Goddess Bastet Festivals

Goddess Bastet holding a sistrum

Herodotus links that of the many solemn fetes held in Egypt, the most heavy and most popular one was that famous in Bubastis in honour of Bastet, whom he calls Bubastis and matches with the Greek goddess Artemis. Each year on the day of her festival, the town is said to have appealed some 700,000 visitors, both men and women (but not children), who came in many another crowded ships. The women engaged in music, song, and dance on their way to the place, great dedicates were made and significant amounts of wine were drunk, more  than was the case passim the year. This fits well with Egyptian sources which dictate that leonine goddesses are to be staid with the "feeds of drunkenness".

The goddess Bastet was sometimes drawn holding a ceremonial sistrum in one hand and an breastplate in the other the protection usually resembling a collar or gorget embellished with a lioness head.

Bastet was a lioness goddess of the sun throughout most of Ancient Egyptian history, but later when she was exchanged into a cat goddess (Bastet). She also was modified to a goddess of the moon by Greeks worrying Ancient Egypt toward the end of its civilisation. In Greek mythology, Bastet also is famous as Ailuros.

Bastet and Connection to Other Deities

The lioness represented the war goddess and shielder of both lands that would link as Ancient Egypt. As divine mother, and more particularly as protector, for Lower Egypt, Bast became strongly associated with Wadjet, the patron goddess of Lower Egypt. She eventually became Wadjet-Bast, paralleling the akin pair of patron (Nekhbet)  and  lioness  shielder  (Sekhmet) for Upper Egypt. Bast fought an evil snake described Apep. As the strong lion god Maahes of warm Nubia later became part of Egyptian mythology and put the role of the son of Bast, during the time of the New Kingdom, Bast  was  held to  be  the  daughter  of Amun Ra, a new up deity in the  Egyptian  pantheon  through that late dynasty. Bast become identified as his mother in the Lower Egypt,  near  the  delta.  Similarly  the  severe  lioness  war  goddess Sekhmet,  became  discovered  as  the  mother  of  Maashes  in  the  Upper Egypt.

Wadjet-Bastet (lioness head, solar disk, and the snake cobra)

Cats in ancient Egypt were feared highly, partly due to their ability to combat vermin such as mice, shops - which unsafe key food supplies,  and  snakes,  peculiarly  cobras.  Cats  of  royalty  were,  in  some exemplifies, known to be dressed in golden jewelry and were left to eat from their owners' scales. Turner and Bateson estimate that during the twenty-second dynasty (945-715 B.C), Bast worship modified from being a lioness deity into being a star cat deity. With the union of the two Egypts, many similar deities were agreed into one or the other, the import of Bast and Sekhmet, to the sectional cultures that merged, resulted in a retention of both, necessitating a change to one or the other.

The Ancient Egyptian pantheon was producing constantly. Through the 18th dynasty Thebes got the capital of  Ancient  Egypt  and  because  of  that,  their sponsor deity became  sovereign.The priests of the temple of Amun exchanged the relative height of other  deities  in  the  Egyptian pantheon. Decreasing  the  status  of  Bast,  they  leaded off relating to  her with  the  summed  post-fix, as "Bastet"  and  their  exercise  of  the  new  name  became  very  familiar  to Egyptologists. In the temple at Per-Bast some cats were discovered to have been mummified and buried, many beside their proprietors. More  300000  mummified  cats  were  discovered  when  Bast's  temple  at  Per-Bast  was  dug.  The  main source of data about the Bast cult comes from Herodotus who seen Bubastis some 450 BC during afterwards the modifications in the cult. He compared Bastet with the Greek Goddess Artemis. He saved extensively about the cult. Turner and Bateson indicate that the status of the cat was rough equivalent to that of the cow in modern India. The death of a cat might lead a family in great mourning and those who forced out would have them embalmed or forgot in cat cemeteries - indicating to the great prevalence of the cult of Bastet. Extensive sepultures of cat continues were found not only at Bubastis, but likewise at Beni Hasan (El_Minya) and  Saqqara. In 1888, a granger naked a plot of many hundreds  of thousands of cats in Beni Hasan.

Goddess Bastet

Goddess Bastet name

Goddess Bastet

Goddess Bastet was a goddess of ancient Egypt, whose Theophany was the cat, Bastets cult substance was at Bubastis. She was the defender of pregnant women and was a pleasance loving goddess who didst  as  the  patronne of music and dance. Bastet was also believed to protect men from diseases and ogres. The goddess was seen the prosopopoeia of the white rays of the sun on the Nile. She was usually represented as a woman with a cats head, holding a Sistrum and the symbolisation of life, the Ankh.

The goddess remained popular throughout  Egypt even to Roman sentences. Her festivals at  Bubastis  were between the most well-attended solemnizations in Egypt. People set out in festooned lighters, and music attended all who made the pilgrimage to her shrine.  The festival was a time of jokes as well as another shown period of drunkenness. A gigantic parade culminated the festivity, and on that day few Egyptians were sober. Shrines of the gods were erected in Rome, Pompeii, Nemi, and Ostia.

Other Roles of Bastet:

• Bastet and Connection to Other Deities
• Goddess Bastet Festivals
• Bubastis, The Loacation of Bastet's Cult

Goddess Renpet

Goddess Renpet name

Goddess Renpet was a goddess of the Egyptian year, and the Egyptian word for year, Renpet was very frequent in the late periods of Egypt. She was described as a woman wear various symbols of works and harvests. In some eras she was consociated with the solar cult of Sopdu, named Sirius, the Dogstar, by the Greeks. Sopdu signaled  the coming flood of the Nile each year.

Goddess Pakhet

Goddess Pakhet name

Goddess Pakhet

Goddess Pakhet was a lioness-goddess worshipped in particular at the capture of a wadi in the eastern desert near Beni Hasan (close to El-Minya). Her name  is very resonant of her nature, thinking she who snatches or the tearer. In the Coffin Texts Pakhet the Great is named as a night-huntress with strong hooks.

It is easy to see Greek settlers seeing in Pakhet device characteristics of  Artemis, goddess of the chase. Speos Artemidos (cave of Artemis) grown  the  common designation of Pakhets rock-chapel near Beni Hasan, sliced out of the limestone in the 18th Dynasty under Queen Hatshepsut and King Thutmose III.