Tell Basta (Bubastis)
The city of the cat goddess Bastet, whose festival drew vast crowds — temple ruins, a cat cemetery and a site museum.
The city of Bastet
Tell Basta, on the south-eastern edge of the modern city of Zagazig in the eastern Nile Delta, is the site of ancient Bubastis (Per-Bastet, "house of Bastet"). It was the cult centre of Bastet, the goddess often shown as a cat or a woman with a cat's head, a protector of homes, women and children. In the Third Intermediate Period, the city became the capital of the kings of the Twenty-second Dynasty, of Libyan origin, who enlarged its great temple. The Greek historian Herodotus, who visited in the fifth century BC, described the temple as one of the most beautiful in Egypt and the annual festival of Bastet as one of the most joyful, with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims arriving by boat, singing and dancing.
The ruins
Today the temple of Bastet is a field of fallen red granite blocks, columns, Hathor capitals and statues, among which archaeologists continue to make discoveries. The site also includes the remains of a temple of Pepi I of the Old Kingdom, palaces, tombs and a vast cemetery where thousands of cats sacred to Bastet were mummified and buried; many cat statues and coffins from Bubastis are now in museums around the world.
The museum
A site museum, opened in 2018, presents finds from Tell Basta and the region, including statues, cat figures and objects from the excavations. Egyptian and German missions continue to work on the site.
Exhibo editorial
There's something joyful about Bubastis even in ruin: you wander among great blocks of red granite, Hathor heads and broken statues, and somewhere under the grass lie thousands of mummified cats, sacred to a goddess whose festival, Herodotus said, was the wildest party in Egypt.
Start in the small museum, with its rows of cat statues, then walk the site slowly. It's an easy stop on the way from Cairo to Tanis or Ismailia, and one of the more charming forgotten sites in the Delta.
Gallery
How to find it
Tell Basta lies on the south-eastern edge of Zagazig, about 1.5 hours by car north-east of Cairo. The entrance and museum are on the road at the edge of the site; from the museum, paths lead to the ruins of the Temple of Bastet and the other monuments.