Bastet (Bast) Cat-Headed Sun Goddess

[GateKeeper]

The town of Bubastis was the cult centre of this solar goddess represented as a woman with a cat's head, or simply as a cat. The goddess holds a sistrum or rattle. She was identified and confused with both Mut and Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess. Bastet wore an aegis or shield in the form of a semi-circular plate, embellished with a lion's head. She was goddess of pleasure and inevitably became one of the most popular deities. In her temple were kept sacred cats, who were supposed to be incarnations of the goddess. When they died they were carefully mummified. The Egyptians found something to worship in just about every animal they had: dogs, cats, lions, crocodiles, snakes, dung-beetles, hippos, hawks, cows and ibises.

As the daughter of Re she is associated with the rage inherent in the sun-god's eye, his instrument of vengeance. It was probably this ferocity that made the analogy so plausible between Bastet and lioness. Her development into the cat-goddess par excellence, of the Late Period of Egyptian civilization, retains the link with the sun-god but in some ways softens the vicious side of her nature. She becomes a peaceful creature, destroying only vermin, and unlike her leonine form she can be approached fearlessly and stroked. It has been suggested that in one myth the Egyptians saw Bastet's return from Nubia, where she had been sent by Re as a lioness and had raged in isolation, to Egypt in the form of the more placid cat as an explanation of the period of unapproachability in the cycle of menstruation. A tangential evidence that advocates of this theory cite the scenes in New Kingdom tomb paintings at Thebes where a cat is depicted under the lady's chair as a deliberate ploy to indicate that she will always be available for sexual intercourse with the tomb owner in the Afterlife. In her earlies appearances in the Pyramid Era Bastet is a goddess closely linked to the king. A magnificent example of precise engineering in the Old Kingdom, namely the valley temple of King Khafre at Giza, carries on its facade the names of two goddess only- Hathor of Southern Egypt and Bastet of the north. The latter is invoked as a benign royal protectress in the Pyramid Texts where, in a spell to enable him to reach the sky, the king proclaims that his mother and nurse is Bastet. Besides the king, Bastet has a son in the form of the lion-headed god Mihos and is also the mother of a more artifical offspring combining the natures of Nefertum and the child Horus, personifying her connection with perfume and royalty. With the dramatic extension of the roles of deities to assist Egyptian courtiers as well as the pharaoh that we find in the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom, Bastet gives immense protection as first-born daughter of Atum. The aggressive side of Bastet can be seen in historial texts describing the pharaoh in battle. For example, Amenhotep II's enemies are slaughtered like the victims of Bastet along the road cut by the god Amun. From her epithet 'lady of Asheru', the precinct of the goddess Mut at Karnak, it is clear that Bastet had a place on Theban soil where she could be equated with the consort of Amun- especially since the lioness and the cat were also claimed as sacred animals by Mut. Reliefs in the temple of Karnak show the pharaoh celebrating ritual races carrying either four sceptres and a bird or an oar in front of Bastet who is called ruler of 'Sekhet-neter' or the 'Divine Field'- i.e. Egypt.

www.aelives.com/gods.htm