The fireside sphinx. Agnes Repplier

Чтение книги онлайн.

      The Cat of Antiquity

       Table of Contents

      "Thine is the lore of Ra and Rameses."

      THERE was—if we may trust the Arabic chronicles as set down by that devout scholar, Damirei—no cat in the Garden of Paradise. Lion cubs and tiger cubs, little leopards and little panthers, Eve had in numbers without doubt; but no pussy to grace and decorate her domestic hearth. How far this loss was responsible for the lamentable ennui which, Charles Lamb says, forced our first parents to sin themselves out of Eden, it would be difficult to determine; but in that desolate world of toil which lay beyond the gleaming gates and sacred rivers of Paradise, no cat was found to comfort the sad exiles on their way. She sprang into existence at the Deluge; for during the long weeks in which the Ark floated over the waste of waters, the rats and the mice increased ​so alarmingly that the comfort—if there was any comfort—of the inmates was threatened with destruction. Then Noah, equal to the emergency, passed his hand three times over the head of the lioness, and lo! she sneezed forth the cat.

      In connection with this venerable legend, it is interesting to note the behaviour of Puss in the old Italian pictures which represent the departure from the Ark, a subject which Bassano has painted over and over again. Invariably we see, walking at the head of the procession, with a most self-satisfied and arrogant air, as if she owned the newly recovered earth, a large brindled cat. The lion and the elephant, the camel and the horse, all the most terrible and the most useful beasts linger with modest diffidence in the background; the cat presents herself superbly to everybody's notice, and, as a rule, begins her career of depredation by assailing one of her late companions—a fat frightened rabbit, or a trembling dove. No one would imagine that she owed her existence to the incidental discomforts of the Ark.

      However mysterious and informal may have been her birth. Pussy's first appearance in veracious history is a splendid one. More than three thousand years ago she dwelt serenely by the Nile, and the great nation of antiquity paid her respectful homage. Sleek and beautiful, she drowsed in the ​shadow of mighty temples, or sat blinking and washing her face with contemptuous disregard alike of priest and people. There is no mention of her in Holy Writ; but when Moses led the Children of Israel into the desert, she watched him go,

      "With sombre sea-green gaze inscrutable."

      Deserts, indeed, offered scant allurement to her. No wandering people have ever enjoyed her sweet companionship. The Arabs loved and valued her; but could do no more than carry her across the trackless sands for the enrichment of softer homes than their black tents could offer.

      "And the bubbling camels beside the load

       Sprawled for a furlong adown the road;

       And the Persian pussy-cats, brought for sale,

       Spat at the dogs from the camel-bale."

      Poor faithful dogs, lovers of novelty and change of scene, who dwell contentedly in tents, or huts, or 'neath the open sky, and roam far and wide with the masters whom they serve. The cat cares little to see the world, and dislikes the discomforts of travel. Some gracious instinct binds her to her home. She feels the charm of the familiar, and her fidelity to the sheltering hearth has made her—now that her old honours have passed away—the little god of domesticity, the friend of those who are too happy or too wise for restlessness.

      ​Egypt, as the granary of the ancient world, had especial need for Pussy's services, and the Egyptian cat was a mighty hunter, not only of rats and mice—ancestral prey—but of wild fowl caught in reedy marshes, and in shallow waters where she could swim with ease. Her sacred character was in no wise impaired by her usefulness. She was the favourite of Pasht, who, in smiling mood, had given her to the world; and the deep veneration in which she was held provoked biting jests from travellers, who then, as now, lacked sympathy for strange customs and strange gods. Herodotus was plainly of the opinion that the devotion manifested for these cherished beasts produced some uncomfortable results. In the first place, there were too many cats. The maintenance of those who lived apart in temples, and who were fed with fish, and bread soaked in milk, was a heavy burden upon the state; and the officials, whose privilege it was to take care of them, seem to have been naturally, but unendurably, proud. Then again, the enforced mourning, the shaving of eyebrows, and all the "mockery of woe" which followed the death of even the smallest kitten, lent a funereal aspect to many homes. Last, but not least, the law which forbade the sinful slaying of a cat occasionally brought vengeance upon the head of the unfortunate who unwittingly killed one. For such an evil ​accident, says Diodorus of Sicily, a Roman citizen was torn to pieces by the infuriated populace of Thebes. So imminent, indeed, was this peril, that an Egyptian who chanced to witness Pussy's death—happily no common occurrence, as a cat, like an Englishman, considers dying a strictly private affair—stood trembling and bathed in tears, plaintively announcing to the world that he at least had no part in such a pitiful calamity. Yet even a tender and far-reaching solicitude could not always save the Egyptian cat from harm. Fires were of frequent occurrence, and the creature's terror occasionally prevented its rescue, and drove it straight into the flames. "When this happens, it diffuses universal sorrow," says Herodotus, with that graceful sympathy which is so pleasing, because so rare, in the historian.

      Writers СКАЧАТЬ