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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

26. Cat Sacrifices

A mummified ancient Egyptian cat, whose skeleton reveals that it had been killed as a sacrifice. Live Science

Today, we see cats as cute and cuddly companions. However, that is not how Ancient Egyptians saw them. Instead, they saw cats as religious sacrifices, to be killed in order to please their gods. Those millions of mummified cats? They were not dear pets, lovingly preserved by their saddened owners after their demise. They were sacrificed.

Ancient Egyptians bred cats by the millions near temples. As soon as they got big enough – usually about 5 or 6 months old, but sometimes as young as 2 to 4 months old – they were sold to worshipers as offerings, to sacrifice at the temple. So while ancient Egyptians esteemed cats, it was a different kind of esteem than what we have long assumed.

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.