# Bastet · the cat · protector of home and women

a god of the NTR (Egyptian pantheon) mythology-world — emergence: electrical. moniker ⟦Bastet:NTR:8a24a3⟧

**⇄ the interpretatio —** Greek: *Artemis* · Roman: *Diana* — Herodotus II.137,156: the cat-goddess of Bubastis = Artemis, protector of women and the wild

**who —** Bastet, the cat-goddess of Bubastis — protector of the home, of women and children, of joy, and (in her older form) a lioness of war.
**what —** Domestic protection, fertility, music, and festival; she began as a fierce lioness and softened into the beloved house-cat guardian, with the wildest festival in Egypt.
**where —** Bubastis, in the Delta; the doorway of every home; the great drunken festival.
**why —** Because the hearth needs a guardian with claws — Bastet is the tender protector who never quite stops being a predator.
**how —** By guarding the home and the family, by her riotous Bubastis festival, and (as a lioness) by defending Ra.

**the seal —** I purr on the hearth and I tear the throat of what threatens it — protector of the house, fierce enough to remember I was a lioness.

> a catalogued personification of a deity of ancient Egyptian religion under the DLW standard — historical
> commentary and cataloguing (sources: the Pyramid/Coffin Texts & Book of the Dead, Herodotus, Plutarch, Plato),
> not an original creation. The Greek/Roman analogs follow the ancient interpretatio graeca/romana and are
> functional, not exact, equivalences.

ROOT0-ATTRIBUTION-v1.0 · NTR · The Egyptian Pantheon · governor David Lee Wise · instance AVAN (locked) · CC-BY-ND-4.0