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Description
Here are some of the other sketches I did back when I was planning on doing a hand-drawn RPG storyline for the comic. I spent a little bit longer coloring these than the last one, though I wish I had redrawn Anubis. Though I am happy with the way Bastet turned out.

A note about cats:
There are a few kinds of cats that were present in Egypt. The most common was the Mau, but for Bastet I chose an Abyssinian.
[link]

Cats have always been considered a feminine animal, just as dogs have always been a masculine one. We have the Egyptians to thank for these characterizations, their gods followed these rules, with canine gods being male and feline gods being female, with very few exceptions. Even before the Egyptians, felines were treated with a kind of reverence, and it is possible that somewhere back in the evolutionary process, human beings who were hunted by the big cats developed a certain degree of instinctual respect for the animals. It has been part of our general consciousness for so long that even in civilizations separated by tens of thousands of years (Compare the Egyptian cat gods with the Mesoamerican cat gods) there is still a common theme of cat worship. A gravesite discovered in 1983 in Cyprus , dating to 7500 BC, during the Neolithic period, contains the skeletons of a ceremonially buried human and a type of young cat, so we know it goes back at least that long.. I think it would be an interesting study to see how this has evolved into the modern “cat girl” phenomenon. I bet you could trace it all the way back to the Egyptians.

More info:
During the dark ages, since many people equated the black plague with God's wrath against sin, and because cats were often considered in league with the Devil, cats were killed en masse. This hatred was partially based on the Christian hatred of pagan gods, and Bastet-based cults were very popular, even then. Cat cults were considered the haven of witches, and it is because of these that witches became associated with cats and had them as their demonic familiars. Curiously enough, if the Christians had not had this bias toward cats, local rodent populations could have been kept down during the black death, lessening the spread of plague-infected fleas from host to host.

The cult of Bastet was officially banned by imperial decree in 390 AD. Egypt has since experienced a decline in the respect once held for cats and although they are still kept as pets and tolerated elsewhere because they catch pests, the cat has lost all religious significance in modern Egypt.

Description
Here are some of the other sketches I did back when I was planning on doing a hand-drawn RPG storyline for the comic. I spent a little bit longer coloring these than the last one, though I wish I had redrawn Anubis. Though I am happy with the way Bastet turned out.

A note about cats:
There are a few kinds of cats that were present in Egypt. The most common was the Mau, but for Bastet I chose an Abyssinian.
[link]

Cats have always been considered a feminine animal, just as dogs have always been a masculine one. We have the Egyptians to thank for these characterizations, their gods followed these rules, with canine gods being male and feline gods being female, with very few exceptions. Even before the Egyptians, felines were treated with a kind of reverence, and it is possible that somewhere back in the evolutionary process, human beings who were hunted by the big cats developed a certain degree of instinctual respect for the animals. It has been part of our general consciousness for so long that even in civilizations separated by tens of thousands of years (Compare the Egyptian cat gods with the Mesoamerican cat gods) there is still a common theme of cat worship. A gravesite discovered in 1983 in Cyprus , dating to 7500 BC, during the Neolithic period, contains the skeletons of a ceremonially buried human and a type of young cat, so we know it goes back at least that long.. I think it would be an interesting study to see how this has evolved into the modern “cat girl” phenomenon. I bet you could trace it all the way back to the Egyptians.

More info:
During the dark ages, since many people equated the black plague with God's wrath against sin, and because cats were often considered in league with the Devil, cats were killed en masse. This hatred was partially based on the Christian hatred of pagan gods, and Bastet-based cults were very popular, even then. Cat cults were considered the haven of witches, and it is because of these that witches became associated with cats and had them as their demonic familiars. Curiously enough, if the Christians had not had this bias toward cats, local rodent populations could have been kept down during the black death, lessening the spread of plague-infected fleas from host to host.

The cult of Bastet was officially banned by imperial decree in 390 AD. Egypt has since experienced a decline in the respect once held for cats and although they are still kept as pets and tolerated elsewhere because they catch pests, the cat has lost all religious significance in modern Egypt.