Living in a Middle-European city the winters are grey, rainy and so pleasant. As I child I was longing for sunshine, so I imagined myself being in Egyipt. On the land of the secrets, golden sand, camels, mummies...and where people worship cats as Gods. That can be a great place! So I was really excited when I first visited the Fine Arts Museum in Budapest, not just because of the mummies, but I was looking forward to see these feline-gods.
The Egyptian Exhibition (it’s a constant exhibition) is really stunning: you feel like you are in the sunshine, the golden rays of the Egyptian sun warms your soul. I saw my first mummies (not just people, but cat mummies, too – and an owl!) and I fell in love with Egypt. A long time has passed since then and I visited the exhibition several times. The first artefact I always search for is the mini statuette of the Goddess Bastet. Because she is a cat, because she is a goddess and because she is all what people think of cats and gods. Explore my favourite statue with me!
According to the Egyptians, the gods - as superhuman and omnipotent in their realm beings - can show both destructive and life-giving faces to mortals. Wild game and playfulness in the bloodthirsty, unbridled lion self of the goddess Sahmet / Tefnut on the one hand and the cat on the other Bastet, which shows its gentle and smooth nature, has a beneficial, fertile effect. Both aspects of the goddess are closely related to the Sun Goddess. According to the Sun-Eye myth, she is the daughter of God he embodies the eyes of his father, once in his wrath he wandered far to the South in the form of a lion or wildcat.
The Sun God sent the baboon-shaped god Thot for him, who brought me back five in tame - in the form of a cat. The statue uses elegantly restrained devices to display the most typical features of the animal, creating a seated cat ideal image. A scarab-shaped (dawn form of the Sun God) engraved on the head of the statue It refers to its relationship with the Sun God. The eyes are inlaid with gold, only of the two pupils made of rhinestones, only one remained.
The main place of worship of the goddess Bastet was the city of Bubastis. Herodotus gives a vivid account of the fertility festival taking place there. Statues, statuettes of the goddess were put in the temple as a votive gift offered to the goddess.
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