I first heard it when I was still a child. Cats were worshiped as gods in ancient Egypt. Then I saw something from an old picture that I thought was a little odd. A cat from an old painting was wearing an earring. Imaging that. Piercing a poor cat’s ear just for a stupid earring! I didn’t hear too much more for a while. Then I saw a tv special recently (I forget exactly where, sorry) where they talked about how cats were sometimes killed just so they could be embalmed in ancient Egypt.
You have to understand I have been an animal lover all my life. And I was pleased to hear there was a place in ancient history where cats had a good quality of life (many animals, esp. cats, didn’t have it so good in the past you know). Anyways, I don’t have all the information in yet concerning this topic. So my question is simply this: What kind of quality of life did cats have in ancient Egypt?
Was it good? Was it really bad? Was it atleast tolerable by the standards of the time?
Not necessarily very good. Bear in mind that societies which worship goddesses do not necessarily treat women very well - e.g. widow-burning in Hinduism. Why should cats be any luckier? I have read that in ancient egypt cats were farmed on an industrial scale so they could be killed and mummified in sufficient numbers to meet demand.
Whether ‘farmed’ or hosehold pets, cats live the same kind of lives most everywhere except where there are unusual circumstances. i.e. Good, Bad, and Indifferent.
IANAE (Not an Egyptologist), but the association of cats with the goddess Bastet seems to have been taken pretty seriously by ancient Egyptians. If Herodotus and other ancient historians are to be believed, Egyptian families regarded the passing of a household cat like that of a loved one, and would shave their eyebrows (the humans’, not the cat’s) in mourning (Herodotus, History Book 2). Diodorus Siculus stated that the killing of a cat in Egypt–even if accidental–was punishable by death (Bibliotheca historica, Book I, 83), and claimed to have witnessed a mob in Egypt lynching a Roman after he had accidentally killed a cat.
One of the most interesting records left by the ancient Egyptians themselves is the temple complex at Bubastis, dedicated to the cat-goddess, Bastet. A large population of cats lived at the temple, and were cared for by the priests as sacred animals. I suppose that if you were a temple cat, you’d probably enjoy a pretty pampered life (although wikipedia states that the priests probably culled the kitten population to keep it under control: Cats in Ancient Egypt–I can’t seem to track down the source for this information, but perhaps this is the same source that UDS refers to).
Of course, not all cats in ancient Egypt were temple cats, so quality of feline lifestyle probably ranged quite a bit–considering how cats breed (regardless of any “farming” practices) you’d have to expect there to be a large feral population in any sizable town. As far as I know, household cats weren’t regarded as sacred, per se, but they were apparently treated with more respect than, for instance, dogs in the Near East, which were widely regarded as vermin (though not so in ancient Egypt, where dogs were revered, if not quite as highly as cats).
So there’s probably not a single answer to your question–it depends on which kinds of cats (temple, household, feral) that you’re talking about, and even within those types, it’s probably difficult to gauge how much a particular cat enjoyed his or her lifestyle. Knowing how cats are, even the temple cats probably grumbled and complained if the priests were delayed in serving their sacred milk or whatever they got at Bubastis.
Not to defend the practice of piercing a cat’s ear, but my mother’s cat (a Himalayan) protested so violently about having to take a bath that I think it would have preferred an ear piercing. It would sulk for days afterward, making sure we all felt appropriately guilty for having so terribly mistreated it.
I wonder what distinction was made between domestic cats and wild cats, if one was more sacred than the other. I’ve read that rich and powerful Egyptians not only kept leopards and cheetahs as pets but used them like hunters today use dogs, implying a level of training that I’ve never imagined possible for a cat. (I can see a cat tracking down a rabbit just fine, but not bringing it back.)
Cheetahs are often referred to as quite “dog-like” in temperment and apparently tame readily. The Mughal Padishas kept stables of hundreds of them for coursing game. They would have been prime candidates for true domestication, perhaps displacing coursing breeds of dogs like greyhounds, except for the wee problem of them being incredibly difficult to breed in captivity. It’s only relatively recently that a few zoos have been able to accomplish it.
Leopards on the other hand have a reputation for being extremely difficult to train and tame, possibly the most intractable of the big cats ( at least among those that folks have tried to work with in venues like circuses ).
Cheetahs, however, are an animal that have accepted the challenge of “be as unlike a cat as possible while still technically being a cat.” Also, they have zero genetic diversity, so there’s that.