Evening star., 1901-06-29
THE GODS OF OLD EGYPT
PEOPLE OF ANCIENT TIMES wOR-
SHIPPED MANY QUEER DEITIEs.
Temples Built In Honor of Serpents,
CrOcOdiles, Bulls and Cats, the
Tutelary Divinities.

From the Gentleman's Magazine.
Visitors of the British Museum, inspect
ing the antiquities in the Egyptian rooms,
are much interested in the array Of cat
mummies in one of the wall cases. Wonder
is often expressed why cats and crocodiles
should have been embalmed and why the
gods of Egypt should have various animal
heads such as the lion, the jackal, the Ibis
and the hawk. 1t seems SO incredibly STU
pd. well so superstitious, considering
how advanced the Egyptians were in civil
lization and culture. They could build tenn
pies. erect massive obelisks and carry out
great engineering works There are sculp-
tured figures in the museum which date
from $500 B. c. There are manufactured
articles and specimens Of writing probably
a thousand years older than that. The an
cient people possessed an ingenious form OF
hieroglyphic writing in which feather
was the letter A and a lion the letter l..
But feather was also the emblem of
truth and all the letters had been emblems
or symbols of things and qualities.
Does it not occur to us that perhaps the
animal heads were symbolic also and the
cats and crocodiles were embalmed because
of their sacred significance? The Egyp-
tians were not FOOLS and we must not
laugh at their worship Of the cat without
seeking to understand it.
Trees. serpents and other things had
Egyptians. The persea tree seems to mark
the place of sun rising on midsummer day,
and. curiously, there was a great cat"
connected with this tree. In the seven
teenth chapter of the Book of the Dead"
the cat Is explained to be Ra himself, the
chief god. serpent was often carried in
long mystical procession, and in some Of
the pictures a cat is represented in the act
of cutting off its head. Along with the
ass the cat is called a sayer of great words
in the Hall of the Two Truths
These instances are enough to show that
the cat had place in the religious SYM
bolism of the Egyptians. The lion, the ser
pent, the crocodile, the bull and other ami
mails each had it's special significance. The
bull was so important that a sacred bull,
called the Apia, kept at Memphis and
treated with great respect. But he was not
allowed to live more than twenty-five years,
and the most likely reason is that he repre-
sented lunar cycle of twenty-five years,
which must terminate punctually. When
he taken through the city in annual
procession people would ask and tell how
old he was, and he would thus be a walk
ing almanac. If he did not die naturally he
was drowned at the age of twenty-five. be-
cause the new cycle had to begin, and
new divine Apia must be found. But he
was honored by being embalmed and buried
in q granite SarcophaguS in the neig'hbor-
hood of the pyramids.
The burial place of the sacred bulls was
discovered by Mariette in 1851, and every
visitor to Egypt goes to see these tombs
inscription. For example: I'm the twen-
tieth year. the month Mesori, the twentieth
day. under the reign of King Psanetik 1,
the majesty of the living Apis departed to
heaven. This god was carried in peace Ito
his buriaD to the beautiful land of the
blest'
Now, there was burial place for sacred
cats, as well as sacred bulls, and the reason
was no doubt the same-namely, that they
had a place in the symbolic worship
cemetery OF cats existed near Bubastis,
10 ha ,AIn NIL
from Zag-a-zig Junction. on the railway
Buried in the mound NJ. Naville some years
ago found the ruined temple of Bast or
Pasht. the cat goddess, who gave her name
TO the city. The foundation Of Bubastis
carries us back to the beginning of the his
torlcai times OF Egypt and is contemporary
with the pyramids the oldest monuments.
HerouotuS says: The temple stands in
the middle Of the city, and is visible on all
sides as one walks around it; for, as the
city mas been raised up by an embankment
"hlie the temple has been left untouched
In Its original condition. you look down
upon 1t wherever you are. A low wall runs
round the fnclosure. having figures engray-
ed upon it, and inside there is a grove of
sbT,n eautllul III, ,aiI trees growing round the
Shrine which contains the image Of the god
deSs And concerning the goddess her
self. he says: The Bubastis of the Eevn-
tians Is the same as the Artemis of the
greeks To this we may add that the
Artemis Of the Greeks is generally said To
De the same as the Diana of the Romans
goddess Of light representing the moon.
Thus we see that Bast or Pasht was con-
necteo with the cat on the one hand and
the moon on the other. So it is quite feas-
ible that puss when she figures as a sym-
Dol in the Egyptian worship represents
something in the domain of astronomy and
the calendar. Ovid calls the cat the sister
OF the moon, and says that Pasht took the
iorm OF cat to avoid Typhon. According
TO Plutarch, cat placed in a lustrum de-.
noted the moon. 1t is a night animal. and
lts eyes giisten in the dark. Hyde Clarke
remarks that there are phenomena of peri-
ooIclly IN the cat which are supposed to
have given rise to It's Relationship ~ +ho
moon. What think 1 have discovered or
at least made clearer than it was before
IS that the cat was an intercalary month
endar '' eei-