Faelis
（
αἴλουρος or
αἰέλουρος,
“wag-tail”). The cat, an animal domesticated by the
Egyptians as early as the thirteenth century B.C., and by them regarded as a sacred animal, so
that it was a capi
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Ancient Egyptian Cats. (Painting from the Monuments.)
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tal offence to kill one (
Diod. Sic.i. 83). The cat
typified to them the lunar goddess Pasht, and was frequently embalmed and sent to Bubastis for
burial. (See
Bubastis.) The early Greeks and Romans
do not appear to have domesticated the cat as we have done, but instead employed a species of
weasel (
γαλῆ,
mustela), or the
whitebreasted marten (
faelis foina). See Hehn,
Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere (last ed. rev. by Schrader, 1894);
and Houghton's
Natural History of the Ancients, pp. 40-50. Cats first appear in
literature as house animals about the fourth century A.D., but even as late as the Middle Ages
they were comparatively rare and costly.
