Who they are
Bastet is the cat goddess, deity of home, women, childbirth, joy, and protection. In early times she too was a fierce lion-headed goddess, later "domesticated" into the gentle house cat — from the wild lion to the hearthside cat, much like the Egyptians' own relationship with cats. Cats held a sacred place in Egypt: they killed the rats and venomous snakes that threatened the granaries, and were guardians of the household; to kill a cat (even by accident) could be a capital offense in some periods, and when a cat died its owner would shave their eyebrows in mourning and have it mummified. Bastet's sacred city of Bubastis held a grand festival each year, at which, Herodotus records, tens of thousands came by boat to drink and revel — one of ancient Egypt's liveliest feasts. She shows that the sacred need not be solemn: the cat that guards the door, kills the rats, and keeps the family company is a god just the same.
Key stories
Cat Mummies and Mourning the Eyebrows
In ancient Egypt the cat was sacred to Bastet, and to kill one was a grave crime. Herodotus records that if a household's cat died a natural death, the whole family would shave their eyebrows in mourning (a dog's death called for shaving the whole body). People had their beloved cats mummified and buried in dedicated cat cemeteries — cat mummies unearthed at Bubastis and Beni Hasan number in the hundreds of thousands. This solemnity toward a small animal rests on a union of the practical and the sacred: the cat guarded the granary and killed the snakes, and the animal that guards the home was naturally raised to the altar.