Wild cats are now known to have lived in Mesopotamia over 100,000 years ago, long before the Egyptian culture. There, these wild cats became domesticated around 12,000 BC along with sheep, goats, and dogs. Those cats were called the Near Eastern Wildcat and are the closest relative to today’s modern-day domestic cat.
Here is the modern day descendant. They measure over 24 inches in length with a 10 inch tail and long legs.
Those cats of yesteryear were bred by the Mesopotamian farmers as a means of controlling pests like mice, which were attracted by the grain supplies. In Africa today, there lives a close relative to the Near Eastern Wildcat pictured above.
The ancient Egyptian culture was most famous for their devotion to the cat. So much so, that the Egyptian government made the export of cats strictly prohibited. They even had a branch of the government whose sole job was to dispatch agents to other lands to find and return those cats. By 450 BC the penalty in Egypt for killing a cat was death.
The most popular deity of the Egyptian pantheon was the goddess Bastet, most commonly depicted as a cat or as a woman with a cat’s head.
Now, when a cat died, all inhabitants of a house shaved their eyebrows to show a sign of deep mourning. The period of the mourning lasted until their eyebrows had grown back.
The deceased cat was taken to the city of Bubastis where an enormous temple was built in honor of Bastet. There, the cats were embalmed and buried in sacred receptacles. Mummified cats have been found sometimes buried with or near to their owners.
The greatest example of devotion to the cat by the Egyptians comes from the battle of Pelusium (525 BC) in which the Persians defeated the forces of Egypt with cats.
Persian soldiers threw cats at the Egyptians.
Knowing of the Egyptians’ love for cats, Cambyses II of Persia had his men round up animals, which mostly consisted of cats. They then drove those animals before the invading forces toward the fortified city of Pelusium on the Nile. The Persian soldiers also painted images of cats on their shields, and marched behind the wall of animals. The Egyptians, in fear of harming the cats and being demoralized at seeing the image of Bastet on the enemy’s shields, surrendered the city.
The Egyptians are also responsible for the name cat. It was derived from the North African word for the animal “Quattah.”
Next time we will be off to India and also learn of the Persian Cat.
