The ancient Egyptians believed that the sun is a natural, spiritual force capable of resurrection and capable of spreading death, because if it sets, the plantings die and the darkness becomes dark, and if it shines, the greenness will spread. The ancient Egyptians believed that when the sun sets, it goes to “the West”, which is the lower world
The ancient Egyptians worshiped the sun and called it “the god Ra.” The god Ra had many sons, including “Mafdet” or “Bast,” which is the female goddess who bears the head of a cat. Most of them were moody, lonely, violent, and the ability to confer fertility, stimulate sexual desire and seek revenge from those who asked her for revenge, it is rumored. It is said that Ra asked her to teach a person a lesson, so she only made him drink his blood so that she would have mercy on him and that a death sentence would not be passed on him. Thus, the ancient Egyptians worshiped the cats and granted them special sanctity and status. In this article, we will delve deeper into this wondrous world.
In Egypt, since 3500 BC, the Egyptians stored wheat in huge warehouses, especially during the long harvest seasons, and they could not celebrate a happy harvest without the cats that chased mice, insects and snakes and prevented the pests from invading the wheat warehouses and fields of the Egyptians, so they became pets, then They were transformed into animals that have their sanctity, and the Egyptians painted them as deities of fertility on the walls and inscriptions of their temples and tombs and in the texts of the pyramids.
The Egyptians sanctified cats and used to punish everyone who harms a cat with a punishment that reaches death, and if a cat dies, they shave their eyebrows in mourning for his death, and then they mummify the cats and turn them into mummies. And recently, scientists found in the city of Bani Hassan, one of the cities south of Minya Governorate in Upper Egypt, a cemetery containing 300 thousand mummies of cats dating back to the era of the Middle Pharaonic Dynasty.
The Egyptians believed that the god Mafdat, a word meaning (the enemy), protects from daily problems, and they put him in their homes. They also believed that he protects the weak from newborns and pregnant women. The embalming process included removing all the viscera except for the heart, then drying the body with salt, filling it with sand, and wrapping it well with strong cloth, which was soaked in spices and oils that gave it a pleasant aroma and maintained its stability.
It is worth noting that cats did not remain the favorite idol throughout the ages of the ancient pharaohs, but rather lost their sanctity with the change of Pharaonic families, and in periods turned into a permanent element in the sacrifices that the people sacrificed to draw close to the gods, which led to the sacrifice of hundreds of them, and their fees gradually disappeared.
But do modern domestic cats have anything to do with the “pharaonic god cat”?
The answer is yes. It came in a study published by a group of scientists from the University of California, Davis, who indicated that the Egyptians were the first to domesticate cats in the world, and then the Fertile Crescent countries followed them. The current and ancient Pharaonic cats, which spread throughout the world and evolved and changed their lineage later.
Most Expensive Selling!
The modern Egyptian cat is known as the “Mau” cat. It is distinguished by its light “chamois” fur, and has a distinctive thin neck and long distinctive ears. It is a cat that prefers warmth and is affected by temperature more than other breeds. Also, the pregnancy period of a Mau cat is longer than others. In other cats, it ranges from 65 to 67 days, while for the Mau cat it reaches 73 days. The Mau cat is the most expensive selling in the world, with prices ranging from 300 to 3000 dollars for the most pure breed.