148 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



cats while alive, but honoured them when dead, 

 going into mourning and shaving their eyebrows. 

 The reason for this has been variously explained. 

 According to Horapollo, the cat was worshipped in 

 the temple of Heliopolis, sacred to the Sun, because 

 the size of the pupil of the animal's eye is regulated 

 by the height of the sun above the horizon. Thus 

 the cat's eye was thought to symbolise the orb of 

 day.^ Plutarch, on the other hand, in his treatise 

 on Isis and Osiris, states that the image of a she 

 cat was placed at the top of the Sistrum ^ as an 

 emblem of the Moon ; partly, perhaps, because she 

 moves about by night, but chiefly because her eyes 

 dilate and grow large at the full of the moon, 

 contracting again at the moon's decline. 



The Egyptian name for the cat was Ckaou, or, 

 according to some Egyptologists, Maou, the latter 

 name (like so many others in primitive languages) 

 being onomatopoeic, that is, imitative of the animal 

 cry. The familiar name of " Puss," apparently, has 

 also come to us from the Egyptian. In the British 

 Museum may be seen several figures of the cat- 

 headed goddess Paskt, under which name the moon 

 was worshipped by the Egyptians, Paskt signifying 



^ Pfere Hue relates that he met some native naturalists at 

 Pekin, who showed him how a cat might fulfil the purpose of a 

 timepiece. They pointed out, he says, that the pupil of its eye 

 contracted gradually at the approach of noon ; that at noon it 

 was like a hair or a very thin line traced perpendicularly on the 

 eye ; after mid-day it began again to dilate. The missionary then 

 examined all the cats in the place, and concluded therefrom that 

 it was past noon. They all presented the same appearance at the 

 same time^ 



2 Sistrum (Gr. ssiarpov), a large rattle described by Plutarch as 

 used by the Egyptians in the rites of Isis. 



