Cat head with scarab on forehead - Bronze

Cat’s head with scarab on forehead.
Bronze. Height 10,8 cm.
Circa 600-400 B.C. Late Period. Egypt.
Excellent condition.


This head of cat is the one of Bastet, goddess-cat worshipped to Bubastis and represented abundantly to the Late Period in the temples of Bastet. In the 1st millennium BC, she is a girl of the sun and a protector of the family. She is very often represented sat with or without her kittens, such a protective cat. Here she wears a beetle on the head, big eyes and seems to sketch a light smile. Two feathers of Maat are represented in her ears. Indeed, Bastet had a double function: at once terrible and that to restore the cosmic order or that of the consciousness of the justice (Maat) which gets closer to its function of protector of the family. This justice is represented by these two feathers in her ears.

Cf. Ph. GERMOND – J. LIVET, Bestiaire égyptien, Paris, 2001, n°4 ; J.-P. CORTEGGIANI, L’Egypte et ses dieux. Dictionnaire illustré, Paris, 2007, p.79-81.

Formely in a Swiss private collection. Exhibited in Basel in 1978 and published in “Le Don du Nil, Art égyptien dans les collections suisses, p. 91, 328.