36 THE CAT 



Christ. The earliest known representation of 

 the cat as a domestic animal and pet is at Ley- 

 den, in a tablet of the Eighteenth or Nineteenth 

 Dynasty, wherein it appears seated under a 

 chair. In Egypt it was an object of religious 

 worship and the venerated inmate of certain 

 temples. The goddess Pasht or Bubastis, the 

 goddess of cats, was, under the Roman empire, 

 represented with a cat's head. A temple at 

 Beni-Hassan, dedicated to her, belongs to the 

 period of Thothmes IV., of the Eighteenth Dy- 

 nasty, 1500 B.C. Behind this temple are pits con- 

 taining a multitude of cat mummies. The cat 

 was an emblem of the sun to the Egyptians. Its 

 eyes were supposed to vary in appearance with 

 the course of that luminary, and likewise to un- 

 dergo a change each lunar month, on which ac- 

 count the animal was also sacred to the moon. 

 Herodotus recounts instances of the strangely 

 exaggerated regard felt for it by the dwellers 

 on the Nile. He tells us that when a cat dies 

 a natural death in a house, the Egyptians shave 

 off their eyebrows and that when a fire occurs 

 they are more anxious to save their cats than 

 to extinguish the conflagration. 



