In Egyptian society cats seem to have had three distinct roles. They were pest
controllers, as they had been for the previous 5,000 years, and from what we
know of what was written about their role at the time, the Egyptians valued
them particularly for their their ability to chase snakes away. It seems a little
bit bizarre nowadays to think that cats are good predators of snakes. There isn't
much evidence for them preying on snakes anywhere in the world, but the Egyptians
definitely thought they were. Nevertheless, I think they must have
also just been pest controllers of mice and rats. The second role was as
household pets. We know that the aristocracy had them as pets, but we
also know that quite humble people, craftsmen for example, had them as pets
because there are little sketches made by the people who were building the temples –
little drawings they'd make on bits of limestone during
their lunch breaks – showing their pet cats. So, right the way through society,
even several thousand years ago, the Egyptians kept cats as pets. Then the
third role was that in religion. They previously worshiped the lion goddess called
Bastet and Bastet seemed to become associated particularly with
domestic cats and almost lost the association with the lion. What was not
so good for cats, was that meant that a lot of people wanted mummified
cats as offerings to make to the Goddess.
So a whole breeding programme for cats run by priests started. These cats were
killed when they were about a year old, mummified, wrapped up in elaborate
wrappings and then offered for sale at the temple where you could go along on a
feast day, buy a cat and give it back to the priests who would then entomb it
for you. And these lasted in their tombs right through to
the Victorian era when they were dug up and many of them were ground up to
make into fertiliser. So there were millions and millions of cats treated in
this way – it was a huge industry. It's rather bizarre, I think, to us today to
think of how the Egyptians must have viewed cats – they had pet cats, they had pest-
controlling cats and then they must have known that just behind the temple, were
lots of cats being killed every day for them to offer up to the Goddess. How
they squared all of those different attitudes in their minds we shall never
know, but it does seem rather odd to us today.