Egyptian Cats, According to Herodotus

Have you heard about how ancient Egyptians shaved their eyebrows when the house’s cat died? Ever wondered how we know that? Today we’re going to tell you, by taking a quick look at what Herodotus, a Greek who lived in the 5th century BC, had to say on the Egyptians and their cats.

Photo via Adobe Stock.

Herodotus who?

Herodotus was a Greek born in ancient Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum, Turkey) in about 484 BC. He is considered the first historian and has been called “the Father of History”—or “the Father of Lies” by those who think he mostly made up his stories. Those stories are collected in The Histories, a work that includes accounts of important battles as well as descriptions of the places he traveled to and the peoples he encountered. One of those places was Egypt, and Herodotus is one source for information about the Egyptians and their cats.

The behavior of tomcats

Herodotus (II.66) noted that the domestic tomcats in Egypt had a habit of snatching kittens and killing them. Why? “The result is that the females, deprived of their kittens and wanting more (for their maternal instinct is very strong), go off to look for mates again. Herodotus calls the toms’ behavior “ingenious,” but it seems pretty brutal to us.

Saving cats from a burning house

The historian says, “What happens when a house catches fire is most extraordinary.” That’s because the people wouldn’t try to extinguish the fire. Instead, they would concentrate all their efforts on keeping the cats safe. The people would stand in a row around the structure, trying to keep cats from running or jumping past and “hurl[ing] themselves into the flames,” an outcome that “cause[d] the Egyptians deep distress” (II.66). This story doesn’t sound quite right to us. What cat—except a mother cat trying to save her kittens—would deliberately run into a fire?

Herodotus
Photo © Marie-Lan Nguyen /
Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 2.5.

When a cat died

And now we come to the eyebrow-shaving portion of our tale. It was when a cat died naturally that “all the inmates of a house … shave[d] their eyebrows.” But when a house’s dog died, the people shaved their whole bodies, including the head.

Cats were taken to Bubastis after death to be embalmed and buried. Bubastis was the city where the cult of Bastet (goddess of cats, the home, domesticity, fertility, and childbirth) was centered. Dogs, on the other hand, were buried in whichever town they’d lived in. Other animals (Herodotus mentions field mice, hawks, and ibises) were, like cats, buried in specific cities.

  

Perhaps you are wondering what happened when someone killed a cat in Egypt. Well, Herodotus doesn’t tell us (which we find a little odd since he specifically mentioned the eyebrow shaving for cats that died naturally). It was a later historian, Diodorus Siculus (1st century AD), who wrote that anyone who killed a cat, even accidentally, was condemned to death.

We wonder why Herodotus did not mention this. Was he unaware of it? Did he forget to ask what the penalty was for killing a cat? Did he lose his notes on that topic? Did Diodorus get hold of some bad information? All questions we can’t answer.

Sources

“Cats in Ancient Egypt,” Ancient Egypt Online, https://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/cat.html.

“Herodotus,” Wikipedia, 15 May 2018 (last edited), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus.

“Herodotus on Cats in Egypt,” Ancient History Encyclopedia, 18 January 2012, https://www.ancient.eu/article/88/herodotus-on-cats-in-egypt/.

Quotes from Herodotus, The Histories, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt, new edition (Penguin Books, 1996).

Hieroglyphic Cats from Ancient Crete

We stumbled upon an interesting little tidbit earlier this week. At first we didn’t even believe it and thought it must be one of those alternative facts that are so easy to find on the internet. But a little digging brought us to some reputable sources, so we are ready to tell you that the so-called Cretan Hieroglyphic writing system (not related to the more famous Egyptian hieroglyphs) included pictures of cats. This system, from the Mediterranean island of Crete, arose around 2000 BC. It has not been deciphered, so no one is 100% sure what the cat pictures mean—but there is a guess at the end of this post!

Just where is Crete? Follow the red arrow. The island
is roughly southeast of mainland Greece.
Image via Adobe Stock.

The cat pictures

Seal of green jasper with Cretan Hieroglyphic writing
including a stylized cat's head.
Photo by Ingo Pini [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons.

The cat pictures in Cretan Hieroglyphics took different forms. Sometimes a full cat’s body was depicted, sometimes just a stylized cat’s head. In Linear A, the next writing system to come along on Crete, there was still a cat’s head symbol, but it was much more stylized, with something that looks roughly like a head with eyes, pointy ears, and sometimes a mouth. Linear A was used from about 1850 to 1400 BC and overlapped with Cretan Hieroglyphic for many years. Then, in about 1600 BC, came Linear B. Linear B also used a cat’s head, but you sort of have to use your imagination to see the cat. This is because it is basically all ears.

By the way, all three writing systems were named by archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans.

What did the cat figures mean?

Broadly, hieroglyphic writing is any system where the characters are pictures of recognizable things. The individual pictures can represent the thing they depict (a crow symbol could mean “crow”), or they could represent a sound (a crow symbol could mean “caw”—and obviously we are sort of making this up as a general example).

While we don’t know for sure what the cat in Cretan Hieroglyphic writing meant, Pippa Steele of the CREWS Project says we can sort of guess by working backward from Linear B, which has been deciphered. All of these systems are syllabic, so the symbols represent sounds—and the sound that the Linear B cat’s head represents is “ma.” Steele says that the symbol and its sound likely came from Linear A. It’s possible that the Cretan Hieroglyphic cat also stood for “ma” or something very similar.

Detail from a table of Cretan Hieroglyphic signs.
The cat is number 75.
From The Palace of Minos, Sir Arthur Evans.
Digitized by Internet Archive Book Images
[No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Wouldn’t it just make sense that someone would draw a cat to represent something like the sound a cat makes? And let’s not forget that the ancient Egyptian word for “cat” was “miu,” so who knows—maybe the people of Crete called cats “mau” or “maur” or something.

Versions of the Linear A and B cat signs.
Adapted from illustrations in Steele 2017.

Sources

Steele, Pippa. 2017. “Cats in the Aegean Scripts.” CREWS Project website, August 7. https://crewsproject.wordpress.com/2017/08/08/cats-in-the-aegean-scripts/.

“Linear A and Linear B.” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Linear-A#ref106905

Cat News Brief: Look Into Cat Mummy Reveals Something…Smaller Than Expected

Researchers at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen got a small surprise when they used a CAT scan to take a peek at what was inside an ancient Egyptian cat mummy in their collection. Instead of a full-grown cat, what was inside the mummy’s wrappings was actually just a kitten. Its neck had been broken. While we may think of the Egyptians mummifying their dear, departed pets, there also existed an industry that bred cats specifically to be mummified and sold to worshipers as temple offerings, possibly to Bastet. In this case, the seller might have made more money from a large cat than a kitten, so he likely bulked up the mummy to charge a higher price.

However, Jaromir Malek^* has written that, judging from the evidence of other cat mummies, it wasn’t unusual for young cats to be killed and mummified, most likely for sale. So it isn’t clear to us that the seller was cheating the buyer in this case (though he may well have been).

*The Cat in Ancient Egpyt. Revised edition. London: British Museum Press, 2006.

The Egyptian Mau: Pharaoh of the Living Room

A "smoke" Egyptian Mau shows off the breed's athleticism--and spots.
Photo by Borcard Serge [CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0],
via Wikimedia Commons.

 The Egyptian Mau is a handsome cat with a lot of history, and you know we’re all about the history here. Egyptian marshes, world wars, a Russian princess, a Syrian Embassy, and an Indian zookeeper all figure into the lore of this breed, which we are pretty sure could be the subject of a blockbuster movie. But first, just what is an Egyptian Mau?

Physical characteristics of the Egyptian Mau

The Mau is one of only two naturally spotted breeds of domestic cat (the other is the Bahraini Dilmun Cat; I know—I’d never heard of this cat either, but as the name implies, they’re from Bahrain). The Mau's randomly spotted coat is quite handsome and hard to look away from, as are their “gooseberry green” eyes. They have distinctive facial markings that include an “M” across the brow and “mascara” lines on the cheeks. One story says that Egyptian women copied the cats’ pattern when applying their eye makeup. Their coat color can be silver, bronze, or smoke.

A bronze Egyptian Mau. You can clearly see the
"M" on the forehead and the "mascara" lines
on the cheek.
Photo by liz west,
[CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons.

These cats are medium sized and are known to be intelligent, athletic, and agile. They are loyal to their humans and generally enjoy interacting with them, though they can seem aloof, especially with those they don’t know. Egyptian Maus love to play with toys. They have even been known to retrieve… Oh, and sometimes they wag their tails. Check out the video below to hear some sounds from a Mau:

From Egypt to New York, by way of Rome

Can you spot the spotted cat in this fresco?

Maybe ancient Egyptians used cats as retrievers.

Fresco from the Tomb of Nebamun, Theban necropolis.

After 1450 BC.

Now in the British Museum.

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Mau meant “cat” or “sun” in ancient Egypt, and spotted cats bearing a striking resemblance to today’s cat appear in Egyptian art going all the way back to about 1900 BC. Sometimes they appear in domestic scenes, where they are often shown with a woman, and in a wall painting from Thebes, the cats are shown with human hunters in the marshes, where they seem to be retrieving birds. Spotted cats are also seen in Greek and Roman art, notably in the Pompeii mosaic seen below. Nice-looking cat!

Jumping ahead several hundred years… The breed was known in continental Europe in the early 20th century, but their numbers declined as a result of the two world wars, and they were in danger of being lost completely by the end of World War II.

Surely you can find him now.
Detail from the marsh fresco.
Public Domain, via
Wikimedia Commons

Check out the spotted cat in this Roman mosaic
from the House of the Faun in Pompeii.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Enter the Russian princess. She was actually an exiled princess named Natalie Troubetsky. She lived in Rome in the early 1950s and learned of the Egyptian Mau. The cat captivated her, and she acquired two of them, a black male and silver female. Stories vary, with some saying the princess first encountered the Mau while she was in Egypt, and she imported two of them to Italy. Another story says that a little boy gave her a kitten in a box, and this kitten spurred her interest in the breed. At any rate, the princess had a female named Lulu and a male named Gregorio. She later imported another male, Geppa, from Egypt by way of the Syrian Embassy (or so the story goes).

The princess bred her cats, and when she immigrated to the United States in 1956, she brought along three cats that had resulted from this breeding. She went to New York City, where she started the cattery called Fatima. Egyptian Maus from the princess’s cats are called “traditionals.”

A new line, a bright future

There is a problem with breeds that are based on only a few individuals: inbreeding eventually weakens the breed’s overall health. The modern Egyptian Mau in the United States started with just those three cats Princess Troubetsky imported, and new blood was needed to strengthen and expand the breed.

Enter the Indian zookeeper…

The so-called “Indian Line” began with two Maus that were born in Egypt and then adopted by a zookeeper in India. They were imported to the United States in 1980 by the breeder Jean Mill. These cats added some diversity to the breed’s gene pool. With careful breeding, Egyptian Maus have become a healthy breed.

Today, Egyptian Maus create a stir in the show ring and delight humans with their playful, loyal nature. They remain rare, and are all the more special for that.

Sources

“The Egyptian Mau.” (2002). Cat Fanciers Almanac. http://cfa.org/Breeds/BreedsCJ/EgyptianMau/EgyptianMauArticle.aspx

“Egyptian Mau.” (n.d.). Cat Fanciers Association. http://cfa.org/Breeds/BreedsCJ/EgyptianMau.aspx

Pickeral, Tamsin. (2013). “The Egyptian Mau.” In The Elegance of the Cat: An Illustrated History. Hauppage, NY: Barron’s Educational.

 Wydro, Bonnie, and Melanie Morgan. (1999). “The Egyptian Mau.” 1999 CFA Yearbook. http://cfa.org/Breeds/BreedsCJ/EgyptianMau/1999EgyptianMauArticlepage1.aspx

A silver Egyptian Mau kitten. Such lovely coloring!
Photo by Svetlana Valiiskaya, via Adobe Stock.

The Cat Bastet Debates the Jackal

Our subject today is an Egyptian fable from the Christian era (that’s from 30 BC to AD 640, give or take). The fable was recorded on papyrus that has been badly damaged, so unfortunately we don’t have the whole story. What we do have tells the story of a debate between a cat and a jackal. It goes like this:

There once was a giant cat, a representative of the Egyptian goddess Bastet. There once was a small jackal. One day these two met and began to talk about philosophy (as you do).

The cat’s argument

The cat said, “The gods are in charge of everything, and they will always reward good and punish evil. If anyone harms even a tiny lamb, that person will meet with retribution—eventually. Even when the sky is dark with clouds, the sun is always shining and will always break through, scattering the clouds and bringing light and joy—eventually.”

The jackal’s argument

“Boy, what a load of hooey!” the jackal retorted. [These were possibly not his exact words, but you get the idea.] He went on, “In this world, the strong will always triumph over the weak. Just look at how the lizard eats the insect, the bat eats the lizard, the snake eats the bat, and the hawk eats the snake. As for evil, your measly little prayers have no power over an evil man.” [Again, possibly not his exact words.]

The cat’s passion

The two argued back and forth, with the jackal offering reasoned arguments while the cat said some more stuff about good always winning—eventually.

In fact, the cat was so ineffectual in her arguments that sometimes she could do nothing but “fall into a passion”—that’s what the translated papyrus said. We imagine this would look something like an antiwar protester beating someone over the head with his peace sign. Only with claws. The little jackal naturally had a certain amount of respect for the cat’s claws.

The end

Unfortunately, that’s all that can be gotten from the damaged papyrus. Who won the debate? Perhaps we’ll never know, though it seems the writer may have been on the jackal’s side.

Sources

Katharine M. Rogers, The Cat and the Human Imagination: Feline Images from Bast to Garfield (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 10.

A. Weidemann, Popular Literature in Ancient Egpyt, transl. by J. Hutchison (London: David Nutt, 1902), 14–16.

Stock images of cat and jackal via Abode Stock.

What Ancient Egyptians Meant When They Said “Cat”

Miss Cuddlywumps muses on miu

Miu: Swamp cat (Felis chaus).

When it came to naming different kinds of cats, ancient Egyptians were not very specific. In hieroglyphic writing, all cats are called miu, or mii, or miit for a female. Whether it was an African wild cat, a swamp cat, or a domestic cat, it was a miu. This is sort of like calling domestic cats, lions, and jaguars “meow” in English.

 

We at first thought this was a little bit lazy of the Egyptians. Surely they could think of unique terms for what were obviously different species? But then we realized that the Egyptians didn’t categorize animals according to the modern genus, species, subspecies system.

To them, the heavily built wild creature that had long, tufted ears and liked swampy areas (swamp cat) was a cat; the smaller wild creature with the long, dark-ringed tail (African wild cat) was a cat; the friendly creature that had quick, bright eyes, a long tail, and that killed rodents and scorpions in their homes was a cat. Maybe on some level the Egyptians distinguished between them, but not in their hieroglyphs.

Miu: African wild cat (Felis silvestris lybica).

And that brings me to names for cats. I am talking now about the individual kitty cats that may have been pets in people’s homes.

Did ancient Egyptians name their domesticated cats anything other than miu or miit? Was there some equivalent of Fluffy or Princess or Fang and we just don’t know it because it was either never written down or that writing has not survived? Or was the cat-human relationship more impersonal in those times (in, say, the second millennium BC), so that even domesticated cats did not need their own names?

I’m sorry to have raised more questions than I answered, but sometimes the past is a puzzle!

For more on miu, see "How to Write 'Cat' in Egyptian Hieroglyphs."

Miu: Domestic cat (Felis catus).

Source

Malek, Jaromir. The Cat in Ancient Egpyt. Rev ed. London: British Museum Press, 2006.

Photo credits
Swamp cat photo by Petra Karstedt / Wilfried Berns [CC BY-SA 2.0 de], via Wikimedia Commons.
African wild cat Illustration by Donovan Reginald Rosevear in The Carnivores of West Africa (1974). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Domestic cat photo by Photo by Lisafern [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.