An orphan boy named Menes - the hero of the story "Cats of Ulthar", written by Howard Phillips Lovecraft - roams the earth with a caravan of wanderers. In the town of Ultar, where they stayed, Menes finds a black kitten and plays with him merrily.
For a lonely child, a kitten becomes almost the only friend. But two children - the human race and the feline race - have a short-lived happiness of communication: the kitten disappears. Suspicion falls on a sinister old man and an old woman living in a hut far from the city, because the elderly couple not only shy away from people, but also hate cats with fierce hatred.
Menes prays to his gods, and when the caravan leaves the city, a strange couple is attacked by city cats. Old people have no chance …
What prayers and to what deities did the boy desperate to find a kitten offer? And why did he bear the same name as the founder of the first dynasty, which united Lower and Upper Egypt? The answer suggests itself: "dark-skinned wanderers" are like the Egyptians. In addition, each of their carts was decorated with images of ancient Egyptian deities - figures that had a human torso, and the head - an animal: a ram, falcon, lion or cat.
Lovecraft treats cats with great sympathy, calling them in the story the soul of Ancient Egypt. The cat, in his opinion, is older than the Sphinx, and therefore wiser, although the Sphinx is her cousin, speaking the same language with her.
Who knows, maybe the boy who was destined to become a pharaoh traveled in the caravan? And having ascended the throne, he ordered to honor all cats as divine creatures. The queen of the purring creatures was the goddess Bast, who was also called Bastet. She was depicted with the body of a woman and the head of a cat, and sometimes in the form of an ordinary cat with refined oriental forms. Bastet was the Goddess of love and fun, joy and feminine beauty. She was "responsible" for fertility and home. As for the latter, little has changed since those times: today the cat is a symbol of home comfort!
But the early dynasties presented this Goddess somewhat differently - in the form of a lioness. One thing remained unchanged: the Bastet figurines were adorned with jewelry. It was believed that her father was the sun god himself, the supreme ruler of Ra. Hathor, the deity of the moon, was her mother. Nut, the goddess of the sky, was Bastet's sister. She also had a brother Khonsu - a god-healer. And the god of thunder, wind, storm and darkness - Mahes, was known as the son of the cat goddess.
How much the Egyptians revered cats can be judged by the legend where Ra turned into a ginger cat and killed the huge and insidious snake Apop. The fight between the cat and the snake took place in Heliopolis. Good triumphs over evil, and here Apop, the lord of the dungeon, carrying darkness and personifying evil, is defeated under the sacred sycamore tree. This plot can be found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
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However, the heyday of the worship of cats can be attributed to the period of the XXII Libyan dynasty of Bubastids. In those days the city of Bubastis flourished. Its name can be interpreted as "Bastet Sanctuary". In other sources, you can find the word Bubastion, meaning the same thing. It was the capital of the XXth nome of Lower Egypt. Here, in the eastern part of Sakkara, archaeologists have discovered an unprecedented size of the cat's necropolis, which was located near the hill where the Bastet temple stood. Cats were then buried as high-ranking people, because they were associated with Bastet.
As for the goddess herself, the celebrations in her honor were reminiscent of festivals. In Bubastis, beer flowed like a river, and they consumed more drink on these holidays than in the rest of the year in all of Ancient Egypt. Those gathered in the city played music, sang and danced, and intoxication seemed divine to them. So the goddess Bastet appears before us with a musical instrument called a sistr. Now this instrument - a rattle clinking with metal rods - would be assigned to the category of percussion. But in ancient times it occupied the place of honor of the temple instruments. A statuette of a goddess holding a sistrum in her hand has survived to this day, four kittens are located at her feet.
Since Bastet was the goddess of fertility, she was often identified with Isis. As the daughter of the moon, the cat goddess was identified with Hathor. However, Tefnut, Sekhmet and Mut were put on a par with Bastet. The word Bast was laid out on Ba-Ast, which meant "Soul of Isis". Therefore, cats were kept in the temples of Isis. And when the temples of this goddess were erected in the Middle East and Europe, furry pets were moved there.
Heliopolis is the city where Bastet was worshiped. There, a statue of a gigantic-sized cat was built, which, depending on the illumination of the sun, could narrow and dilate the pupils, as if alive. Even the pharaohs went to the Bastet temple to make a sacrifice. The temple cats lived under the tireless care of the priests. And as soon as the Bastet holiday came, there was a ban on hunting "big cats" - lions.
And Herodotus wrote that the brave Egyptians could enter a burning house to check if a cat was dying in smoke and fire, and to save it if it was found.
When a cat died, people wore mourning - they shaved off their eyebrows, which was supposed to be done to the mourners. And the one who unwittingly killed the animal was supposed to receive a terrible punishment. For example, a driver who was hit by a cat under the wheels could be stoned to death.
The deceased cat was buried with honors, her body was embalmed, and the whole family in which the animal lived had to be present at the burial. Together with the body of the cat, toys and food were lowered into the grave.
And no matter how strange we all perceived this, the ancients had an explanation for such an attitude towards a pet - they believed that a god could be embodied in a cat, and therefore they risked so much because of the cat, so severely punished.
An illustrative case is the capture of the fortress of Pelusius by the Persians under the leadership of King Cambyses. The Persian ruler could not lay siege to the city for a long time until he talked with a Greek deserter warrior, who told what cats mean to the Egyptians. It is not known where the Persian soldiers caught the fluffy beauties and beauties, but each of the advancing men had a live cat tied to the shield. The Egyptians were forced to put aside arrows and spears, fearing to injure or kill the animal, which became their shrine. So, thanks to unusual hostages, the Persians took the city. Neither side shed a drop of blood. And cats too.