11. The Mass Sacrifice of Ancient Egyptian Cats
Egyptian pilgrims who visited temples brought cat mummies as offerings. They were placed in temple precincts or tombs to gain the gods’ favor, much like lighting candles in modern religious traditions. Cats were raised in temple-run “cat farms.” After death by strangulation or blunt force trauma, according to forensic studies, the cats were ritually embalmed, their bodies carefully wrapped in linen, sometimes with painted or gilded details, and buried in vast underground catacombs.
Archaeological excavations have uncovered massive cat burial sites. One of the most famous is the cat necropolis at the Temple of Bastet in Bubastis, a major pilgrimage center. In some sites, hundreds of thousands of cat mummies have been discovered. In the nineteenth century, so many were found that some were ground up and exported to Europe for use as fertilizer – a shocking fate for animals once so revered.
