Who is Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess?

Bastet, also called Bast, was the cat goddess of ancient Egypt. She began as a fierce lioness, a daughter of the sun god Ra, and in time became the gentler goddess shown as a cat or as a woman with a cat’s head. She protected the home, mothers and children. Her city was Bubastis in the Nile Delta, where great crowds came to her festival and many thousands of cats were buried in her honour.

Who she was in Egypt: Bubastis, in Egyptian Per-Bastet, the house of Bastet, lay in the eastern Delta. The Greek historian Herodotus called her festival there the chief festival of Egypt: people came by boat, singing, clapping and playing music, and he was told that 700,000 gathered, not counting children. She guarded the king, and was one of the goddesses called the Eye of Ra.
Her signs and animals: The cat was her animal, but the oldest images show her as a lioness. Later she is most often a cat, or a woman with a cat’s head. Bronze figures show her holding a sistrum, a sacred rattle, sometimes with kittens at her feet. Worshippers gave such bronzes to her temples, along with cats that had been mummified and wrapped in linen.
How Gerald Massey read her in 1907: Massey calls her Pasht, and also Bast. He does not keep her apart from the lioness Sekhmet, whom he spells Sekhet: he writes of “Sekhet-Bast” and of “Sekhet, otherwise Pasht”. In his reading the cat, the seer by night, made her a goddess of the moon and a form of the Great Mother. He argues that the cat mummies of Bubastis were the totems of a great cat clan, honoured as signs of the mother and the moon, not worshipped for their own sake.
What scholars say now: The name Pasht is no longer used: she is Bastet, or Bast. His Sekhet-Bast has some ground, since Egyptians came to see the two goddesses as the gentle and the fierce sides of one power, but each had her own main city of worship, Bastet at Bubastis and Sekhmet at Memphis. Egyptian texts make Bastet a daughter and Eye of the sun god; her link with the moon came only late in Egypt’s history. Scholars agree that the cats were mummified for the goddess’s sake, but as offerings, not clan totems: studies show that many were cats under a year old, bred at temples and sold to worshippers to give to her.
Where you meet her today: The ruins of Bubastis lie at Tell Basta, near Zagazig. In the British Museum, the Gayer-Anderson cat shows the goddess as a bronze cat wearing gold earrings and a nose ring, and bronze cats made as offerings to her are in collections everywhere.
In Massey’s words: “Millions of cats were made into mummies and sacredly preserved around the city of Bubastes, but not with the notion of a bodily resurrection.” (Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (1907), Book IV, p. 215)
In the app: Trainer › Symbol Trainer › Cat. In the app, the Symbol Trainer explains the cat of Bastet and the Great Cat of Ra, and the Word Trainer sets Massey’s Pasht beside Bastet.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

Next questions

Get it on Google Play