In 1952, in the Natural History Museum in London, a chest full of objects that came from Egypt, was discovered. Inside there were 192 mummified cats from the IV to the II century BC, seven mongusts, three dogs and a fox. They had been found in the excavations in Giza and had been given to the museum in 1907 by Flinders Petrie, unfortunately they didn’t have any information about their exact origin. It was a very important discovery because it enlightened the role and the authority that the cat had in the Egyptian society.
In the IV century BC the cats were appreciated probably because they were capable hunters of rodents that infested the deposits of seeds. Later they entered the religious cult.
Bubasti, on the delta of the Nile, was the most important center for the goddess bastet’s cult, represented both as a cat, as by a woman with the head of a cat.
In the second half of the IXI century, the catacombs in Bubasti gave back hundreds of thousands of mummified cats.
Zoological researches revealed that of the 191 mummies, three were bigger than the others, they were the remains of the cat of the jungle (Felis chans), the other 189 were similar to the common wild African cat or Egyptian cat of the sands (Felis libica).
A species between the African wild cat and the domestic cat of today.
The study on the mummies, has also changed some beliefs on the role the cat had in the Egyptian society.