Hebrew scholars, however, beUeve that the animal there referred 

 to is the jackal. Even in Egypt, where the cat appears to have 

 been first tamed and where it became an object of worship, its 

 domestication seems to have been comparatively late. Every- 

 thing points to the probability that the cat was domesticated 

 originally in Africa. African cats are easily tamed, while those 

 of other countries are said to be more savage and do not so 

 readily lend themselves to domestication. 



The cat appears to have come to the front as a domestic 

 animal about the period of the twelfth dynasty in the "Land of 

 Cush," after the conquest of that country. It seems probable, 



Egyptian hunting cat, Felin maniculata. An ancestor of the domestic cat. 



then, that this little Cushite was derived from the wild Kaffir 

 cat, Felis caffra, or from Felis maniculata, which is a native of Nubia 

 and the Sudan. Cat mummies from Egypt have been considered 

 to belong to this species, but naturalists differ regarding the identi- 

 fication, and Blainville distinguishes three species among cat mum- 

 mies, Felis caligata, the Egyptian cat (which is identical with F. ma- 

 niculata), F. bubasiis and F. chaus, an Asiatic species. Two of 

 these species are found still, both wild and domesticated, in 

 Africa. Ehrenberg, however, considers all the cat mummies that 

 he examined as remains of the Abyssinian wild cat, F. caligata. 

 Temminck, Pallas and Blyth conclude that the domestic cat, Felis 

 domestica, is a result of the interbreeding of many species, and as 

 there are many small wild cats in various parts of the world, and 

 as Felis domestica breeds freely with Felis catus, the common wild 



