Bastet: The Goddess Who Walked from Desert to Temple

The Egyptian goddess Bastet was originally a fierce lion-headed warrior deity of Lower Egypt. Around 1500 BCE, her image softened to that of a domestic cat, and she became the guardian of home, love, fertility, and joy. Her sacred city was Bubastis, which each year drew hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. Devotees would leave small bronze cat statues at her temple as votive offerings; many are now in the British Museum and the Louvre. Cats held an almost divine status in Egypt — killing a cat was punishable by death, and a family mourning the loss of a cat would shave off their eyebrows in grief. The line between cat and god in ancient Egypt was never very clear.