← Back to the front page

Meow – The History of Cat Domestication, and How Our Furry Friends Domesticated Themselves

Khalid Elhassan June 3, 2025 17 min

12. Revering Cats – and Sacrificing Them

Ancient Egyptian cat statuette, intended to contain a mummified cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ancient Egyptian fascination with cats began around 2000 BC, and intensified in the first millennium BC. Cats were associated with several deities, most notably Bastet, goddess of home, fertility, music, and protector of women and children. Bastet was often depicted with a cat’s head, and cats were believed to embody her qualities. They were seen as guardians of households, especially since they killed snakes, rats, and other pests.

Because of that divine association, harming a cat was considered a grave crime, sometimes punishable by death. Simultaneously, though, cats were also bred and sacrificed in massive numbers, especially during the Late Period, 664 – 332 BC, and into the Ptolemaic and Roman eras. Cat sacrifices were rooted in religious practice. Many ancient cultures offered animal sacrifices, and Egyptians offered mummified animals – including, or at times especially, cats – as votive gifts 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.