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Classic Myth: Bastet

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Another from :iconpernastudios: Classic Mythology set!

Even though Bastet is known as the cat-headed goddess, I chose to depict her as a woman holding a cat. Partly because I like drawing cats and women, but also because I think the animal heads of the Egyptian pantheon are probably symbolic. That is, the gods are portrayed as having the heads of animals, to demonstrate that they have the attributes of those animals, not necessarily because their worshippers actually thought they looked that way. Sort of like how, in Byzantine iconography, God the Father is sometimes portrayed as a man with a beard. It's a representation of an idea, not meant to be taken literally.

/art critic

Anyway, Bastet. She's cool. :D

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Wiki time! [link]

Originally she was viewed as the protector goddess of Lower Egypt. As protector, she was seen as defender of the pharaoh, and consequently of the later chief male deity, Ra, who was also a solar deity, gaining her the titles Lady of Flame and Eye of Ra.

Her role in the pantheon became diminished as Sekhmet, a similar lioness war deity, became more dominant in the unified culture of Lower and Upper Egypt.

In the first millennium BC, when domesticated cats were popularly kept as pets, Bastet began to be represented as a woman with the head of a cat and ultimately emerged as the Egyptian cat-goddess par excellence. In the Middle Kingdom, the domestic cat appeared as Bastet’s sacred animal and after the New Kingdom she was depicted as a woman with the head of a cat or a lioness, carrying a sacred rattle and a box or basket.
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