ANST-401 Lessons

Well students, you’ve made it! We have arrived at our final class of the year. I cannot tell you how immensely I have enjoyed our time together and hope that I will see all of your eager faces again next year! As a reminder, next year we will focus on the ancient civilizations in Europe, including the Greco-Romans, Celts, and Norse. It will be a year packed full of curious enigmas and amusing occurrences.

All that stands between you and Year Five are your finals, but before we get to those, I have a special treat for you! Today we’ll be covering some additional content. It’s nothing so crucial that it will be more material to remember for your finals and increase the strain, but it is interesting additional content that will likely augment your already fantastic knowledge about ancient civilizations in Africa. Ah, but I’ll stop hinting and get on with it, shall I?

I’m a Cat Person

Today, because I am very much a cat person -- no, not an Animagus, I just adore cats -- we will be covering the obsession the ancient Egyptians had with the same creatures. If you think you like cats, wait ‘till you hear about the practices in Egypt!

So, you already know that cats were, shall we say, mildly popular in ancient Egypt. But let’s look at exactly what form this popularity took. Now, obviously generalising anything in a civilization that lasted as long as ancient Egypt is quite difficult, but for the sake of ease, I’ll try to make a few broadly applicable statements, just please take them with a grain of salt. Firstly, as you know, many deities in ancient Egypt were anthropomorphic or had certain animal features. A frequently featured animal was our friend the feline. No fewer than eight goddesses had cat-like features, some even appearing as a cat entirely. These eight included: Bastet, Mafdet, Mut, Pakhet, Sekhmet, Shesemtet, Tefnut, and Wadjet. The best examples of these are Bastet, who began as a lion headed warrior goddess who served to protect her father, the sun god Ra. This association was likely quite important to the elevation of cats as, often, pharaohs would consider themselves incarnations of that very same god. Over time, Bastet’s associations evolved, changing from a warrior lioness, to a domestic housecat who presided over fertility and childbirth.

Sekhmet was another well-known example of a fierce goddess of bloodshed and protection. She continued to have warrior-like associations, which you will most definitely learn if you take Mythology and hear some of the myths associated with her. However, knowing that your Mythology class covers her in great detail, I don’t want to step on toes! Suffice it to say this daughter of Ra was, on occasion, intertwined with Bastet and had similar affiliations, particularly Bastet’s earlier incarnations, though occasionally was also associated with motherhood. 

Finally, we have Mut. At times, she was worshipped as the sole creator of the world, though more often she was viewed as the consort of Ra. She had many animal associations, the cat among them, and therefore the cat was considered sacred to this goddess, as well her taking the form of a lion in some depictions. As the other goddesses mentioned, Mut was heavily associated with femininity and motherhood in her time, in this case much more than the others, as her temple was the only we know of to have an all-female administration, meaning all of the officials in the temple (priestesses) were all women. Typically, the role of head priestess would fall to the pharaoh's principal wife (or in the case of a female pharaoh, the eldest daughter).

With so many powerful women associated with cats, it’s no wonder that they were prized animals, and treated differently from others. In fact, they were considered partially god-like on their own merit. So revered were these animals by the ancient Egyptians that even in death they were cared for with the greatest respect. When a cat died, the family that hosted it went into official mourning for the pet, which included shaving off their eyebrows. The cat was mummified, similarly to the manner in which people were mummified, and the body buried in a place of honour. One such cat tomb was released for Muggle discovery in 1888, and it contained no fewer than 80,000 mummified felines.

Absolutely Charming

Now how did this happen, you may ask? While we sadly may never know specifics, if we look at the information we have and use a bit of deductive reasoning, the phenomenon comes from a quite logical progression.

It is postulated that cats were originally sought after to reduce the number of vermin (snakes, rats, mice, etc.) threatening the fields of farmers and labourers. In fact, ancient Egyptians went so far as to tempt the wild cats with fish heads and other tasty treats so they would find their way to the fields and storehouses, and keep the pest problem under control. Over generations, the cats became somewhat domesticated and moved into the houses of their adoptive families.

Of course, this simple symbiotic relationship explains how cats became part of everyday life, and potentially even how they become associated with protectors of Ra (seeing as he was often pitted against various types of snakes in mythology), but what this doesn’t do is explain how cats became to be revered and worshipped by the ancient Egyptians. For that, we need to look back to our very first lesson in the class and remember how common it is for magic and religion to become intertwined.

Let me explain. If you are a cat owner, or have even encountered a cat before, you will likely have noticed that cats have their own agenda. They do what they want, when they want, and no amount of pleading, coercing, or bribery will change their minds. However, one of the most interesting facts about feline-human interactions in ancient Egypt is that cats were recorded hunting alongside humans. They worked as a unit with the humans and, perhaps mind-bogglingly for a cat owner, took orders from humans and followed them. That would certainly be a first for me! This is simply a thing that cats have never done since, at least as far as I know. So how did this happen? Well, pleading, coercing, or bribing may not work on cats…  but magic does. 

While it would certainly be an ethical grey area in today’s civilization, it appears the ancient Egyptians were able to control cats with a spell. Based on enough brief allusions to the behaviour of cats and other animals, it seems like this spell’s effects were localised to only cats (though there is some evidence that there may have been an additional spell for snakes). From what researchers know, this spell likely took the form of a prayer to one or more of the cat-related goddesses and, as we discussed, was attributed to cats’ semi-divine nature or connection with the gods, rather than with a magical effect.

What really occurred in these hunting expeditions, of course, was that the creatures were bewitched to be obedient to their masters, and there is some evidence that this magic also enhanced their natural born hunting prowess. Interestingly, it may have also made them more docile, to which we may owe the existence of domesticated cats. Alas, we will never know for sure, as explicit knowledge of this enchantment (including its incantation, method of casting, and a concrete description of its effects) was one of the many pieces of knowledge lost in the great tragedy of Alexandria.

Finally Finals

Well, while I hope you enjoyed our brief break, I think it’s about time; we’ve delayed enough. Before you can go on to summer holidays (or indeed Year Five of Ancient Studies), we must first gauge how much you’ve learned this year! There will be two parts to your final. The first part consists of a number of essay options for you to choose from, with more details on those options in the assignment itself, of course. The second is a more traditional test with a variety of multiple choice, true or false, and short answer questions. There is a slightly heavier focus on material we covered since the midterm, but questions on earlier content will be present as well. I hope you’ve been studying!

You have an hour or so to prepare if you have not done so already! Be sure that you feel confident before you take your test! If you have been confused about a topic throughout the year and your question still hasn’t been answered, now is the time to make sure you ask! Not after you’ve taken the test! Best of luck to you in your finals, students, and I hope to see you in Year Five!

Image credits here and here
Original lesson written by Professor Liria Morgan