CHAP. XIV. CAT. 



The Cat. 



IGI 



The respect with which the Cat was treated in 

 Egypt, was such as few of the sacred animals en- 

 joyed. Its worship was universally acknowledged 

 throughout the country*; and though, in some 

 districts, the honours paid to it were less marked 

 than in the immediate neighbourhood of Bubastis, 

 its sanctity was nowhere denied ; and the privileges 

 accorded to the emblem of the Egyptian Diana, 

 were as scrupulously maintained in the Thebai'd, 

 as in Lower Egypt. '* Never," says Cicero t, " did 

 any one hear tell of a cat having been killed 

 by an Egyptian;*' and so bigoted were they in 

 their veneration for this animal, that neither the 

 influence of their own magistrates, nor the dread 

 of the Roman name, could prevent the populace 

 from sacrificing to their vengeance an unfortunate 

 Roman who had accidentally killed a cat. t 



When one of them died a natural death, all the 

 inmates of the house shaved their eyebrows in 

 token of mourning, and having embalmed the body, 

 they buried it with great pomp ; so that, as Dio- 

 dorus§ observes, *' they not only respected some 

 animals, as cats, ichneumons, dogs, and hawks, 

 during their lifetime, but extended the same 

 honours to them after death." 



All writers seem to agree about the respect 



* Strabo, xvii. p. 559. 



-|- Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 29. " Ne fando quidem auditum est, cro- 

 codilum, aut ibim, aut felem violatum ab ^gjptio." 



f Diodor. i. 83. Vide supra, p. 95. " § Diodor. i. 83. 



VOL. II. — Second Series. M 



