Ancient Egyptian Cat Worship and Cultural Significance

Ancient Egyptians revered cats, intertwining their worship with daily life and economy, showcasing their significance through mummification and rituals.

### The Cultural Significance of Cats in Ancient Egypt: Insights from the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures
* 🐱 The exploration of cat worship in ancient Egypt reveals that cats held **immense cultural and religious importance**, with their presence **deeply integrated into society**.
* 🏺 At the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures in Chicago, curator Dr. Marc Maillot emphasizes that the museum showcases around **350,000 artifacts**, with only **2% on display**, covering a timeline from **5,000 BCE to the 6th century AD**.
* 🎨 A notable highlight is a wooden painted stela depicting the **divine priestess of Amun presenting an offering to the god Ra-Horakhty**, showcasing the **emotional depth of ancient artistry**.
* 😺 Cats were not only cherished as pets, with some living **long lives**, but they also played a crucial role in religious rituals, as evidenced by the widespread **mourning practices when a cat died**.
* ⚱ The mummification of cats, including the **mass production of cat mummies for offerings**, illustrates the **transactional nature of Egyptian religion**, where worshippers sought favor from deities like **Sekhmet and Bastet**.
* 📜 Archaeological evidence suggests that around **180,000 cat mummies** were exported to the UK for fertilizer in the late 1800s, highlighting the **economic significance** of these practices.
* 🌍 The museum's commitment to **addressing its colonial past** and fostering partnerships in archaeological research reflects a modern approach to **understanding ancient cultures** while promoting **accessibility and education**.
* 💡 Ultimately, the rich history of cats in ancient Egypt serves as a reminder of the **interconnectedness of human experiences across time**, inviting visitors to reflect on their **own relationships with these enigmatic creatures**.

From the text, and this is very, very clear, it's written down in the economic texts, that around these cat temples there would be large pens where cats were raised. - Ah! - Catteries. What were they doing with the cats?

- Well... - [both chuckle] [bright music] I'm taking you to one of my favorite hidden gem museums in Chicago, but the problem is I don't want it to be a hidden gem. It is one of the coolest places I have come across.

It's on the University of Chicago campus. It is free, but they close at four o'clock, so I gotta hustle. Right across the street from the main quad is this archaeology museum, known as the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures.

I came here to learn more about cat worship in ancient Egypt, but first wanted to talk with the museum's chief curator, Dr. Marc Maillot, to learn more about the museum itself. So, from a chronological standpoint,

we cover everything from prehistory to the Early Middle Ages, basically 5,000 BCE right up until the 6th century AD. With new integrations like the Islamic collection display case, we can go as far as sometime before the 14th century.

Our main focus is the Middle and Near East, the entire Nile Valley, so Egypt and Sudan. But also a very particular aspect of ISAC is that it's relying on an archaeological collection of approximately 350,000 artifacts.

Only 2% of them are on display. What are some of the highlights, not only in the collections themselves, but also what people can see in the gallery? There is one specific wooden painted stela that I love,

where you have the divine priestess of Amun, Djed-Khonsu-Amun, who is presenting an offering to the god Ra-Horakhty, Third Intermediate Period. This is an exceptional piece because of the artist's imagination

that was able to recreate a feeling of transparency in the costume without mastering perspective. You can see the artist's emotion radiating from the object. (Emily)
Oh wow. Is that something that surprises you, the way that we, today, feel so separated

from ancient people and ancient cultures? But are there things that come up where you're like, "Ancient people are just like us"? (Marc)
On an archeological site,
for example, you can find in a brick that's not perfectly cooked

the footprint of a dog that was just passing by. Having access to that puts you into a specific mindset regarding your own meaning in life. Like, no big deal, just everything you see elicits an existential question within yourself when you come here.

I'm French.
I guess that goes with it. [both laugh] -It's a cultural necessity.
-Yes, exactly. That's what I want people to experience when they walk into a museum like this: each one of these objects is like a little snapshot in time.

(Marc)
We should get rid of the idea that visiting
a museum is exceptional; it should be a reflex—as I like to say often,
a cultural reflex.  Namely, you come here
when you want to check something, like
a dictionary, for example.

You should tailor your visit
depending on your curiosity and your eagerness to learn, and to do that more as a city—I mean Chicago.
-Yeah. And not just neighborhoods. (Emily)
I told Marc that
I was super curious

about cat worship, so we
had to go check it out. So as you can see here, this is the mask
of a cat mummy, so you have this
constant interplay in Egyptian art between the lioness
and the cat,

to actually make sure
that the entire scope of any given attribution also
linked to the female nature is covered by
the god in question. (Emily)
I had to know more, and for that, I was
lucky to talk with one

of the most world-renowned
scholars in Egyptology. Well, I'm Emily Teeter. I'm an Egyptologist. My specialty is the
languages and the culture. And my special interest
is objects—the weirder, the better.

[light upbeat music] Yeah, and that's
when I start rooting through textual
evidence and comparanda and try to figure out
what this thing is and how it fits into
that larger question of religion and daily life. (Emily G)
We're looking at the topic
of felines, cats.

I'm a cat person; lots of cat people at home. There's a general understanding that cats had a huge cultural importance, religious importance, in ancient Egypt. But I don't even think I understand the extent of it.

(Emily T) Cats are huge in ancient Egypt. A particular interest that I have in them is their function in religion and the economy, because these two things very much overlap. First of all, we're used to seeing these beautiful statues of cats,

and there are some accounts. For example, Herodotus talks about cats being so beloved that people would run into burning houses to save a cat, and that there were rituals when a cat died. People would go into mourning.

There were cats all over Egypt. Some of them lived happy, long lives. In fact, we know that there were cat pets. And I love, the ancient Egyptian word for cat is miu. -Aw. -(both) Miu.

(Emily T) A very famous cat monument is, there's a big stone sarcophagus. The cat's name is Ta Miu, which means "the kitty." -Aw. -Made by one of the kings of the 18th dynasty apparently for his pet cat

who passed away. But on the other hand, what we know from archaeology and contemporary texts is a little bit different. They had a huge religious significance. For example, this statue here that shows a lioness, Sekhmet,

And you see she has a sun disk on top of her head because this goddess was the daughter of the sun god Ra. Ra is one of the most important gods in Egyptian religion. And so you get this idea of the feline

being among the very top levels of the pantheon. The myths about Sekhmet talk about her getting really cranky with mankind because they were disrespecting her father, Ra. She told the gods she's going to go out and kill everybody,

kill all humankind. -Ah, okay, cool.
-Just kill 'em all. Yeah, sounds good. And so the gods' solution was even better. -Ah.
-They dyed a lot of beer red and spread it all over Egypt.

And it looked like rivers of blood, and she started lapping it up, and she got drunk and fell asleep. -Nice.
-And just forgot about the whole thing. [both laughing] -Oh, classic.
-So that's the fierce side.

That is a fierce side of Sekhmet, and you didn't want to mess with Sekhmet. And then here we have a really cute little one. This is the goddess Bastet, and she's holding ritual objects.

She's holding what's called a sistrum in her right paw. And then in her other hand, she is carrying another ritual instrument. The Egyptians loved duality; when the goddess is happy, she is Bastet. When she's not happy, she's Sekhmet.

Ah, what is this context? It's her, another deity, and then Osiris? Is this like a trifecta of strength and power? -Yeah. -It's loading them on. -Okay.

If you can have three gods, why not have three gods? And here in front of you, we have—it looks like a torpedo. -(Emily G) Yeah. With little pointy ears, and that is a cat mummy.

Some cats were eviscerated, as were human mummies. More often they were not. But they would be purified with incense and smeared with a tar-like substance, like a resin or a bituminous substance, and then wrapped with linen.

And the whole idea of the wrapping alludes to the god Osiris, who's the main god of the dead. He was the first mummy. Egyptian myths are kind of bizarre. He is killed by his brother,

and his body is chopped up into a lot of pieces. And his faithful wife, Isis, gathers the pieces together, wraps them as a mummy, and then he impregnates his wife. The dead guy impregnates his wife.

So that is the icon of "from death becomes life." So they indicate rebirth. From the text, and this is very, very clear, it's written down in the economic texts, that around these cat temples, there would be large pens where cats were raised.

-Ah.
-Catteries. What were they doing with the cats? -Well...
-[both laugh] So we know from the remains of cat mummies and also from texts that the priests who raised these cats would cull the herds,

and they'd take the kittens, like three or four months old. -Oh no.
-And wring their necks. Oh no! -No!
-And then mummify them -and present them as--
-That's so sad. It is sad, but it made the deities so happy.

(Emily G)
Ah, okay. And when the gods are happy, Egypt is happy. It means the sun comes up. It means the river floods. It means everything is just wonderful. -Yeah.
-And so this is part of this big cycle of the universe.

This was very, very big business in ancient Egypt. In gift shops, you'll see statues of Egyptian cats standing very regally and sometimes a little gold earring, and those are usually cat coffins. The cat was actually considered to be the representation

of the *ba*, or the spirit of these feline goddesses. Egyptian religion was really transactional. You give something to the god because you want something from the god. So offerings are major, major, major. For example, a cat deity like Sekhmet,

you would offer her like a little statue or a mummified cat. We have cat cemeteries. -Wow.
-They're actually "catacombs." [laughs] Of course. Is that really where the word catacomb comes from?

-No, no.
-Oh gosh. -I don't believe so.
-That would be hilarious. How can you not say "catacomb," right? No, yeah, that makes sense. So this whole process is that the cats would be mummified.

They'd be presented to the deity, and then, according to the text, several times a year, all of these cat mummies, some of them in containers—bronze coffins or wooden cases—would then be taken by the priest down

to the catacombs underneath the temple. In the late 1800s, there's a record of something like about 180,000 cat mummies that were exported to the UK for fertilizer. -A hundred eighty thous--
-Thousand cats.

Cats for fertilizer? -Kind of sad, isn't it?
-Oh. [laughs] -I mean--
-I'm sorry to laugh. No, I think it's really interesting because-- -It's just amazing--
-Yeah.

180,000 cat mummies, and that's from one site apparently. Oh goodness. What are these itty-bitty things? (Emily T) These are called amulets, and amulets are kind of like good-luck charms.

So these were often protective charms worn by living people. They were also placed on mummies. They're beautifully detailed. They're made out of faience, which is like a quartz-based pottery. And when it's fired, it gives this sort of blue-green,

or green and then blue-green. And they show Sekhmet in this little itty-bitty one, which would probably be put on a necklace and worn. And so these could be sold to people who wanted something to show their love

-Yeah.
-For Sekhmet or Bastet. The love for cats. Today, even today, people are still wearing amulets and jewelry of cats. -(Emily T) That's right.
-To show our cat love. Not very Egyptian.

Part of the reason I wanted to do this video is, like, I love cats; the audience loves cats. There's just something universal, whether or not we today are assigning god-like power to our own felines.

It's almost even today, they have a sort of mystical quality to them. Maybe that's why we're still like, "Can't quite figure you out." There's some mystery there. (Emily T)
Well, exactly, because they are unpredictable.

With many things, the Egyptians were so prolific, created so much wonderful architecture and statues, and it's just amazing, the output of this group. Every time I learn something new, every time I look at a temple wall a little differently.

Luckily with this culture, we have got an endless supply of material culture, of objects. And then the written texts are also just phenomenal. And so we have the ability to try to go in and get into their heads. What were these people like?

And that's what really got me interested in this study. It's like, who were these people? (Emily G) I do keep thinking about something that Dr. Teeter mentioned, which is about the abundance of material that still exists from this culture,

including objects removed from Egypt and placed in museums like ISAC's. Also, until 2023, they were still using the name "Oriental Institute," which is geographically confusing and also seemed to ignore the use of "Oriental" as an offensive term.

So I went back to Marc with my questions. Can't deny that in a place like ISAC, there is a little bit of a colonial background. And what are you doing now in light of that, knowing that a lot of the collections come

from those places, but also knowing that you're continuing to work in those areas? Pedagogy and partnerships—these are the two main pillars. So after 1972, it was no longer allowed to buy or own artifacts and collections coming from overseas.

As for everything that's coming before 1972, this is a collection that's a wonderful tool for fundamental research; also the spreading of knowledge for general human history.

We are open to changing trends in the modern era, and we are listening to the people who are actually visiting our galleries. Most of the time, it's in partnership with hosting authorities and very concretely, for example, where

through co-directorships on archaeological excavations. So it only works if you have a very long-term approach where you actually have the equipment, the staff, and the time to train the people on a long-term basis.

So it's not even that, like, the conservation science is the only part that's advancing in terms of technology, but also like the way that you're able to deepen social partnerships and be able to look at synergies

in research, like what you're doing here and what you can facilitate in Chicago—and how that can go overseas.

-Exactly. It's an extension of the museum. The museum doesn't exist here in just this space, but it's—

-No.
-You have a partnership with people, educators, researchers all over the world. One of the particularities of ISAC as a museum is that it's not just interested in the big, monumental, shiny things.

It's also trying to recreate the mindset of the people that created all these artifacts in the first place, through the context but through social practices, too. So yes, as you can see, the ripple effect can cross millennia.

Yeah, I love that. I love this museum because it's about the human experience. Sometimes that means relating to it, like looking for cat lovers throughout history, and sometimes that means using it as a basis for change.

Either way, acknowledging the past is critical to growing, both as people and as places. Accessibility provided by the U.S. Department of Education. [light upbeat music] It still has brains on it.

Why were Ancient Egyptians obsessed with cats?

thebrainscoop

Ancient Egyptian Cat Worship and the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC)

Economic texts indicate cat raising in large pens near cat temples.

Introduction to ISAC, a free archaeology museum on the University of Chicago campus.

Museum's collection spans prehistory to the Early Middle Ages, focusing on the Middle and Near East and the Nile Valley.

Interview with Dr. Marc Maillot, chief curator, about the museum's collection and highlights.

Discussion of a wooden painted stela depicting a priestess offering to the god Ra-Horakhty.

Connecting with Ancient Cultures and the Human Experience

Finding a dog's footprint in an imperfectly cooked brick elicits existential questions.

The museum experience should be a cultural reflex, like consulting a dictionary.

Tailoring museum visits to individual curiosity and eagerness to learn.

Focus shifts to cat worship in ancient Egypt.

Examination of a cat mummy mask and the interplay between lioness and cat in Egyptian art.

The Religious and Economic Significance of Cats in Ancient Egypt

Introduction of Emily Teeter, Egyptologist specializing in languages, culture, and objects.

Cats held huge cultural and religious importance in ancient Egypt.

Discussion of cats' roles in religion and economy, with examples from Herodotus' accounts.

Evidence of cat pets and the ancient Egyptian word for cat, "miu."

Mention of Ta Miu, a pet cat of an 18th dynasty king, and its sarcophagus.

Description of Sekhmet, a lioness goddess, daughter of Ra, and her fierce nature.

Myth about Sekhmet's attempt to kill humankind and the gods' solution of red-dyed beer.

Introduction of Bastet, a gentler feline goddess, and the duality between her and Sekhmet.

Discussion of a cat mummy and the mummification process.

Explanation of cat mummification practices and their connection to the god Osiris.

Cat Breeding, Mummification, and Offerings

Texts describe large pens where cats were raised near cat temples.

Priests culled cat herds, mummifying kittens and presenting them as offerings.

Cat mummification as a significant business and part of a cosmic cycle.

Cat statues and coffins as representations of the *ba* (spirit).

Offerings to cat deities, including cat mummies, and the existence of cat cemeteries.

Cat Mummies, Amulets, and the Legacy of Cat Worship

The transport of cat mummies to catacombs and their later export for fertilizer.

Description of amulets as good-luck charms, worn by living people and placed on mummies.

Details about the material and appearance of amulets depicting Sekhmet or Bastet.

Continuation of cat amulets and jewelry in modern times.

The enduring mystical quality of cats and their unpredictable nature.

The Abundance of Material Culture and the Study of Ancient Egypt

The prolific nature of Egyptian culture and the abundance of material culture and written texts.

The study of ancient Egyptians and their way of life.

The abundance of material culture, including objects in museums like ISAC.

ISAC's name change from "Oriental Institute" and the acknowledgment of its colonial background.

ISAC's Approach to its Collection and Colonial Legacy

ISAC's response to its colonial past and current practices.

Focus on pedagogy and partnerships, with no buying artifacts from overseas since 1972.

Partnerships with hosting authorities and co-directorships on archaeological excavations.

Long-term approach to training people and advancing conservation science.

Deepening social partnerships and synergies in research.