Ancient Egypt
The exact history of human interaction with cats
is still somewhat vague. The earliest written
records of attempts to domesticate cats date back
to ancient Egypt, circa 4000 BC, where cats were
employed to keep mice and rats away from grain
stores. However, a gravesite discovered in 1983 in
Shillourokambos, Cyprus, dating to 7500 BC,
contains the skeletons of a ceremonially buried
human and a type of young cat. Since cats are not
native to Cyprus, this suggests that cats were
domesticated (or just tamed) at least this early.
The cat found in the Cyprus grave was more similar
to the ancestral wildcat species than to modern
housecats. Statues from Anatolia created around
6000 BC have also been found depicting women
playing with domesticated cats, which implies that
cats were domesticated there around the same time
period.
Ancient Egyptians regarded cats as embodiments of
the goddess Bast, also known as Bastet
(emphasizing the female -t suffix) or Thet. The
penalty for killing a cat was death, and when a
cat died it was sometimes mummified in the same
way as a human. Recently, deep scans of several
mummified felines indicated they had suffered
broken necks before mummification. It is unclear
why, but researchers theorize that some cats may
have been sacrificed to honor Bast. Recent
research indicates that cats were so popular in
tombs that sometimes other animals would be
wrapped up in the form of a mummified cat. |
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