. ... The domestic cat; bird killer, mouser and destroyer of wild life; means of utilizing and controlling it. Cats. 11 to the sun also. Plutarch says that the image of a female cat was placed at the top of the sistrum as an emblem of the lunar orb. Horapollo asserts that the cat was worshipped in the temple of Heliopolis, sacred to the sun. Some scholars claim to have found evidence that one sex was believed to be emblematic of the moon, and that the other was symbolic of the sun. Such homage was paid the animal possibly because its eyes change the form and size of their pupils with the waxin
. ... The domestic cat; bird killer, mouser and destroyer of wild life; means of utilizing and controlling it. Cats. 11 to the sun also. Plutarch says that the image of a female cat was placed at the top of the sistrum as an emblem of the lunar orb. Horapollo asserts that the cat was worshipped in the temple of Heliopolis, sacred to the sun. Some scholars claim to have found evidence that one sex was believed to be emblematic of the moon, and that the other was symbolic of the sun. Such homage was paid the animal possibly because its eyes change the form and size of their pupils with the waxing and waning of the orbs of day and night, and become more brilliant when the moon is fufl. A cat-headed goddess appears in the temples of Egypt, known as Bast, Pasht, Sekhet, Pasche, Tefnut or Menhi, believed by some to have been the Diana or hunting goddess of the Egyptians. She is referred to by others as the goddess of love or pleasure. The cat well might be chosen to represent both Diana and Venus. This goddess, known to the Greeks as Bubastis, seems to have antedated the deification of the cat, and to have been a lioness goddess until the cat was domesticated, when the deification of the king of beasts apparently was forgotten, and the "little lion" of the fireside took its place as an object of veneration. From the twelfth dynasty onward pussy seems to have become a precious jewel — a fetish of the Egyptian people. The valley of the Nile was then a great grain-growing region, and Egypt the gran- ary of the ancient world. No doubt the utility of the cat in catching rats and mice appealed to the Egyptians, but this was merely incidental, and no adequate reason for the exceeding veneration with which cats were treated. The extreme reverence, affection and solicitude displayed by the people of Egypt for this animal are illustrated by historic tales of the ancients which seem incredible in the light of the twentieth century. The law forbade the sinful killing of a
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectcats, bookyear1916
