Name
Some hold that the name of Bast (Ubasti, Pasht, and Gr: Bastet, Bubastis) means 'She of the Bast', bast meaning 'ointment jar'. This is also the form of the hieroglyph used to write her name, though it is uncertain what it in fact implied. Others is of the opinion that the name of Bast means 'Devouring Lady', from bas = devour and with a feminine 't' added. Thus it would be superfluous to add yet another feminine form to her name and write it as 'Bastet'.
She did not become associated with the cat until ca 1000 BC, until then she was shown with a lion's head or a desert sand-cat headed goddess. Sometimes she was regarded as the mother of the savage lion-god Maahes (Gr: Miysis), the 'lord of slaughter'.
Only after or towards the end of the New Kingdom was she depicted with a cat's head, and a more friendly appearance developed.
Earliest Appearance
The first signs are from Dyn II. She appears on stone vessels of Hetepsekhemwy and Nebra (c 2890 b.c.) from the steppyramid complex at Saqqara. On these vessels Bast is seen standing before the kingīs cartouche. In the Pyramid Age, Bast is a protector of the King. The valley temple of Khafre (Dyn IV) displays Het-hert as the Southern goddess and Bast as the Northern one, thus making a pair of them, like Wadjet and Nekhbet were in later times. Here Bast is the mother, nurse and protectress of the King and enables him when deceased to reach the sky.
Because of this fierce protective trait, Bast is later the mother of Mihos, a lion headed war deity. There is also a connection between Bast and Nefertum and Heru which associates her with perfume and royalty.
Nefertum is at the same time the son of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, so once again we find the association with the lion. In the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts, Bast is ascribed great importance as the first born daughter of Atum, therefore her protective abilites are great.
Eye of Re
She is also called 'Daughter of Re' or Eye of Re'. This is a title Bast shares with several other female deities and it is from this association with the power and avenging wrath in the eye of the Sun god, that the link with the lion originated. The wrath in the Eye of Re takes the form of Bast when she as a cat slays Apep by cutting him up in the Underworld.
Bast, cats and lions
It is important to keep in mind that Bast in cat form did not become common until ca 1000 b.c. From early times Bast was connected to those deities who manifested themselves in leonine form: Sekhmet, Tefnut and Mut. Via Mut, the spouse of Amun at Thebes, who is sometimes depicted as a lionheaded goddess, Bast also has a connection with Amun. In the New Kingdom there was a cult center to Bast at the Precinct of Mut at Karnak.
It is here that Mut claims both the lion and the cat as sacred animals and at Karnak Bast is called the 'ruler of sekhet-neter', meaning Divine Field = Egypt. Here are also reliefs found which depict the King performing ritual races with four sceptres and a bird or an oar in his hands, before the statue of Bast.
Bast at Per Bast
Per Bast means 'the House of Bast'. Modern name is Tell-Basta, the Greeks called it Bubastis. There are inscriptions with the name of Bast from the early 2nd Dynasty, indicating that here might have been a cult center for Bast already in those days. There is some evidence which point at an even earlier date, but these are uncertain.
Here once stood a red granite temple to Bast, which today is so ruined that no trace of its layout remains. Excavations in the late 19th century confirms the descriptions of the temple but it has not been possible to reconstruct it other than establishing its basic outline (200x300 m, 656x984 ft), and that there was an entrance hall, a festival hall, a hypostyle hall and a sanctuary.
Several smaller structures were situated around the main temple, among them a shrine to the son of Bast, the lion-god Maahes.
It was documented by the Greek historian Herodotos in 5th century b.c. The temple supposedly had grooves of trees around the sacred pool and a treelined processional route. He also describes a lavish, annual festival to Bast, as being one of exaggerated drinking, dancing, liscentiousness etc. with thousands of pilgrims attending.
There have been excavated cemeteries of cats at Per-Bast and at other sites along the Nile, among them Saqqara at Memphis. Bast had here the title 'Lady of Ankhtawy'(the burial area), meaning 'life of the Two Lands'. The mummified cats were buried in large numbers in the so called 'Bubasteion' (Gr.), situated not far from the pyramid of King Teti.
Bast in Later Periods
By and by, Bast took on the same traits as Het-Hert, (Gr: Hathor) and the Greeks, true to their habit of interpreting foreign culture and deities according to their own culture, likened her to their own Artemis. Thereby Bast became the protector of pregnant women, children, musicians and all kinds of excess, especially sexual. It was probably here, along with the Greek way of likening her to Artemis, that the concept of the cat as a form of female sexuality developed. Originally Bast had nothing to do with this aspects, as she was a fierce protector of the throne, the King and the Two Lands.
