Bastet and the Guardian Cat

Cats reached a level of formal religious protection in ancient Egypt that few animals anywhere have matched. Bastet, originally depicted as a lioness and later softened into a domestic cat or a cat-headed woman, presided over the home, fertility and protection, and her cult center at Bubastis drew large festival crowds according to Herodotus's account. Killing a cat, even by accident, could carry serious social and legal consequence in Egyptian society, and archaeologists have recovered enormous cat cemeteries containing mummified cats offered to Bastet by the thousand, evidence of an industry built around the animal's sanctity as much as around devotion itself.

The cat's practical value as a hunter of rodents and snakes around granaries likely reinforced its symbolic standing, giving Egyptian farmers a material reason to welcome and then to sanctify an animal that was, in origin, simply useful to have nearby.