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Bastet

Bastet (Art by Alexandra Khitrova - Cruzine)

Bastet, also known as Bast, was an ancient Egyptian goddess of the home, domesticity, women's secrets, cats, fertility, and childbirth. She protected the home from evil spirits and disease, especially diseases associated with women and children.

Description[]

Bastet was originally a lioness warrior goddess of the sun throughout most of Ancient Egyptian history, but later she was changed into the cat goddess which is familiar today. Greeks occupying Ancient Egypt toward the end of its civilization changed her into a goddess of the moon. Along with the other lioness goddesses, she would occasionally be depicted as the embodiment of the Eye of Ra.

She is associated with both Mau, the divine cat who is an aspect of Ra, and with Mafdet, goddess of justice and the first feline deity in Egyptian history. Both Bastet and Sekhmet took their early forms as feline defenders of the innocent, avengers of the wronged, from Mafdet. This association was carried on in depictions of Bastet's son Maahes, protector of the innocent, who is shown as a lion-headed man carrying a long knife or as a lion.

Overview[]

In Bastet's association with Mau, she is sometimes seen destroying the enemy of Ra, Apophis, by slicing off his head with a knife in her paw; an image Mau is best known by. In time, as Bastet became more of a familial companion, she lost all trace of her leonine form and was regularly depicted as a house cat or a woman with the head of a cat often holding a sistrum. She is sometimes rendered in art with a litter of kittens at her feet but her most popular depiction is of a sitting cat gazing ahead.

Even though she lost her leonine form, she was still venerated as a warrior goddess and was a deity most feared as two of her titles demonstrate: The Lady of Dread and The Lady of Slaughter. She was especially feared by ancient Egyptian sorcerers who defied the fate of the dead, especially undead, who killed the pharaoh. She was also considered a patron deity for Werecats, particularly those like the Sibuor and the Nzahu who were revered by early civilizations as guardians and protectors. This also ties into Bastet's role as the goddess of protection against contagious diseases and evil spirits. Much like how the Khan draw their more destructively violent tendencies from Kali, an alternate form of Durga, the Sibuor perform a similar technique by channelling the warrior aspect of Bastet, in this case Sekhmet. As protector of Lower Egypt, she was seen as defender of the pharaoh, and consequently of the later chief male deity, Ra.

Her name was associated with the lavish jars in which Egyptians stored their ointment used as perfume. Bastet thus gradually became regarded as the goddess of perfumes, earning the title of perfumed protector. In connection with this, when Anubis became the god of embalming, Bastet came to be regarded as his wife for a short period of time.

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