Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt

Brooklyn Museum

Through December 2014

The ancient Egyptians really knew their cats, said Ariella Budick in the Financial Times. The people of the Nile didn’t exactly worship felines. They instead chose to depict many of their gods as cat-like, and “anyone who has lived with these unfathomable beasts” can appreciate why that choice makes sense. Few cat owners haven’t at one time or another been awed by their pets’ mercurial nature—“their sense of entitlement, their capacity for spite, and their ability to bestow serenity and warmth.” To such observers, all 30 objects in this small but effective show will feel like familiar housemates—even the goddess Sakhmet, who’s depicted here as a fearsome lioness. According to myth, Sakhmet was once deployed by her sun-god father to destroy mankind, and took to the task with such ferocity that she had to be tricked into getting drunk when old Dad decided to call off the slaughter. Soothed by a cool drink, she transformed in a blink from monster to pussycat.

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The Egyptians were actually “remarkably unromantic” about cats, said Holland Cotter in The New York Times. At temples devoted to various feline goddesses, kittens were routinely killed so that they could be packed into votive sculptures and sold to religious pilgrims. And that’s just one reason a contemporary cat lover might resist wanting to return to the Egyptians’ cat-centric way of life. Only “a rigidly patriarchal society” would have so many feline goddesses like Sakhmet, all of them reinforcing the notion that women too are “unpredictable, untamable, and therefore dangerous.” At least maternal goddesses like Bastet won large followings too, said Lance Esplund in Bloomberg.com. Here, Bastet is alluded to in a small sculpture, more than 2,600 years old, that shows a mother cat nursing four kittens. As one playful kitten looks up into her face, the lounging mother actually smiles.