The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-03-07
TWENTY TONS OF CATS.
A Ship Load of Embalmed Kitties
from Egypt.
From the PhaadeIDhia Inquirer

From the Philadelphia Inquirer.
A cat 1000 years old Is not altogether q
familiar object to Englishmen, and can
scarcely be regarded as an everyday visitor
to these shores. The arrival, therefore, of
nineteen tons and half Of such cats in
Liverpool is an incident that cannot but lay
heavy strain upon the British capacity
for experiencing amazement Not the
least astonishing feature Of this unique
event is that the consignment in question.
described with commercial crispness
as "a parcel of embalmed cats" consists
exclusively Of feline mummies, aptly but
accidently culled from a catacomb in Cen
trail Egypt. There are no fewer than
10000 of these swathed and spiced remains
iii the 'parcel" that reached that country a
few days ago, and they have already been
sold for fertiiiZing purposes to a Liverpool
manure merchant, the auctioneer who dis
posed of them using one of the deceased
cats heads as hammer wherewith to knock
down the "lotsn According to a CORES
pondent it had long been believed in
Psychological circles that
HUGE CAT CEMETERY.
was in existence 'some where aboutn on the
left bank of the Nile. One day last autumn
fellah husbandInan, while engaged in the
agricultural pursuit of digging on q place
called Benz HasSan, discovered this ancient
burial ground by a very simple process.
The soil which he was turning up suddenly
gave way under him and he fell into a pit,
which, upon further examination, proved
to be spacious subterranean cave, tenanted
by uncounSed legions of dead cats. Every
one of these corpses had been sedulouslY
embalmed, and swaddled, SO tn speak, in
cloth cerements, in the very best style of the
undertaker's craft as practiced in the land
no a1l
fore the commencement of the christian era
The news of this strange discovery spread
swiftly through BENZ Hassan and the ad-
joining districts, whence laborerS soon
hocked to the newly opened cave and set
to work with might and main to disinter its
venerable occupants. Why the cats had
been mummified and when they had come
to be arranged so systematically in their
suoterranean quarters were secondary con-
slderations, naturally enough, in the bucolic
Egyptian mind-in fact 'the sort of things
no teilah could understand" but. the peas
ants of the Nile are keenly alive to the COM
merclal value of embalmed "cats and dogs
and each obscener beast to which Egyptian
dotards once did bow" either as hlgh-class
manure or as peculiarly quick and fra
grant combustible With exemplary prompt
tude and dispatch, therefore, they dug up
some
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF MUMMIEs.
several slots" of which were purchased on
the spot by local farmers, while others
found their way down river to the store
houses of an Alexandrian merchant. This
worthy, being of speculative turn of mind,
shipped them off to Liverpool "on sale or
RETURN" where they fetched a trifle less
than "a ton. Thus for a matter of three
'poniesn or SO, British "boue buyer" has
become the sole possessor Of nearly 200 900
old pr11Sfp1 -
which at the time of its decease, had eenb
deemed worthy of special embalmment and
honorable sepulture, according to the rites
of Memphis, Bubastis and Thebes, 'In that
case made and provided"
For these Gals, once highly reverenced
and even publicly worshipped in their ma
tive land, it Is heavy come down to cross
the seas 1900 years after their translation
to mummyhood, and settle in strange
country, in order TO be used up as a COM
post for the artificial fattening of British
turnips, bee troots, or even mangoldwurzel
In the zenith of its fame and worldly pros
perity the Egyptian cat was not merely
respected as an heraldic emblem-the badge
or
TOKEN OF CERTAIN NOBLE FAMILIES,
but as a minor deity, having permanent
and indisputable rights of residence in the
Egyptian Olympus, and as such deemed
worthy of "the old world dignities of
priestly services, temple ceremonial and
posthumous embalming.n In the words of
brilliant essayist, ''the days are long gone
by when to bury a cat professions of white
robed Egyptians, crowned with convolVulus,
acacia and chrysanthemums, tralled their
efhgies of water-beast and reptile, their
images Of dog-headed and hawk-headed
gods, with the clashing of cymbals and
singing of the choirs of Isis, down through
the long aisles of reverend folk from the
Memphian temple gates to the cata--
combs under the rocks" Except once a
year, at the Crystal palace, cat worship has
gone out of fashion, and its revival as a
popular cult appears improbable, but the
mutabil1ty OF feline affairs has surely never
heretofore been SO painfully exemplifed as
by the circumstance that an animal which
was formerly venerated in temple of its
own, say at Bubastis, surrounded by COM
forts and waited upon with every outward
token Of consideration throughout life, ex-
pensively embalmed and conveyed to its
tomb with royal honors after death, should
be broken to bits or ground into dust in its
fortieth century and strewn over the surface
OF foreign lands as irreverently as though
1t we're mere contemporary guano or Rus
sian military bone-dust from the environs
OF Plevna. Not only in Egypt, where
IT RANKED AS DIVINITY
and exercised a supernatural protectorate
over more than one eminently respectable
dynasty, was this dignified quadruped
much thought of in olden times. In the
Hindoo mythology it figured as sort of
saint. "practiclng austerity on the banks Of
the Gauges" with such solemnity of aspect
and decorum and demeanor as to inspire
confidence in the riparian birds, which
gathered around it Ito pay homage to its
sanctity. The Oldest of all known myths de-
scribed the divine moon itself as a sublime
white cat, devouring the gray mice of twi-
hight, an image of Aryan symbolism that
foreshadows the classic legend according to
which Diana, the chaste lunar goddess, was
won't to assume the feline form at times.
The affinity of cats TO the 'orb of night"
which few suburban residents of the pres
ent day will feel inclined to dispute, was
also more than limited at in ancient Scandi-
navian folklore, which assigned the privi-
lege of drawing Freya's chariot to team of,
grimalkins. Throughout Continental Italy
in more modern ages, st. Gertrude has been
regarded as the special patroness and pro-