has the power to travel to nine different points in world history (his "nine lives"). Jason convinces Gareth to take him along and their adventures begin where cats are considered divine, in Ancient Egypt in the year 2700 BC.
Eye of Ra
The characteristics of the Eye of Ra were an important part of the Egyptian conception of female divinity in general, and the Eye was equated with many goddesses, ranging from very prominent deities like Hathor to obscure ones like Mestjet, a lion goddess who appears in only one known inscription.
Dream (comics)
Morpheus' appearance ranges widely: People generally perceive him in a style of dress appropriate to their region and era. In the Dreaming, he is often seen wearing a grey T-shirt and dark pants. He appears to be light-skinned when interacting with similar characters, but the people of "Tales in the Sand"'s primordial African city see him as dark. Morpheus appears as a huge black cat when speaking to the lonely cat-pilgrim of "Dream of a Thousand Cats" and as a cat-headed god when addressing the Egyptian feline goddess Bast. The Martian Manhunter sees Morpheus in the shape of a flaming Martian skull and identifies him as Lord L'Zoril; but Mister Miracle, looking at him simultaneously, sees Morpheus as a man. In "", he appears in the same form to all the Gods (Bast comments: "I much prefer you in cat form, Dream old friend"). In "", set in ancient Japan, Morpheus appears as a Japanese man to a Buddhist monk and as a fox to a fox spirit.
Pschent
The Pschent represented the pharaoh's power over all of unified Egypt. It bore two animal emblems: an Egyptian cobra, known as the uraeus, ready to strike, which symbolized the Lower Egyptian goddess Wadjet; and an Egyptian vulture representing the Upper Egyptian tutelary goddess Nekhbet. These were fastened to the front of the Pschent and referred to as the "Two Ladies". Later, the vulture head sometimes was replaced by a second cobra.
Hatmehit
Hatmehit, or Hatmehyt (reconstructed to have been pronounced *Hāwit-Maḥūyat in Egyptian) in the ancient Egyptian religion was a fish-goddess in the area around the delta city of Per-banebdjedet (called Mendes in ancient greek). In ancient Egyptian art Hatmehit was depicted either as a fish, or a woman with a fish emblem or crown on her head. She was a goddess of life and protection. 
Her name translates as "Foremost of Fish" or "Chief of Fish." She may have some connection to Hathor, one of the oldest deities of Egypt who also went by the name "Mehet-Weret", meaning "great flood". This may possibly be due to being seen as a remnant of the primal waters of creation from which all things arose. Other goddesses associated with the primal waters of creation are Mut and Naunet.
Narmer Palette
Both sides of the Palette are decorated, carved in raised relief. At the top of both sides are the central serekhs bearing the rebus symbols "n'r" (catfish) and "mr" (chisel) inside, being the phonetic representation of Narmer's name. The serekh on each side are flanked by a pair of bovine heads with highly curved horns, thought to represent the cow goddess Bat. She was the patron deity of the seventh nome of Upper Egypt, and was also the deification of the cosmos within Egyptian mythology during the pre-dynastic and Old Kingdom periods of Ancient Egyptian history.
Anubis
Anubis (; , Egyptian: "jnpw", Coptic: "Anoup") is the Greek name of a god associated with mummification and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head. Archeologists have identified Anubis's sacred animal as an Egyptian canid, the African golden wolf.
Horned deity
Bat was a cow goddess in Egyptian mythology depicted as a human face with cow ears and horns. By the time of the Middle Kingdom her identity and attributes were subsumed within the goddess Hathor. The worship of Bat dates to earliest times and may have its origins in Late Paleolithic cattle herding. Bat was the chief goddess of Seshesh, otherwise known as Hu or Diospolis Parva, the 7th nome of Upper Egypt.
The imagery of Bat as a divine cow was remarkably similar to that of Hathor the parallel goddess from Lower Egypt. The significant difference in their depiction is that Bat's horns curve inward and Hathor's curve outward slightly. It is possible that this could be based in the different breeds of cattle herded at different times.
Kheper
Kheper is a genus of Scarabaeidae or scarab beetles in the subfamily Scarabaeinae. The genus name honors the god Khepri in the ancient Egyptian religion, who is depicted as having a scarab for a head.
Scarab (artifact)
In ancient Egyptian religion, the sun god Ra is seen to roll across the sky each day, transforming bodies and souls. Beetles of the Scarabaeidae family ("dung beetle") roll dung into a ball as food and as a brood chamber in which to lay eggs; this way, the larvae hatch and are immediately surrounded by food. For these reasons the scarab was seen as a symbol of this heavenly cycle and of the idea of rebirth or regeneration. The Egyptian god Khepri, Ra as the rising sun, was often depicted as a scarab beetle or as a scarab beetle-headed man. The ancient Egyptians believed that Khepri renewed the sun every day before rolling it above the horizon, then carried it through the other world after sunset, only to renew it, again, the next day. A golden scarab of Nefertiti was discovered in the Uluburun wreck.
Animal worship
The Egyptian pantheon was especially fond of zoomorphism, with many animals sacred to particular deities—cats to Bastet, ibises and baboons to Thoth, crocodiles to Sobek and Ra, fish to Set, mongoose, shrew and birds to Horus, dogs and jackals to Anubis, serpents and eels to Atum, beetles to Khepera, bulls to Apis. Animals were often mummified as a result of these beliefs.
Eye of Ra
Likewise, cobra goddesses often represented the Eye. Among them was Wadjet, a tutelary deity of Lower Egypt who was closely associated with royal crowns and the protection of the king. Other Eye-associated cobra goddesses include the fertility deity Renenutet, the magician goddess Weret-hekau, and Meretseger, the divine protector of the burial grounds near the city of Thebes.
Anubis
Although the Greeks and Romans typically scorned Egyptian animal-headed gods as bizarre and primitive (Anubis was mockingly called "Barker" by the Greeks), Anubis was sometimes associated with Sirius in the heavens and Cerberus and Hades in the underworld. In his dialogues, Plato often has Socrates utter oaths "by the dog" ("kai me ton kuna"), "by the dog of Egypt", and "by the dog, the god of the Egyptians", both for emphasis and to appeal to Anubis as an arbiter of truth in the underworld.
Humbaba
The iconography of the apotropaic severed head of Humbaba, with staring eyes, flowing beard and wild hair, is well documented from the First Babylonian Dynasty, continuing into Neo-Assyrian art and dying away during the Achaemenid rule. The severed head of the monstrous Humbaba found a Greek parallel in the myth of Perseus and the similarly employed head of Medusa, which Perseus placed in his leather sack. Archaic Greek depictions of the gorgoneion render it bearded, an anomaly in the female Gorgon. Judith McKenzie detected Humbaba heads in a Nabatean tomb frieze at Petra.
Frogs in culture
To the Egyptians, the frog was a symbol of life and fertility, since millions of them were born after the annual flooding of the Nile, which brought fertility to the otherwise barren lands. Consequently, in Egyptian mythology, there began to be a frog-goddess, who represented fertility, named "Heqet". Heqet was usually depicted as a frog, or a woman with a frog's head, or more rarely as a frog on the end of a phallus to explicitly indicate her association with fertility. A lesser known Egyptian god, Kek, was also sometimes shown in the form of a frog.
Mummies Alive!
Set is a bulldog-headed spirit who is leader of the "Trackers of Souls". He calls himself "Dog of the Desert, Master of Evil, Lord of Thunder". Anubis, the not-so-competent jackal (wild dog) spirit of the underworld, tags along with Set. Anubis has a scepter that causes "the sleep of forgetting". They appear in "Pack to the Future", "The Face In The Mirror", "Dog Bites Mummy", and "Family Feud I – Brother's Keeper". They are often summoned by Scarab, but occasionally did turn on him when they did not like to be ordered around. Unlike in real Egyptian mythology, where Anubis is a mostly neutral and clever god, he is one of the villains and is rather dim-witted, often being outsmarted by Presley. In Egyptian Mythology, Set doesn't have the head of a dog.
Funerary cult
Funerary cults are especially associated with ancient Egypt, where it was common for royalty, those associated with royalty, cats, and the wealthy to be mummified. This practice was done so as to preserve their bodies for the journey to the afterlife. The deity Osiris, who was the dying and reviving god and Lord of the Egyptian afterlife, was usually depicted as a mummy in Egyptian art. Also at Bubastis, where Bast was worshiped, there was a massive cat cemetery. Cats were also thought to journey to the afterlife, usually to join their owners. These needed their own material goods for this journey, such as food.
Nekogami Yaoyorozu
, also known as Cat God, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Flipflops about a cat goddess that lives in an antique shop. An anime television adaptation by AIC PLUS+ aired in Japan between July and September 2011 and has been licensed in North America by NIS America under the title The Everyday Tales of a Cat God.
Horus
The Eye of Horus is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection and royal power from deities, in this case from Horus or Ra. The symbol is seen on images of Horus' mother, Isis, and on other deities associated with her. In the Egyptian language, the word for this symbol was "wedjat" ("wɟt"). It was the eye of one of the earliest of Egyptian deities, Wadjet, who later became associated with Bastet, Mut, and Hathor as well. Wadjet was a solar deity and this symbol began as her all-seeing eye. In early artwork, Hathor is also depicted with this eye. Funerary amulets were often made in the shape of the Eye of Horus. The Wedjat or Eye of Horus is "the central element" of seven "gold, faience, carnelian and lapis lazuli" bracelets found on the mummy of Shoshenq II. The Wedjat "was intended to protect the king [here] in the afterlife" and to ward off evil. Egyptian and Near Eastern sailors would frequently paint the symbol on the bow of their vessel to ensure safe sea travel.
Bat (goddess)
The imagery of Bat as a divine cow was remarkably similar to that of Hathor, a parallel goddess from Lower Egypt. In two dimensional images, both goddesses often are depicted straight on, facing the onlooker and not in profile in accordance with the usual Egyptian convention. The significant difference in their depictions is that Bat's horns curve "inward" and Hathor's curve "outward" slightly. It is possible that this could be based in the different breeds of cattle herded at different times.
Anubis
Anubis was depicted in black, a color that symbolized regeneration, life, the soil of the Nile River, and the discoloration of the corpse after embalming. Anubis is associated with Wepwawet (also called Upuaut), another Egyptian god portrayed with a dog's head or in canine form, but with grey or white fur. Historians assume that the two figures were eventually combined. Anubis' female counterpart is Anput. His daughter is the serpent goddess Kebechet.
Egyptian free-tailed bat
The Egyptian free-tailed bat has fine, dense fur which is greyish-brown in colour, shading darker on the head and back and paler on the underparts, particularly around the throat. The wing are narrow and pointed with translucent light brown membranes, there is a short tail which is projects beyond the membrane connecting the wings and the ears sit close together on the top of the head and are rather rounded in shape. The face is rather bulldog-like and heavily wrinkled faces and this gives rise to the family name Molossidae, which refers to the Ancient Epirote mastiffs called molossus. Head and body length is 6–8 cm. Forearms 5 cm.
Late Period of ancient Egypt
Artwork during this time was representative of animal cults and animal mummies. This image shows the god Pataikos wearing a scarab beetle on his head, supporting two human-headed birds on his shoulders, holding a snake in each hand, and standing atop crocodiles.
Animal worship
Amun, the god of Thebes, Egypt, was represented as ram-headed. His worshippers held the ram to be sacred, however, it was sacrificed once a year. Its fleece formed the clothing of the idol (Thomas 1911, p. 52). Another Egyptian ram-headed god was "Banebdjed", a form of Osiris.
Scorpion Macehead
The Scorpion macehead (also known as the "Major Scorpion macehead") is a decorated ancient Egyptian macehead found by British archeologists James E. Quibell and Frederick W. Green in what they called the main deposit in the temple of Horus at Hierakonpolis during the dig season of 1897/1898. It measures 25 centimeters long, is made of limestone, is pear-shaped, and is attributed to the pharaoh Scorpion due to the glyph of a scorpion engraved close to the image of a king wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt.
Cultural depictions of cats
Although no species are sacred in Islam, cats are revered by Muslims. Some Western writers have stated Muhammad had a favorite cat, Muezza. He is reported to have loved cats so much, "he would do without his cloak rather than disturb one that was sleeping on it". The story has no origin in early Muslim writers, and seems to confuse a story of a later Sufi saint, Ahmed ar-Rifa'i, centuries after Muhammad.
Hedetet
Hededet or Hedjedjet "(ḥdd.t)" is a scorpion goddess of the ancient Egyptian religion. She resembles Serket in many ways, but was in later periods merged into Isis. She was depicted with the head of a scorpion, nursing a baby. She is mentioned in the Book of the Dead.
Cats in ancient Egypt
In 1830, Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg accounted of having observed three different small cat forms in Egypt: the jungle cat, the African wildcat, and a sacred cat that was intermediate in size between the jungle cat and the domestic cat. He called this cat "Felis bubastis".
Ancient Egyptian deities
Most deities were depicted in several ways. Hathor could be a cow, cobra, lioness, or a woman with bovine horns or ears. By depicting a given god in different ways, the Egyptians expressed different aspects of its essential nature. The gods are depicted in a finite number of these symbolic forms, so they can often be distinguished from one another by their iconographies. These forms include men and women (anthropomorphism), animals (zoomorphism), and, more rarely, inanimate objects. Combinations of forms, such as deities with human bodies and animal heads, are common. New forms and increasingly complex combinations arose in the course of history, with the most surreal forms often found among the demons of the underworld. Some gods can only be distinguished from others if they are labeled in writing, as with Isis and Hathor. Because of the close connection between these goddesses, they could both wear the cow-horn headdress that was originally Hathor's alone.
Certain features of divine images are more useful than others in determining a god's identity. The head of a given divine image is particularly significant. In a hybrid image, the head represents the original form of the being depicted, so that, as the Egyptologist Henry Fischer put it, "a lion-headed goddess is a lion-goddess in human form, while a royal sphinx, conversely, is a man who has assumed the form of a lion." Divine headdresses, which range from the same types of crowns used by human kings to large hieroglyphs worn on gods' heads, are another important indicator. In contrast, the objects held in gods' hands tend to be generic. Male deities hold "was" staffs, goddesses hold stalks of papyrus, and both sexes carry "ankh" signs, representing the Egyptian word for "life", to symbolize their life-giving power.
Thoth
He also appears as a dog-faced baboon or a man with the head of a baboon when he is A'an, the god of equilibrium. In the form of A'ah-Djehuty he took a more human-looking form. These forms are all symbolic and are metaphors for Thoth's attributes. The Egyptians did not believe these gods actually looked like humans with animal heads. For example, Ma'at is often depicted with an ostrich feather, "the feather of truth," on her head, or with a feather for a head.
Iusaaset
In Ancient Egyptian art, Iusaaset appears as a woman wearing the vulture crown of Mut, another mother goddess, topped with the solar disk between cow horns, the headdress of Hathor. She carries an ankh in one hand and a was sceptre in the other, and sometimes her crown bore a uraeus (Egyptian cobra), representing the goddess Wadjet. The Egyptian vulture that made up her crown symbolised the goddess Nekhbet, the other one of the Two Ladies protecting Egypt, alongside Wadjet. The Egyptian vulture was also thought to reproduce though parthenogenesis, which might be the basis for a similar view about the motherhood of Iusaaset. The vultures were also considered extremely good mothers, protecting their chicks at any cost, so it is not surprising that mother goddesses like Nekhbet, Iusaaset and Mut were portrayed as or with them.
Lion
The ancient Egyptians portrayed several of their war deities as lionesses, which they revered as fierce hunters. Egyptian deities associated with lions include: Bast, Mafdet, Menhit, Pakhet, Sekhmet, Tefnut and the Sphinx. In Egypt, the avenging goddess Sekhmet, represented as a lioness, symbolized the heat of the sun. The lion was also believed to act as a guide to the underworld, through which the sun was believed to pass each night. The presence of lion-footed tombs found in Egypt and images of mummies carried on the backs of lions suggests this close association of the lions with the underworld.
Partly mummified lions were excavated at the necropolis Umm El Qa'ab in a tomb of Hor-Aha, and at Saqqara in the tomb of Maïa.
Mummies Alive!
Cat Goddess of ancient Egypt and the patron goddess of Nefer-Tina, brought to the present in "Paws". She demands to be worshiped by the people.
Solomon Kane
When Kane is taken prisoner by slavers, one of their party, "Yussef the Hadji", recognizes the staff for what it is. He says the staff is older than the world itself and holds mighty magic. The cat-head is a representation of Bast, and the priests of Bast used the staff in ancient Egypt. The feline head which now decorates the staff's top was itself carved out of a pre-existing decoration, though it is now impossible to say what manner of eldritch symbol (or creature) was originally effigiated on it. With the staff Moses (known as "Musa" in Arabic) did wonders before the Pharaoh and carried it with him when his people fled Egypt. For centuries it was the Scepter of Israel (mentioned in Numbers 24:17), and Solomon used it to combat magicians and capture djinns. The staff may be related to Aaron's rod, Moses' rod or the Rod of Asclepius.
Nut (goddess)
Nut is a daughter of Shu and Tefnut. Her brother and husband is Geb. She had four or, in some sources, five children: Osiris, Set, Isis, Nephthys, and in some sources Horus. She is considered one of the oldest deities among the Egyptian pantheon, with her origin being found on the creation story of Heliopolis. She was originally the goddess of the nighttime sky, but eventually became referred to as simply the sky goddess. Her headdress was the hieroglyphic of part of her name, a pot, which may also symbolize the uterus. Mostly depicted in nude human form, Nut was also sometimes depicted in the form of a cow whose great body formed the sky and heavens, a sycamore tree, or as a giant sow, suckling many piglets (representing the stars).
Eye of Ra
The Egyptians associated many gods who took felid form with the sun, and many lioness deities, like Sekhmet, Menhit, and Tefnut, were equated with the Eye. Bastet was depicted as both a domestic cat and a lioness, and with these two forms she could represent both the peaceful and violent aspects of the Eye. Yet another goddess of the solar Eye was Mut, the consort of the god Amun, who was associated with Ra. Mut was first called the Eye of Ra in the late New Kingdom, and the aspects of her character that were related to the Eye grew increasingly prominent over time. Mut, too, could appear in both leonine and cat form.
Eye of Ra
The deities associated with the Eye were not restricted to feline and serpent forms. Hathor's usual animal form is a cow, as is that of the closely linked Eye goddess Mehet-Weret. Nekhbet, a vulture goddess, was closely connected with Wadjet, the Eye, and the crowns of Egypt. Many Eye goddesses appear mainly in human form, including Neith, a sometimes warlike deity sometimes said to be the mother of the sun god, and Satet and Anuket, who were linked with the Nile cataracts and the inundation. Other such goddesses include Sothis, the deified form of the star of the same name, and Maat, the personification of cosmic order, who was connected with the Eye because she was said to be the daughter of Ra. Even Isis, who is usually the companion of Osiris rather than Ra, or Astarte, a deity of fertility and warfare who was imported from Canaan rather than native to Egypt, could be equated with the solar Eye.
Hesat
Hesat is an ancient Egyptian goddess in the form of a cow. She was said to provide humanity with milk (called "the beer of Hesat") and in particular to suckle the pharaoh and several ancient Egyptian bull gods. In the "Pyramid Texts" she is said to be the mother of Anubis and of the deceased king. She was especially connected with Mnevis, the living bull god worshipped at Heliopolis, and the mothers of Mnevis bulls were buried in a cemetery dedicated to Hesat. In Ptolemaic times (304–30 BC) she was closely linked with the goddess Isis.
Abuwtiyuw
The ancient Egyptians mummified many animal species, from cats and gazelles to crocodiles, baboons, and birds. Typically, many animal species were consumed as meat after death, but it is highly unlikely that dogs would have been eaten. Radiographs of exhumed dogs in the ancient world have revealed that the mummification process involved wrapping the embalmed bones together with bandages and placing them within a wooden statue of Anubis, the jackal-headed deity associated with mummification and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion.
Bubastis
Bubastis (Bohairic Coptic: "Poubasti"; Greek: "Boubastis" or "Boubastos"), also known in Arabic as Tell-Basta or in Egyptian as Per-Bast, was an Ancient Egyptian city. Bubastis is often identified with the biblical "Pi-Beseth" ( "py-bst", Ezekiel 30:17). It was the capital of its own nome, located along the River Nile in the Delta region of Lower Egypt, and notable as a center of worship for the feline goddess Bast, and therefore the principal depository in Egypt of mummies of cats.
The Kit Kat
Al-Kit Kat (Arabic: الكيت كات) is a 1991 Egyptian comedy that revolves around Sheikh Hosni, played by Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, a blind man living in the Al-Kit Kat neighborhood in Giza, Egypt. Sheikh Hosni lives with his mother and son and spends his days dreaming of riding a motorcycle and smoking marijuana. He does this to cope with his life as a blind man and the loss of his wife.
Serpent (symbolism)
In Ancient Egypt, where the earliest written cultural records exist, the serpent appears from the beginning to the end of their mythology. Ra and Atum ("he who completes or perfects") became the same god, "Atum", the "counter-Ra," was associated with earth animals, including the serpent: Nehebkau ("he who harnesses the souls") was the two headed serpent deity who guarded the entrance to the underworld. He is often seen as the son of the snake goddess Renenutet. She often was confused with (and later was absorbed by) their primal snake goddess Wadjet, the Egyptian cobra, who from the earliest of records was the patron and protector of the country, all other deities, and the pharaohs. Hers is the first known oracle. She was depicted as the crown of Egypt, entwined around the staff of papyrus and the pole that indicated the status of all other deities, as well as having the all-seeing eye of wisdom and vengeance. She never lost her position in the Egyptian pantheon.
Gayer-Anderson cat
The sculpture is known as the Gayer-Anderson cat after Major Robert Grenville Gayer-Anderson who, together with Mary Stout Shaw, donated it to the British Museum. The statue is a representation of the female cat deity Bastet. The cat wears jewellery and a protective wadjet amulet. The earrings and nose ring on the statue may not have always belonged to the cat. A scarab appears on the head and a winged scarab is shown on the chest. The statue is 42 cm high and 13 cm wide. A copy of the statue is kept in the Gayer-Anderson Museum, located in Cairo.
Hathor
Despite these early precedents, Hathor is not unambiguously mentioned or depicted until the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2613–2494 BC) of the Old Kingdom, although several artifacts that refer to her may date to the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3100–2686 BC). When Hathor does clearly appear, her horns curve outward, rather than inward like those in Predynastic art. A cow deity with inward-curving horns appears on the Narmer Palette from near the start of Egyptian history, both atop the palette and on the belt of the king, Narmer. The Egyptologist Henry George Fischer suggested this deity may be Bat, a goddess later depicted with a woman's face and inward-curling antennae, seemingly reflecting the curve of the cow horns. Lana Troy, however, identifies a passage in the "Pyramid Texts" from the late Old Kingdom that connects Hathor with the "apron" of the king, reminiscent of the goddess on Narmer's belt, and suggests the goddess on the Narmer Palette is Hathor rather than Bat.
Wadjet
Wadjet was associated with the Nile Delta region and was more associated with the world of the living. She was closely linked to pharaohs as a protective deity. She was associated, along with other goddesses, as the ‘eye of Ra’. Wadjet was often depicted as an erect cobra with its hood extended as though she were ready to strike. At times she was depicted wearing the Red Crown of Lower Egypt. Wadjet was depicted many times in her cobra form alongside her Upper Egyptian counterpart Nekhbet, in her vulture form wearing the Red Crown on wall paintings or on the pharaoh's headdress.
Cultural depictions of cats
The Greeks later syncretized their own goddess Artemis with the Egyptian goddess Bastet, adopting Bastet's associations with cats and ascribing them to Artemis. In Ovid's "Metamorphoses", when the gods flee to Egypt and take animal forms, the goddess Diana (the Roman equivalent of Artemis) turns into a cat. Cats eventually displaced ferrets as the pest control of choice because they were more pleasant to have around the house and were more enthusiastic hunters of mice.
Cats in ancient Egypt
Excavations in the Bubasteum area at Saqqara in the early 1980s yielded 200 cat mummies in the tomb of the Vizier Aperel.
Another 184 cat mummies were found in a different part of this tomb in the 1990s, comprising 11 packets with a few cat bones and 84 packets containing mud, clay and pebbles. Radiographic examination showed that mostly young cats were mummified; most cats died of skull fractures and had dislocated spinal bones, indicating that they were beaten to death. In this site, the tomb of Tutankhamun's wet nurse Maia was discovered in 1996, which contained cat mummies next to human mummies. In 2001, the skeleton of a male lion was found in this tomb that also showed signs of mummification. It was about nine years old, probably lived in captivity for many years and showed signs of malnutrition. It had probably lived and died in the Ptolemaic period.
Mummified remains of 335 domestic and 29 jungle cats were excavated in the catacombs of Anubis at Saqqara during works started in 2009.
Mendes
The ram deity of Mendes was described by Herodotus in his "History" as being represented with the head and fleece of a goat: "...whereas anyone with a sanctuary of Mendes or who comes from the province of Mendes, will have nothing to do with (sacrificing) goats, but uses sheep as his sacrificial animals... They say that Heracles' overriding desire was to see Zeus, but Zeus was refusing to let him do so. Eventually, as a result of Heracles' pleading, Zeus came up with a plan. He skinned a ram and cut off his head, then he held the head in front of himself, wore the fleece, and showed himself to Heracles like that. That is why the Egyptian statues of Zeus have a ram's head, is why rams are sacred to the Thebans, and they do not use them as sacrificial animals. However there is just one day of the year—the day of the festival of Zeus—when they chop up a single ram, skin it, dress the statue of Zeus in the way mentioned, and then bring the statue of Heracles up close to the statue of Zeus. Then everyone around the sanctuary mourns the death of the ram and finally they bury it in a sacred tomb."
Thoth
Thoth (; from "", borrowed from , the reflex of "[He] is like the Ibis") is one of the ancient Egyptian deities. In art, he was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon, animals sacred to him. His feminine counterpart was Seshat, and his wife was Ma'at.
Cats in ancient Egypt
Remains of 23 cats were found in the early 1980s in a small mastaba tomb at the archaeological site Balat in Dakhla Oasis, dated to the Old Kingdom of Egypt about 25th century BC. The cats were probably mummified as tissue shreds were still stuck in their bones.
Uraeus
The Uraeus is a symbol for the goddess Wadjet. She was one of the earliest Egyptian deities and was often depicted as a cobra, as she is the serpent goddess. The center of her cult was in Per-Wadjet, later called Buto by the Greeks. She became the patroness of the Nile Delta and the protector of all of Lower Egypt. The pharaohs wore the uraeus as a head ornament: either with the body of Wadjet atop the head, or as a crown encircling the head; this indicated Wadjet's protection and reinforced the pharaoh's claim over the land. In whatever manner that the Uraeus was displayed upon the pharaoh's head, it was, in effect, part of the pharaoh's crown. The pharaoh was recognized only by wearing the Uraeus, which conveyed legitimacy to the ruler. There is evidence for this tradition even in the Old Kingdom during the third millennium BCE. Several goddesses associated with or being considered aspects of Wadjet are depicted wearing the uraeus as well.