The Cat in Hieroglyphs: Miw and Its Meaning
The Egyptian word for cat was written with a seated feline and pronounced roughly 'miw' — which is, quite plainly, the sound the animal makes.
Onomatopoeia, 4,000 years old
Miw (or miit for a female cat) is the earliest recorded case of a species named after its own voice.
Where it appears
In tomb paintings cats sit beneath chairs, hunt in marshes with their owners, and in the Book of the Dead a great cat kills the serpent Apep beneath the sacred persea tree.
The serpent-slaying cat
That image — cat versus serpent, order versus chaos — is the oldest ancestor of every cat-hero story since, including the one you can play here.
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.
Keep Reading
You've read the codex. Now live it.
▶ PLAY AS THE BLACK CAT — BAST: NINE LIVESFree in your browser · 7 worlds · 63 levels · no install