Did the ancient Egyptians really love cats? The dark truth might break your heart
Cats might have been sacred in ancient Egypt, but they were far from cherished pets. Discover why our assumptions about their treatment draw far more on modern sensibilities than historical reality
A sleek Egyptian cat is an ancient image immortalised in bronze statues and painted on tomb walls. They also don’t just exist in art; cats from this period are preserved today in museums across the world in tiny sarcophaguses or swaddled in linen.
These remarkable traces have left many assumptions that cultures across the vast span of ancient Egyptian history adored cats, treated them as beloved companions and elevated them above other animals as uniquely sacred beings.
But according to Campbell Price, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast series Ancient Egypt: The Big Questions, that picture rests on a total misunderstanding. It reflects our modern attitudes towards animals whilst, in reality, cats were viewed in ways many would find alien – and brutal.
The evidence, when examined more closely, is much more unsettling, and far more revealing about how ancient Egyptian belief actually functioned. What did that belief really look like?
The system of belief in ancient Egypt
“The ancient Egyptian belief system was polytheistic,” Price says.
“There are lots of ancient Egyptian gods and they are in a hierarchy. But divinity is in lots of different things, and you can encounter the gods in different places.”
The ancient Egyptians believed that deities could be encountered in dreams, in natural forces, in the landscape, in the afterlife and, crucially, in living beings.
For that reason, Price says that addressing ancient Egyptian faith as a “belief system” is often more accurate than calling it a religion. It was flexible, and capable of absorbing new deities and practices over time. This flexibility meant that religious experience varied by region and was shaped by local cults and traditions.
What unified these variations was a shared understanding that divine power was infused within the material world, and that humans could interact with it through physical acts.
The role of animals in ancient Egyptian worship
“The truth is gods could be resident in, or experienced through, lots of different things: rocks, rivers, dreams and animals. Animals are certainly one of those things … [but] we’ve put undue focus on the poor kitty cats,” Price says.
Indeed, cats were not exceptional. Crocodiles, falcons, ibises, bulls, fish and dogs could all serve as vessels or intermediaries for divine presence. Certain gods were closely associated with particular species, and temples often kept living animals as part of cult practice.
But this didn’t mean that the animals themselves were worshipped – and it certainly didn’t mean that they were loved. Animals were one part of a broader belief system built on the idea of exchange. Humans made offerings, and the gods were expected to respond by granting protection, fertility, bountiful harvest and health.
“It is not that the ancient Egyptians worshipped animals,” Price says. “It is that animals were a go-between stage between humanity and the gods.”
This is where the modern image of the beloved and pampered Egyptian cat begins to unravel.
- Read more | What was daily life like in ancient Egypt?
Price explains the ancient Egyptians’ view: “the great thing about animals was you can kill them and give them as gifts.”
By the Late Period (from around the first millennium BC), this logic reached an industrial scale. Animals were bred specifically to be sacrificed, mummified and sold to pilgrims as offerings for the deities. Temples functioned as religious centres, yes, but also as hubs of large-scale animal production.
Cats, associated with the powerful and influential goddess Bastet, were especially prominent in this regard. In Egyptian mythology, Bastet was the daughter of the sun god Ra who was worshipped as a warden against evil and linked with ideas of fertility. Excavations around cult centres, such as Bubastis, uncovered vast burial deposits of cats killed in her name.
As Price describes: “tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of cats and kittens were raised and had their necks broken as part of an enormous industry of animal deaths to service votive gift giving to the gods.”
Cats as votive offerings, not companions
What was it that brought the ancient Egyptians to sacrifice animals?
Price explains the practice through this comparison: “today, in a Christian tradition, you might light a votive candle to help your prayer get to God. In ancient Egypt, you would buy a mummified cat, or a crocodile, or a falcon, and you would give that as a gift – not as a pet.
- Read more | The dark side of ancient Egypt
“This notion of animals as pets is extremely rare and very culturally contingent.”
So, the enduring belief that Egyptians loved cats might say more about modern culture than ancient Egyptian beliefs and values.
Cats certainly lived alongside humans in ancient Egypt, particularly because they controlled vermin. Some may even have been allowed in indoor domestic settings.
However, their pragmatic usefulness, both as pest-control and as a conduit to the deities, should not be confused with affection.
“The ancient Egyptians were using animals as a means of communicating with the gods,” Price concludes.
“They were not venerating them; they were not viewing them as pets. We just have to let go of that modern perception.”
Campbell Price was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Authors
James Osborne is a digital content producer at HistoryExtra