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Goddess Myths
Goddess Quiz
Egyptian
Goddess Bast (Bastet)
~Temple of the Cat Goddess Discovered ~
Even a queen needs a goddess she can
call on! Even Queen
Berenike (also known
as Berenice), who reigned in Egypt during
the third century B.C.E. as a co-regent with her
husband, the Ptolemy III.
Was it to add a little spice to her sex
life? (She had four children.) Or to protect her household? (Definitely
needed, one of her sons eventually killed her . . . presumably so he could
ascend to the Dowager Queen's throne.)
No one knows for sure, but the presence
of Bast's temple near the center of her government seems to indicate that
she greatly revered the goddess.
The original Egyptian goddess
Bastet was personified as a lion who
fiercely protected the king during
battle. Originally an Egyptian sun
goddess, Bast's followers were
centered in Bubastis. More than 300,000
mummified cats were discovered inside her temple there.
It was thought that the worship of the
goddess Bast declined after the Greek rulers of the Ptolemaic Dynasty took
over the rulership of Egypt from the Pharoahs.
Not true, apparently! They just changed
her appearance from a lion to that of a domestic cat and, associating her
with the Greek goddess Artemis, began worshipping her as a lunar goddess
instead.
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The
Goddess Bast
~Egyptian Cat Goddess~
A team of archaeologists recently unearthed a temple
dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Bast (also known as Bastet) near
Alexandria, finding a large collection of pots and statues of the
Egyptian gods as well.
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| The find,
says the Supreme Council of Antiquities, suggests that the goddess
Bast (Bastet) continued to be actively worshipped much later than
originally thought. Read about the discovery
of the temple of the
Goddess Bast |
Read the Myths of the
Goddess Bast
Return to
Goddess Gift
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