Egyptian Cat Gods and Goddesses: The Complete List
Egypt's feline deities range from the gentle-fierce Bastet to the lioness of plague and healing, Sekhmet. Here is who's who, and what each one actually governed.
Bastet
Home, joy, music, fertility, protection. Cat-headed, sistrum in hand, fiercely maternal.
Sekhmet
Lioness of war, plague, and healing — the sun's destructive heat given a body. Ra sent her to punish humanity and had to trick her with beer dyed red to stop the slaughter.
Mafdet
One of the oldest, a cat or mongoose deity who executed criminals and killed venomous creatures — justice with claws.
Pakhet
'She Who Scratches,' a desert lioness goddess of the night hunt, worshipped at the rock-cut temple the Greeks called Speos Artemidos.
Mut and Tefnut
Both took lioness form; Mut as a mother goddess of Thebes, Tefnut as the goddess of moisture and, in one myth, a lioness who fled to Nubia and had to be coaxed home.
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.
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