Le Porte dell'Anno

Alabaster statue of a cat, dating to the XII dynasty (1991-1783 B.C.), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The cat was a sacred animal to the goddess Bastet, who was often represented with the head of a cat, and was worshiped in the city of Bubastis, in the Nile Delta. Like the lioness goddess Sekhmet, Bastet appears as an ambivalent power, at the same time both protective and aggressive and fierce. In association with the goddess Hathor, Bastet was regarded as a goddess of music and dance: her main attribute was the sistrum, a ceremonial rattle. Toward the end of the New Kingdom, Bastet’s cult assumed an enormous popularity, as goddess of the household and of the hearth, and protector of pregnant women. At Bubastis, the cult center of the goddess’s worship, every year a great festival was celebrated in her honor. Ships, carrying feasting men and women, arrived from every part of Egypt, in a joyous atmosphere, characterized by music, dances, songs and elation produced by wine (as described by Herodotus, II, 60). The Greeks identified the cat-goddess of Bubastis with their goddess Artemis (Remler 2010).

[Image: http://library.artstor.org/library/]




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Alabaster statue of a cat, dating to the XII dynasty (1991-1783 B.C.), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The cat was a sacred animal to the goddess Bastet, who was often represented with the head of a cat, and was worshiped in the city of Bubastis, in the Nile Delta. Like the lioness goddess Sekhmet, Bastet appears as an ambivalent power, at the same time both protective and aggressive and fierce. In association with the goddess Hathor, Bastet was regarded as a goddess of music and dance: her main attribute was the sistrum, a ceremonial rattle. Toward the end of the New Kingdom, Bastet’s cult assumed an enormous popularity, as goddess of the household and of the hearth, and protector of pregnant women. At Bubastis, the cult center of the goddess’s worship, every year a great festival was celebrated in her honor. Ships, carrying feasting men and women, arrived from every part of Egypt, in a joyous atmosphere, characterized by music, dances, songs and elation produced by wine (as described by Herodotus, II, 60). The Greeks identified the cat-goddess of Bubastis with their goddess Artemis (Remler 2010). [Image: http://library.artstor.org/library/]