From Heliopolis Herodotos continued his voyage down the Pelusiac arm of the Nile to Bubastis, thus following nearly the same line of travel as the modern tourist who goes by train from Cairo to Zagazig. The rubbish heaps of Tel Basta, just beyond the station of Zagazig, mark the site of Bubastis, called Pi-beseth in the Old Testament (Ezek. xxx. 17), Pi-Bast, “the Temple of Bast,” by the Egyptians. The cat-headed goddess Bast presided over the fortunes of the nome and city, where she was identified with Sekhet, the lion-headed goddess of Memphis. But the cat and the lion never lay down in peace together. As a hieroglyphic text at Philæ puts it, Sekhet was cruel and Bast was kindly.
The exclusive worship of Bast at Bubastis, however, dated from the time of Osorkon II. of the twenty-second dynasty, as Dr. Naville’s excavations have made plain. Before that period other deities, more especially Butô and Amon-Ra, reigned there. Bast, in fact, was of foreign origin. She was the feminine form of Bes, the warrior god who came from the coasts of Arabia, and her association with the cat perhaps originated far away in the south.
The description given by Herodotos of Bubastis and its festival is clearly that of an eye-witness. He tells us how the temple stands in the middle of the town surrounded by a canal which is shaded with trees, and how the visitor looks down upon it from the streets of the city, which had grown in height while the level of the temple had remained unaltered. He tells us further how a broad street runs from it to the market-place, and thence to a chapel dedicated to Hermês, and how at the great annual festival crowds of men and women flocked to it in boats, piping and singing, clapping the hands and dancing, offering sacrifices when they arrived at the shrine, and drinking wine to excess. A similar sight can be seen even now in the month of August at Tantah, where the religious fair is thronged by men and women indulging in all the amusements recounted by the old Greek traveller, sometimes beyond the verge of decency. Wine alone is absent from the modern feast, its place being taken by _hashish_ and _raki_.
As the festival was held in honour of Bast, it was probably an annual commemoration of the great “Shed-festival” of thirty years celebrated by Osorkon II. in his twenty-second year, and depicted on the walls of the hall which Dr. Naville has discovered. The “Shed-festival” took place during the month of August—in the time of the sixth dynasty on the 27th of Epiphi. It was probably, therefore, at the end of August or the beginning of September that Herodotos found himself in the city of Bast.