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Bastet

"You people talk about the living and the dead as if they were two mutually exclusive categories. As if you cannot have a river that is also a road or a song that is also a color." Nail Gaiman, “American Gods”.

How a daughter of Ra was grown?

Bastet has been known as a deity since the Second Dynasty of Egypt and was the representative god of Lower Egypt. Each day, they would fly across the sky with their father, the god Ra. She would be the guardian of his boat when it was used to guide the sun across the sky. At night, she would turn into a cat and protect Ra from his worst enemy, the serpent Apep.

As a sign of her protective role, she was called the Lord of the East, the Goddess of the Rising Sun, the Sacred and All-Seeing Eye. Bastet was also known as the Goddess of the Moon. She was supposed to be both the eyes of the Moon and the eyes of Ra.  Many historians associate the Cat Goddess with the deity Sekhmet, the goddess with the lion's body, and in early Egypt, these two goddesses were considered different forms of the same deity.

Over time, as Bastet became more of a family companion, she lost all traces of her lion form and was regularly depicted as a house cat or a woman with the head of a cat, often holding a sistrum. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the Goddess of home is frequently depicted in art with a brood of kittens at her feet, but her most popular depiction is as a seated cat looking forward.

One enormous mansion for the children of Ra

Ancient Egyptian Bastet's Temple, located in Bubastis (now Tel Basta), was one of Egypt's most famous and worshipped shrines. The temple of Bastet was the site of countless rituals, prayers and ceremonies dedicated to this goddess with a carved statue close to the center of the temple. It was customary to go to the house of the Goddess of fertility to be blessed with birth and home care.

The river procession of the handmade ritual statues in their bark shrines is a well-known element of ancient Egyptian religious festivals. It is easy to imagine the rowing of Bastet’s sacred bark on the Isheru of her temple at Bubastis as the spiritual culmination of the festival. Surely, the appearance of the triumphant Goddess of fertility would be the summit of a celebration passionately attended by the thousands of pilgrims who journeyed to her city every year.

Altar sculpture was decorated with colored stones, and offerings were sometimes piled outside the temple boundaries. Traditionally, a small handmade Bastet statue was placed in every home of a child of the Nile, becoming the protector of women and newborns.

Egyptian heritage for your home

Egyptian culture has also been used as a decorative object and symbol for the past 150 years. Mythological creatures and gods of all pantheons, especially Egyptian gods, were prioritized. That’s why the figurine of the cat-woman Egyptian Goddess became so popular. The size of the handmade wooden statue is as follows:

●      height: 9" / 23 cm;

●      width: 3.5" / 9.5 cm;

●      depth: 1.57" / 4cm.

Like all cats, the statue does not like water. Do not soak it in water; wipe it with a dry cloth. Thanks to the skillful carving, you can hear Bastet's whispered words as you pass the Bastet statue: “I got eyes wherever my folk walk. You take care now, hon...”