the thumbnail art made using grok
In most of the movies that had its settings in ancient Egypt, the one thing you will never miss are the cat arts on the walls. Of course there's the dog arts too.
Cats were quite sacred for the Egyptians. The reason for this is that they were associated with a goddess named Bastet. Egyptians had many gods for specific values, Bastet was the goddess of home, fertility, protection and joy. She was depicted as a woman's image with a cat head or a full cat.
This was primarily because of the nature of cats when it comes to hunting down rats and snakes, and these were threats to homes, so in a way the cats were protecting homes but we all know that was not their intention. They're just looking for food and fighting off predators.
Because of the association with the goddess, it was law that killing cats, even accidentally could be punishable by death.
It's a good thing we've advanced and have been enlightened. A human life for a cat life is ridiculous but that would have been the world today.
It was found in the writings of ancient historians like Herodotus that the Egyptians took this so seriously that mobs would attack anyone who caused harm to a cat. One of the things they did as a tradition was that when a family cat died, people sometimes mourned by shaving their eyebrows.
They had thousands of cats mummified just like the elites in their society, pharaohs, nobles, high officials and wealthy people. The mummified cats were offerings to their goddess Bastet.
It got to a point where the Egyptians were so protective of cats that exporting them was banned. But the irony here is that by doing so, they made cats more valuable and that's one reason why they spread across the Mediterranean through trade and conquest.
I had a rodent problem in my house. Infact I also had a lizards problem, I used to see a lot of them around, but I adopted one female cat that gave birth two three kittens, all males. It's been close to a year since I saw a rat or a lizard. I may not see or associate cats with gods because I don't believe in that, but I do see them as lifesavers and they earned their meals.
