Bastet in the context of "Cats in ancient Egypt"

Animal worship (also zoolatry or theriolatry) is an umbrella term designating religious or ritual practices involving animals. This includes the worship of animal deities or animal sacrifice. An animal 'cult' is formed when a species is taken to represent a religious figure. Animal cults can be classified according to their formal features or by their symbolic content.

The classical author Diodorus situated the origin of animal worship in a myth in which the gods, threatened by giants, disguised themselves as animals. The people then began to worship these animals and continued even after the gods returned to their normal state. In 1906, Weissenborn suggested that animal worship resulted from humans' fascination with the natural world. Primitive man would observe an animal that had a unique trait and the inexplicability would engender curiosity. Wonder resulted from primitive man's observations of this distinctive trait. As such, primitive man worshipped animals that had inimitable traits. Lubbock proposed that animal worship originated from family names. In societies, families would name themselves and their children after certain animals and eventually came to hold that animal above other animals. Eventually, these opinions turned into deep respect and evolved into fully developed worship of the family animal. The belief that an animal is sacred frequently results in dietary laws prohibiting their consumption. As well as holding certain animals to be sacred, religions have also adopted the opposite attitude, that certain animals are unclean.

Kemetism (also Kemeticism or Kemetic paganism; sometimes referred to as Neterism from netjer "god") is a neopagan religion and revival of the ancient Egyptian religion, emerging during the 1970s. A Kemetic is one who follows Kemetism.

There are several main groups, each of which takes a different approach to its beliefs, ranging from eclectic to reconstructionist. These can be divided into three types: reconstructed Kemetism, a syncretic approach, and the more monotheistic Kemetic Orthodoxy.

The Eye of Ra or Eye of Re, usually depicted as sun disk or right wedjat-eye (paired with the Eye of Horus, left wedjat-eye), is an entity in ancient Egyptian mythology that functions as an extension of the sun god Ra's power, equated with the disk of the sun, but it often behaves as an independent goddess, a feminine counterpart to Ra and a violent force that subdues his enemies. This goddess, also known with the theonym Wedjat, can be equated with several particular deities, including Hathor, Sekhmet, Bastet, Raet-Tawy, Menhit, Tefnut, and Mut. The eye goddess acts as mother, sibling, consort, and daughter of the sun god. She is his partner in the creative cycle in which he begets the renewed form of himself that is born at dawn. The eye's violent aspect defends Ra against the agents of disorder that threaten his rule. This dangerous aspect of the eye goddess is often represented by a lioness or by the uraeus, or cobra, a symbol of protection and royal authority. The disastrous fury and rampages of the eye goddess and the efforts of the gods to appease her are a prominent motif in Egyptian mythology.

The Eye of Ra was involved in many areas of ancient Egyptian religion, including in the cults of the many goddesses who are equated with it. Its life-giving power was celebrated in temple rituals, and its dangerous aspect was invoked in the protection of the pharaoh, of sacred places, and of ordinary people and their homes.

Animal mummification was common in ancient Egypt. Animals were an important part of Egyptian culture, not only in their role as food and pets, but also for religious reasons. Many different types of animals were mummified, typically for four main purposes: to allow people's beloved pets to go on to the afterlife, to provide food in the afterlife, to act as offerings to a particular god, and because some were seen as physical manifestations of specific deities that the Egyptians worshipped. Bastet, the cat goddess, is an example of one such deity. In 1888, an Egyptian farmer digging in the sand near Istabl Antar discovered a mass grave of felines, ancient cats that were mummified and buried in pits at great numbers.

Besides Egypt, pre-Columbian bird mummies have been found in the Atacama Desert of Chile, including some next to the oasis town of Pica. These mummies were part of unknown rituals and a long-range trade from the humid tropics across the Altiplano and the Andes to reach Atacama Desert in modern Chile. If bird distribution was as in present, the closest place to Pica from where all bird species could have been captured is Beni Department in northern Bolivia. The mummified birds found in Atacama Desert had their organs removed as well as their tail feathers. Some bird mummies were found wrapped in textiles.

Bubastis (Bohairic Coptic: Ⲡⲟⲩⲃⲁⲥϯ Poubasti; Greek: Βούβαστις Boubastis or Βούβαστος Boubastos), also known in Arabic as Tell-Basta or in Egyptian as Per-Bast, was an ancient Egyptian city. Bubastis is often identified with the biblical Pi-Beseth (Hebrew: פי-בסת py-bst, Ezekiel 30:17). It was the capital of its own nome, located along the River Nile in the Delta region of Lower Egypt, and notable as a center of worship for the feline goddess Bastet, and therefore the principal depository in Egypt of mummies of cats.

Its ruins are located in the suburbs of the modern city of Zagazig.

In Egyptian mythology, Sekhmet (/ˈsɛkˌmɛt/ or Sachmis /ˈsækmɪs/, from Ancient Egyptian: 𓌂𓐍𓐰𓏏𓁐, romanized: Saḫmat; Coptic: Ⲥⲁⲭⲙⲓ, romanized: Sakhmi) is a warrior goddess as well as goddess of medicine.

Sekhmet is also a solar deity, sometimes given the epithet "the eye of Ra". She is often associated with the goddesses Hathor and Bastet.