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10/09/2002 "Egypt"

I saw a special on Egypt tonight which reminded me of these things. So much fantasy so little time to debunk them.

When did Egypt begin to exist?

Explore more than 3.000 years of Ancient Egyptian history, from the end of prehistory at around 3.000 BC to the closing of the last Egyptian temple in 535/537 A.D. A time-line on this site helps you navigate through history and discover the formidable Pharaohs of Ancient

"Nearly every god of the earliest part of Egyptian history was visualized in the form of an animal, bird, or even an inanimate object.
Thus Bastet, the local goddess of the town Bast (modern Tell Basta) in the eastern Delta, became associated with a lioness, the god Thoth of Khemenu (Hermopolic Magna, modern El-Ashmunein) with an ibis, Khnum of the first cataract region with a ram, the goddess Hathor, whose worship was known from several places, with a cow, and the god Sobek with a crocodile. See, Hathor. The precise reasons for such associations are not clear, but natural logic seems to have influenced the choice. Thus, the cults of the bull were popular in the cattle-grazing area of the Delta, a crocodile cult was known from the marshy Faiiyum, etc. The god could adopt the form of an animal in order to become manifest, but this did not mean the animal itself was regarded as a deity."

"We can conjecture that each of the larger chiefdoms at the end of the Predynastic Period [5000/4500-2925 BC] was connected with a cult-center and a shrine or temple of the local deity. The fortunes of Egyptian gods waxed and waned with those of their home districts, and the development of relationships among deities went side by side with the creation of one state. Almost all of the deities of later times were known during the earliest dynasties, usually in the forms of animals, birds, or fetishes."
- Jaromir Malek, In the Shadow of the Pyramids

The Sphinx for example is a representation of a lion, and is one of the earliest works of Egyptian art. The sphinx has the head of the pharaoh, and the body of a lion, showing the pharaoh's power and importance. According to Allbritton, Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess of fate, controls the Tablets of Destiny; therefore, the fate of humanity lies in her hands, or rather her paws .

As in most societies, the original tribes were matriarchies during the Prehistory. A change that marks the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period is the rise of urbanism. Inhabitants of small settlements throughout the country abandoned their homes and moved to larger communities and cities. Early Period 3000-2575

It was during this period that the divine kingship became well established as Egypt's form of government, and with it, an entire culture that would remain virtually unchanged for the next 3000 or more years.

. By 3100 BC, Egypt had a centralized government controlled by a line of hereditary rulers. These kings, called pharaohs, kept a royal court of advisors and nobility, and oversaw the governors of the provinces of the kingdom. They were also commanders of the Egyptian army. Even the priests and priestesses who officiated at the complex religious ceremonies and attended on the gods, served the pharaohs.

Fully domesticated cats in Egypt as companions to humans probably originated around 2000 BCE They were usually captured from the wild as kittens to be domesticated. House cats in Egypt were likely descended from the African wildcat and little swamp cats. Pictures depicting domestic cats have been found in the Middle Kingdom, but skeletons of cats date back to the period before the dynasty. Their original home was probably somewhere in the Near East, so they may well be indigenous to Egypt.

Despite this, a few people believe that cats may have been imported from Persia about 4000 years ago, or from Nubia during the New Kingdom. They preyed on cobras, vipers, rats, mice, and other creatures harmful to the human population. Cats and humans spent about 1000 years building their relationship; and cats, unlike other animals were allowed to come and go as they saw fit. The women domesticated the cat by a power of attraction and observation of the animal. They had to share the water with them. They treated them with respect and in return the cats protected the granaries.

Cats were also used in many ways not usually associated with feline companions. Wilkinson (1988) noted that cats, instead of hunting dogs, retrieved birds that were shot in marshes. From 1000-350 BCE, however, cats were also seen as deities, and worshipped as such.

So there is the belief that cats were worshipped in Egypt but Egypt lasted a long time. The Bast cult can be traced back to about 3200 BC, and she became a national deity when Bubastis became the capital of Egypt in about 950 BC.

While cats might have been revered when they were first domesticated, as the civilization deteriorated, about the time of Rameses, when males were priests at Bubastis instead of females, at the end of the New Kingdom-the 20th Dynasty, during the later years of Ramesses XI, 1136 - 1070, according to this PBS special; the Egyptians began raising cats in cages to be sold to the great unwashed as sacrifices.

The more cats you bought for the priests to kill, the more blessings you received. But not everyone will agree.

M Epstein tells it this way: "Cats were mummified after death, and mice, rats, and saucers of milk were placed in their tombs. However, X-rays of 55 mummified cats showed that several had broken necks, implying that the Temple priests may have killed kittens to keep down their population, and used them as offerings to Bast (Bisno, 1997)".

The above is garbage as I saw the cat mummies and those were some big, big cats, not kittens. Cat cemeteries line the Nile River and cat mummies can be found in the tombs of Egyptians (Coll, 1997). The city of Bubastis, contains around 300,000 cat mummies.

So were the holy practices degraded after the matriarchy. The truth is, that as the rulers became corrupted by wealth, and the culture began to emphasize the afterlife, in order to get away with making the here and now a living hell on earth for everyone except the rulers, the Theben priests may have bred cats to kill as sacrifice. Another way to insult and degrade the old beliefs. To help the people accept the new way. The patriarchs were very paranoid about their illegitimate power. Read Ariadne by June R. Brindel

Thou art the Great Cat, the avenger of the gods, and the judge of words, and the president of the sovereign chiefs and the governor of the holy Circle; thou art indeed the Great Cat.

... (Inscription on the Royal Tombs at Thebes)

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