Property of Sekhmet

In March last year I began a long-term project of taking notes from all the photocopies and downloads I'd gathered on the goddess Bast or Bastet. I think I've finally finished. :)

Here, as threatened, is my brief (and very much not comprehensive!) summary:

Bastet's name becomes common in the Second and Third Dynasties, but isn't attested before then. She was the protectress of royalty in the late Old Kingdom.

The Libyan pharaohs of the 22nd Dynasty adopted Bastet as their tutelary deity and rebuilt her temple at Bubastis. It's not until then that the familiar cat goddess appears. Until then, Bastet is a lioness, with similar iconography to Sekhmet (and it can be difficult to tell them and other lioness goddesses apart). Bastet was called "Eye of Re" and "Eye of Atum", the daughter of Atum-Re, or his consort (and, by him, the mother of Mahes or of Horhekenu.) Like Sekhmet, she sent disease in the form of "the slaughterers of Bastet". However, in Dynasties 12 and 18, Bastet could be paired with Sekhmet as the gentler of the two, for example, in descriptions of the pharaoh's beneficence vs his righteous anger; but his ferocity in battle could also be compared with Bastet's.

Cats became house pets during the Middle Kingdom; perhaps this is what changed the cat's image from wild to docile. Votive statues of Bastet are always in cat or cat-headed form, not lioness. The cat version of the goddess is often accompanied by her aegis, a sistrum, and a basket possibly containing kittens. During the 22nd Dynasty, cat necropolises appear, in which mummified cats are left in large numbers as votive offerings, including cats killed for the purpose.

Good grief, when you write it down like that, it doesn't look like anything! And yet, a little over a year ago, I didn't know any of it.

More stuff:

• Another skerrick: In CT 1186, Heqata addresses a rerek-snake called "traveller of Shu" and "envoy of Bastet". (p 139)


• You don't want to miss the Henadology entry for Bast!


• The 30th Dynasty pharaoh Nekhthorheb II did a lot of building work at Bastet's temple in Bubastis, including adding two granite shrines, one of which has been reconstructed, and housed "a processional image of Bastet". The shrine has a tw3-p.t scene showing pharaoh holding up the sky. Daniel Rosenow remarks: "Each primary deity of a temple is interpreted as the creator god, he or she has to support heaven, as every king has to hold up the heaven of the temple." The goddess, seated, holding a lotus sceptre, lion-headed but with no headdress, identifies herself as "Bastet, lady of the shrine and eye of Horus".


• Also found at Tell Basta: a depiction of the "cult statues" of Shesemtet and Wadjet, probably intended to be carried in barques. Both goddesses are depicted standing with empty hands and lioness heads with no headdress.


• Bastet's son Mahes (aka Mihos, Miysis, etc) had a little temple of his own next to his mum's big temple at Bubastis - a rectangular structure to the north of the main temple, with "red-granite palm and papyrus bundle columns". There's nothing left now but the foundations. Like the later Ptolemaic mammisis, the temple linked the child-god's birth to that of the king, in this case Osorkon II.


• Some snippets found in Traversing Eternity. From the Ceremony of Glorifying Osiris in the God's Domain, Graeco-Roman ritual/funerary text: "Hathor will guard you in Hetepet, and Bastet will protect you in Bubastis. She will instil fear of you before all. She will magnify your strength against your foes." (Maybe it's just the translation, but this suggests the "she" is both Hathor and Bastet.) Similarly, in Papyrus Harkness: "Neith the triumphant, Bastet, and Sekhmet will overthrow your enemy."


• Taming the Beast: The Evolution of Bastet from the Old Kingdom to the Ptolemaic Period (paper)


• "The only other dedication to Artemis from Alexandria, or its neighbourhood, is from Canopus. It is to Artemis Soteira [Artemis the Saviour], and is of the early Ptolemaic period. As an example of a potential syncretism we may note that Bast or Bubastis, whom the Greeks early equated with Artemis, bears the cult-title Soteira in a dedication of the reign of Euergetes II, made by a family of Greeks. The dedication may be from Bubastis, and the Greek family resident there has in that case accepted the identity of the local goddess with Artemis." (Fraser, P.M., Ptolemaic Alexandria, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1972)
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• An unpublished Early Dynastic inscription of the Goddess Bastet (from 2003. Probably been published by now!)