Deity · Egyptian · c. 2600 BCE
Bastet
Also called Bast, Ubasti · also recorded as Bubastis, Baast (per Wikidata)
The gentler face of the lioness — Sekhmet's rage domesticated into a household guardian, and the object of the rowdiest festival in Egypt.
Well sourced
The lioness domesticated, and the process is visible in the record: the earliest form is a lion goddess of the same family as Sekhmet, and the cat arrives later, which makes her one of the few Egyptian figures whose iconography can be dated as it softens. Herodotus watched her festival at Bubastis and reported boatloads of pilgrims singing and quarrelling along the river, with more wine drunk than in the rest of the year — one of the very few descriptions in this corpus of an ancient religious occasion as an eyewitness experience rather than as a rite. The cemetery of mummified cats there is the same cult from the other side.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
Bubastis, where Herodotus says the yearly festival drew seven hundred thousand people and more wine than the rest of the year together.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- The Pyramid Texts · c. 2350–2100 BCE
- Rank
- Lady of Bubastis
- Pantheon
- Egyptian
- Order
- Egyptian pantheon
- Base of operations
- Bubastis, where Herodotus says the yearly festival drew seven hundred thousand people and more wine than the rest of the year together.
- Era
- c. 2600 BCE
- Traditions
- Egyptian
- Placed in
- The Great Gods of Egypt
Traits
- Domain
- Home, cats, protection from vermin and disease, festivity
- Traditional form
- A cat, or a cat-headed woman with a sistrum
Stats
Known connections
Identified with
3 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 3 offices attributed to Bastet, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- social1
- martial1
- material1
2 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Bastet, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 1,920 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Bastet, Bast / Bubastis
Named in the oldest royal material, seventeen centuries before Herodotus watched the boatloads of pilgrims going to her festival at Bubastis. The corpus holds the two attestations at either end of her documented life, and the cat she is now identified with is a late development in between — the earliest form is a lioness.
Herodotus describes the festival at her city as the largest in Egypt and by some distance the least sober, with more wine drunk there than in the whole of the rest of the year.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Bastet?
Is Bastet the same as Sekhmet?
What rank is Bastet?
How else is Bastet spelled?
What is Bastet said to do?
How old is Bastet?
Nearest in the corpus
If Bastet is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Khepri
The Morning Sun · Egyptian
The sun at dawn, in the form of a scarab beetle rolling it up over the horizon — one of the three daily aspects of the sun, and a pun on the word for coming into being.
Anubis
Guide of the Dead · Egyptian
Embalmer and psychopomp, who leads the dead to the scales — the office Western tradition eventually gives to Michael and to Azrael.
Horus
Falcon King · Egyptian
Son of Osiris, who contends eighty years with Set for the throne. Every living pharaoh was understood to be his incarnation.
Isis
Great of Magic · Egyptian
The great magician who reassembles Osiris and tricks Ra into surrendering his secret name. Her cult eventually reached as far as Roman Britain.
Nephthys
Lady of the House · Egyptian
Set's wife who sides with her sister Isis against him, and mourns Osiris at the head of the bier.
Osiris
Lord of the Dead · Egyptian
Murdered by Set, reassembled by Isis, and installed as judge of the dead. He is the earliest fully developed dying-and-rising sovereign we have.
The books behind Bastet
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
The Pyramid Texts
Anonymous; carved for the kings and queens of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties · c. 2350–2100 BCE · Old Egyptian
Read The Pyramid Texts in full ↗The Histories, Book II
Herodotus; tr. G. C. Macaulay · c. 430 BCE · Ancient Greek
Read The Histories, Book II in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Unknown · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.