Bubastis: Inside Egypt's Wildest Festival
Herodotus called the annual festival at Bubastis the greatest in Egypt. What he described sounds less like a solemn rite and more like a floating carnival.
The river procession
Worshippers traveled by barge, playing flutes and clapping, calling out to people on the banks as they passed.
The scale
Ancient accounts put attendance in the hundreds of thousands and note that more wine was consumed during the festival than in the rest of the year combined.
What was actually being honored
Joy itself, as a form of devotion — Bastet's domain included music, dance, and pleasure, and the festival was the offering.
In the game
BAST: Nine Lives takes this history literally: you play the black cat of the temple, racing three Heralds to the anchor-shrines while the serpent Apep — the same chaos-serpent the great cat kills in the Book of the Dead — strains at his chains beneath the sand.
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