Description
Cats – Meadow Cat 1000 PC Jigsaw Puzzle
Meadow Cat Jigsaw Puzzle is a very arty illustration of a very beautiful cat with blue eyes.
The English artist Jane Crowther studied illustration at college and later founded the greetings card company Bug Art. Her unique designs immediately received an enthusiastic response and are now internationally successful. Hidden in her images is a small green bug – if you look carefully you can find one in each puzzle.
Cats known in ancient Egypt as “mau” were considered sacred in ancient Egypt society. Based on recent DNA comparisons of recent species, it has been estimated, that cats were first domesticated from the Middle Eastern sub species of the wild cat about 10,000 years ago.
Praised for controlling vermin and its ability to kill snakes such as cobras, the domesticated cat became a symbol of grace and poise.
As a revered animal and one important to Egyptian society and religion, some cats received the same mummification after death as humans. Mummified cats were given in offering to Bast.
In 1888, an Egyptian farmer uncovered a large tomb with mummified cats and kittens. This discovery outside the town of Beni Hasan had eighty thousand cat mummies, dated after 1000 BC.
After the pyramids and the kohl painted eyes, almost nothing evokes more awe and mystery than the fascination ancient Egyptians had with cats.
They were not only the most popular pet in the house, but their status rose to that of the sacred animals and then on to the most esteemed deities like no other creature before them.
Cats domesticate the ancient Egyptians
Although no one can pinpoint the time exactly, we know that the cat was domesticated in Egypt, probably around 2000 B.C., and that most modern cats are descendants of the cats of ancient Egypt. One reason it is difficult to say precisely when domestication occurred is that the ancient Egyptians did not distinguish between wild and tame cats in their descriptions of them.