The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-03-30
THE CAT AND THE MOON,
ITS SUPPOSED RELATION TO THE
 EARTH'S S1TELLTTE
Offered as m Explanation of Egyptian
 Alteration.

Adoration.
 Visitors to the British Museum, in-
 specting 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. It seems so incredibly stupid
 as well as so Superstitious, considering
 how advanced the Egyptians were in
 civilization and culture. They could
 build temples, erect massive obelisks
 and carry out great engineering works
 There are sculptured figures in the mu- scum which date from $500 B. c. There
 are manufactured articles and speci-
 mems probably thousand years older
 than that This ancient people pos
 sessed an ingenious form of hierogyph-
 ic writing in which a feather was the letter A. and lion the letter L. But a
 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 em- balmed because of their sacred signifi- canoe? The Egyptians were not fools; and we must not laugh at their wor- ship of the cat without seeking to un
 derstand it, Perhaps they did not real ly worship it, any more than a devout Christian worships the crucifx. Trees and serpents and many other things had place in the religious symbolism of the Egyptians. The persea tree seems to mark the place of sun-rising of midsummer day; and curiously there was a "great cat" connected with this tree. In the XVIIth chapter of the Book of the Dead the cat is explained to be Ra himself, the chief god. A ser pent was often carried in long mystical procession; and in some of the pictures cat is represented in the act of cut ting off it's head Along with the ass the cat is called a saver 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 serpent, the crocodile, the bull and oth CT animals each had it's special signifi- canoe. The bull was so important that a sacred bull, called the Apis, was kept at Memphis, and treated with great re- spect. But he was not allowed to live more than twenty-five years; and the most likely reason is that he represent ed a lunar cycle of twenty-five years, which must terminate punctually. When he was taken through the city in annual procession people would ask and tell how old he was, and he would thus be walking almanac. If he did not did naturally he was drowned at the age of twenty-five, because the new cy- cle had to begin, and a new divine Apis must be found. But he was honored by being embalmed, and buried in gran ite sarcophagus in the neighborhood of the Pyramids. The burial place of the sacred bulls was discovered by Mariette in 1S501, and every visitor to Egypt goes to see these tombs. Each of the stone collins had it's memorial inscription. or example: Tn the Tewentieth year, the month Mesori, the twentieth day, under the reign of King Psametik I, the Majesty of the living Apis departed to heaven. This god was carried in peace (to his buriaD to the beautiful land Of the vest
 Now, there was a burial place for sa- cred cats as well as sacred bulls; and the reason was no doubt the same namely, that they had a place in the symbolic worship. A cemetery of cats existed near Bubastis, which is the l modern Tel Basta, not far from Zag-a- zig Junction, on the railway. Buried in the mound, M. Naville a. few years ago found the ruined temple of East or Pasht, the cat doddess, who gave her name to the city. The foundation of i, Bubastis carries us back to the begin ming of the historical times of Egypt, l and is contemporary with the Pyra | mids, the oldest monuments. Herodo- tus says: "The temple stands in the middle of the city, and is visible on all | sides as one walks round it; for, as the city has been raised up by an embank- ment, while the temple has been left untouched in it's original condition, you look down upon it wherever you are. A low wall runs round the inclosure hay ing figures engraved upon it, and inside there is a grove of beautiful tall trees growing round the shrine, which con- lulIio tilC ihLu6C Cl lhC s,oouCsE. fAhSA the goddess herself he says: 'The Bubastis of the Egyptians is the same as the Artemis of the Greeks" To this we may add that the Artemis of the Greeks is generally said to be the same as the Diana of the Romans, a goddess of light, representing the moon.
 Thus we see that East, or Pasht, was with the cat on the one hand and the moon on the other. So it is quite feasible that puss, when she fig lres as symbol in the Egyptian wor- ship, represents something in the do- main of astronomy and the calendar Ovid calls the cat the sister of the moon md says that Pasht took the form of ,at to avoid Typhon. According to Plutarch, cat placed in lustrum de- 1oted the moon. It is night animal, md it's eyes glisten in the dark. Hyde Clarke remarks that there are phenom- ma of periodicity in the cat, which are supposed to have given rise to it's rela- ionship to the moon. What l think I lave discovered-or at least made learer than it was before-is, that the z at was an intercaary month, added in he one hundred and twentieth year, to J ectify the alendar.-Gentleman's :,