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40 Things About The Outlandish Math Cult Leader, and Other Unusual Facts From the Ancient World

Khalid Elhassan May 22, 2020 33 min

Democritus and Protagoras - Odysseus and Nausicaa (Ulysses and Nausicaa) — 'Pythagoras and the Fishermen', by Salvatore Rosa. Wikimedia

27. Ancient Egyptians Liked Cats – But Not as Pets

Mummified ancient Egyptian cats in London’s Natural History Museum. Pinterest

Cats are probably the animal that most people commonly associate with ancient Egypt. And for good reason: there are thousands of cat statues all over the place, and millions of mummified cats. Indeed, so common were mummified cats, that archaeologists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries frequently observed Egyptian farmers crushing and using them as fertilizers.

Bastet, the ancient Egyptian cat goddess. Etsy

However, recent discoveries and research indicate that while cats were popular in ancient Egypt, the reason for that popularity was nothing like the reason for cats’ popularity today. All those cat mummies? They were not pets: they were sacrificed to the gods.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.