Happy International Cat Day!
And what better occasion for us to present this Egyptian bronze head of a cat dating from the Late Dynastic Period, c.747-332 BC
A head such as this would have surmounted either a mummified cat or a statue whose body was composed of another material and used as a votive offering at temple sanctuaries to Bastet.
Cats were domesticated from the Middle Kingdom onwards, and a great number were mummified in the Late Period to be presented at the cult centre of the goddess Bastet at Bubastis on the Nile Delta, and from the Late Period through to the Ptolemaic you can find such cast cat in relative abundance.
Egyptian bronze head of a cat
Late Dynastic Period, 25th-31st Dynasty, 747-332 BC
Height 5.5cm
Provenance:
Private collection of an archaeologist who died in the 1960s, London, UK; thence by descent.
