The fireside sphinx. Agnes Repplier

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СКАЧАТЬ feline dignities. Timocles observes cynically that when irreverence to the great gods so often escapes unpunished, he can hardly fear to violate the shrine of a cat. Anaxandrides of Rhodes presents with fine brutality the Greek point of view, in his comedy, "The Cities." "If you see a cat indisposed," sneers one of the characters to an Egyptian, "you weep for it. For my part, I am well pleased to kill it for its skin."

      The exact era of Pussy's domestication in Egypt ​is lost in the dawn of history. It was so very long ago that our minds grow dizzy, contemplating the vast stretch of centuries. A tablet in the Berlin Museum, which has on it a representation of a cat, dates from 1600 BC: and another, two hundred years older, bears an inscription containing the word Maū, or cat. The temples of Bubastis, of Beni Hasan, and of Heliopolus were the most sacred haunts of this most sacred animal. There, petted, pampered, wrapped in silken ease, and, above all, treated with that delicate reverence she is so quick to understand and appreciate, she lived her allotted lives; and there, when all nine were well spent, her little corpse was lovingly embalmed, and buried in a gilded mummy case with dignified and appropriate ceremonial. Her

      "splendid circled eyes

       That wax and wane with love for hours,

       Green as green flame, blue-grey like skies,"

      were believed to be emblematic of the waxing and the waning of the sun, and added to the mysterious sanctity of her reputation.

      Plutarch held that she also represented the moon, because of her nocturnal habits, and of her singular fecundity. "For it is said that she brings forth at first one kitten, afterwards two, and the third time, three; and that the number increaseth thus until the seventh and last birth, so that she ​bears in all twenty-eight young, or as many as the moon hath revolutions. And though this may be but a fable, yet it is certain that her eyes do enlarge and grow brilliant with the filling of the moon, and do contract and lose their light with its decline."

      What a pleasure it must have been to study natural history in the ancient days, when the general absence of information left the historian liberty and leisure to tell really interesting things.

      The temple of Bubastis, says Herodotus, was the fairest in all Egypt, and the festival held in honour of the goddess was the gayest of the year, thousands of pilgrims speeding along the pleasant water-ways to enjoy themselves piously at her shrine. Often they carried with them the mummies of dear dead cats, to be interred in the neighbourhood of the temple; and often they bore, as offerings to the shrine, animals of great size and beauty, or with especial markings that denoted sanctity, and insured their admittance into the circle of the elect. To these pilgrimages, and to the sacredness of the temple cats, may be traced—so says Ignace Goldziher in his "Culte des Saints chez les Musulmans"—a curious custom which survived until recent years among Egyptian Moslems. When the caravans bound for Mecca were preparing to start from Cairo, and the city was celebrating their departure with the feasts of Mahmal, one camel was set apart ​for the sole use of an old woman who bore the honourable title, Mother of Cats, and whose duty it was to carry to the Holy City a number of Persian pussies. Her position was no sinecure, for all the distinction it conferred, the cat's rooted aversion to travel rendering it a troublesome charge; and the venerable "Mother" finally gave place to a young and active man, better able to cope with his sackful of turbulent prisoners. What strange survival of an ancient practice induced pious Moslems to send to the Prophet's shrine the animals that their faraway ancestors had carried devoutly to the temple of Bubastis? No one knows. The links between old and new have long ago been broken; and, as so often happens, the custom lingered on for countless years after its significance had been lost to men's unreasoning minds.

      The great burying-grounds of favoured Egyptian cats were the thrice blessed fields of Speos Artemidos near the tombs of Beni Hasan, where thousands of little mummies reposed for centuries. It was reserved for our rude age to disturb their slumber, to desecrate their graves, to fling their ashes to the four winds of heaven, or, with base utilitarianism, to sell the poor little swathed and withered bodies—once so beautiful and gently tended—for any trifling sum they would bring from ribald tourists who infest the land. Many were even used as ​fertilizers of the ancient soil—a more honourable fate, and one which consigned them gently to oblivion. The incredible number of such mummies found at Beni Hasan and other sacred cemeteries proves that Egypt, "in the hour of her pride," was the abode of countless pussy-cats, and explains the sarcasm of that travelled Greek, who observed that, on the banks of the Nile, it was more common to meet gods than men.

      Once outside of Egypt, where, thanks to inscriptions, embalming, and an admirable pictorial art, we know with exactness what we know at all, the history of the cat is shrouded in mystery and gloom. There is no proof that she was domesticated in Babylon or Assyria; and what scanty information we can gather as the centuries roll on is of a dishearteningly fabulous character. There is a story which used to be found in the school-books of our youth, but which has probably been eliminated in these duller days, of the infamous scheme devised by Cambyses—and worthy of him—for the capture of Pelusium. Each Persian soldier was bidden to carry in his arms a cat, so that he was safe from the weapons of the Egyptians, who feared to wound the sacred animal he bore. The tale, it must be admitted, does not sound veracious. To march to battle carrying a cat—a cat that must have been eminently unwilling to go—would have required ​more courage than to face an enemy. Moreover, the Persians could hardly have done their own share of fighting very effectively while they were clasping legions of pussies to their bosoms. Perhaps the ruthless disregard evinced by Cambyses for all his fellow-men held dear and sacred may have given rise to this once popular tradition.

      There are others less well known, but much prettier, as that of the Persian monarch, Hormus, who, finding his kingdom invaded by a mighty army under Prince Schabé, his own unworthy relative, was warned by a soothsayer that he could never conquer this enemy until his troops were led to battle by a general having the face of a wild cat—"qui eut la physionomie d'un chat sauvage," says Moncrif, who tells the story with delight. After searching far and wide, Hormus at last discovered this treasure in the person of a rude mountaineer named Baharan, or, as some say, Kounin, to whom he joyfully gave the command of all his forces. The result justified the prediction. The Persians, though few and ill-trained, were yet so animated by the assurance of victory, so exultant when they beheld the fear-inspiring countenance of their leader, that they easily routed the foe, and carried Schabé's head back to their royal master.

      In India the house cat was known from a very early period, and was called by several composite ​names signifying rat-eater and mouse-enemy, to denote the useful character of her occupations. She figures also in some of the oldest Indian fables, always as an arrant hypocrite, fair-spoken and full of guile. Her first entrance into the Chinese Empire appears to have been about 400 A. D., and she is described in ancient documents as a hunter of mice and slayer of hens, unmistakable characteristics, both of them. There is also a venerable proverb which says, with true Chinese sententiousness, that a lame cat is better than a swift horse when rats infest the palace. The rampant creature that rears itself aggressively on the royal banners of Korea is some fierce wild cousin of the cat; just as the animal held sacred for centuries along the Pacific coast of South America, and which we see over and over again in the terra cottas of lost Peruvian cities, was forest born and bred—ocelot perhaps, or jaguar—not the sweet domestic deity of the Nile.

      The saddest gap in the chronicles of the cat is her conspicuous absence from "the glory that was Greece," from "the grandeur that was Rome,"—an absence which extended over many hundreds of years. No Greek monument shows her sitting at her master's feet, as the Egyptian Bouhaki sat for centuries at the feet of King Hana, in the Necropolis of Thebes. Homer, who tells us the touching story of the hound, Argus, has never a word for ​the cat; though we would give much to see her watching with wise eyes Penelope's unfinished web, or playing with the soft tangled wools in Helen's silver work-basket. And what fitter companion for Nausicaa than a white cat, beautiful, spotless and urbane? M. Henri Havard argues subtly that the very essence of Greek civilization, as it slowly flowered СКАЧАТЬ