![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldWhile visiting the Art Gallery of Ontario's King Tut exhibition with Jerry today, I happened upon this sarcophagus, dedicated by Crown Prince Thutmose of the eighteenth dynasty to his cat Ta-Miu (She-Cat).
As the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the sarcophagus demonstrates, Thutmose loved his cat.
A full translation of all of the text is available here in PDF format.
The whole exhibition is impressive and highly-recommended, a well-organized display of statuary and jewellery and household artifacts and gold, so much of the gold that was the skin of the ancient Egyptians' golds. This one sarcophagus stands out for me as artifact from a famously cat-loving and cat-worshipping civilization, proof that the attitudes of some of its ancients are akin to mine, more evidence that this civilization isn't all that different from mine.
This cat's coffin, possibly a canopic box (Reisner and Abd-Ul-Rahman 1967: 392), reflects the few indicators we have of the ancient Egyptians' love of cats. Crown Prince Thutmose, the eldest son of Amenhotep III, had this coffin duly prepared for his pet cat upon her death. Her name was apparently "tA-miAt", meaning "The Cat (feminine)." As a means of shorthand, many Egyptologists render the cat's name as either "Ta-Miaut" or "The She-Cat." Here, both terms are used.
As the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the sarcophagus demonstrates, Thutmose loved his cat.
Prince Thutmose's sentiment for The She-Cat is evidenced by the series of supplications by various deities to care for the animal in the afterlife, but the initial opening lines of the inscription appear to acknowledge the cat's justification and eventual deification in the afterlife was a given, just as with human deceased. At times, The She-Cat is referred to as male in the supplications of various deities, which is not unknown even in female human burials of the New Kingdom as well. The glyphs read:Words spoken by Osiris, Ta-Miaut
I bristle before the Sky, and its parts that are upon (it).
I myself am placed among the imperishable ones that are in the Sky,
(For) I am Ta-Miaut, the Triumphant.
A full translation of all of the text is available here in PDF format.
The whole exhibition is impressive and highly-recommended, a well-organized display of statuary and jewellery and household artifacts and gold, so much of the gold that was the skin of the ancient Egyptians' golds. This one sarcophagus stands out for me as artifact from a famously cat-loving and cat-worshipping civilization, proof that the attitudes of some of its ancients are akin to mine, more evidence that this civilization isn't all that different from mine.
