Mummified Cats: The Last Journey Beside a Goddess

In 1888, an Egyptian farmer digging at the village of Beni Hasan stumbled upon a tomb containing 180,000 mummified cats. Similar discoveries followed throughout the late nineteenth century. Archaeologists now estimate that more than a million cat mummies lie beneath Egypt, spanning from 600 BCE to the fourth century CE. Some were buried alongside their owners as beloved pets; others were votive offerings to Bastet. In 1889, the British shipped nineteen tons of cat mummies to be used as fertilizer — one of the great tragedies of archaeological history. Today, both the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the British Museum display mummified cats in dedicated exhibits. Standing before these ancient skeletons, you feel a strange continuity — they look, in many ways, exactly like the cats of today.