5 ms·

I can imagine the Egyptians like cat pictures like people today. However, the statutes don't look like the most beautiful of cats. Have the aesthetics of cat pi

by gersh 8y ago

I can imagine the Egyptians like cat pictures like people today. However, the statutes don't look like the most beautiful of cats. Have the aesthetics of cat pictures changed over time?

gwern 8y ago
Egyptian art had very different conventions and esthetics. But also the cats themselves seem to be different (larger, IIRC, and different colored than the European cats you're probably more familiar with). If you want to take a look at all the kinds of cat-related artwork (including cartoons which I can only call cat memes, like artwork of rats laying siege to a cat fortress or cats whipping a human for unknown offenses), take a look at all the illustrations in Malek's _The Cat in Ancient Egypt_. You can get a high-quality scan from, ahem, the usual place. One interesting thing about the cat mummies here is that they'll provide additional datapoints on how well fed temple-sacrificial cats were and how they were killed. And perhaps at some point some ancient DNA can be sequenced? Which will give interesting data about how domesticated they were. Bradshaw in _Cat Sense_ argues that the core work of domesticating cats was accomplished by the Ancient Egyptians as a byproduct of their large-scale breeding, necessary for the raising the vast volumes of cats to be sacrificed as offerings.
- dmix 8y ago
  Is putting underscores around titles a convention for some format? I see it around once in a while.
  - scrollaway 8y ago
    Probably trying to make it italic, which is indeed a convention. Asterisks will work better on hn.
    - gwern 8y ago
      I'm too lazy to remember how HN's pseudo-Markdown does (not) work.
  - kylek 8y ago
    Underscores usually means underline the words they're around. I believe underlining book titles is a MLA format thing (brb highschool english class flashbacks).
wyck 8y ago
It's a little deeper than that, cats were revered because they killed snakes, scorpions, rats, etc, around the house that did harm, pharaoh's having a particularity good pick of the litter, breeding was a part of temple life. The most common cats in ancient Egypt are still around today, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_wildcat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_wildcat and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_cat
drdeadringer 8y ago
There is an [ancient] Egyptian museum near where I live. Mummies, trinkets, sarcophagi, other artefacts. The cats pictured in the article are in line with what is in the museum, in both sarcophagus and trinket form. I know this does doesn't quite answer your "changed over time" question, but it is a data point.
woodpanel 8y ago
I'd put it differently. Not that aesthetics have changed, rather that the technique of displaying what you see (through painting or sculpting) has gone through considerable evolution since the days of the pharaohs. And thus the aesthetics of things were a result of that.

by gersh 8y ago

I can imagine the Egyptians like cat pictures like people today. However, the statutes don't look like the most beautiful of cats. Have the aesthetics of cat pictures changed over time?

gwern 8y ago

Egyptian art had very different conventions and esthetics. But also the cats themselves seem to be different (larger, IIRC, and different colored than the European cats you're probably more familiar with). If you want to take a look at all the kinds of cat-related artwork (including cartoons which I can only call cat memes, like artwork of rats laying siege to a cat fortress or cats whipping a human for unknown offenses), take a look at all the illustrations in Malek's _The Cat in Ancient Egypt_. You can get a high-quality scan from, ahem, the usual place. One interesting thing about the cat mummies here is that they'll provide additional datapoints on how well fed temple-sacrificial cats were and how they were killed. And perhaps at some point some ancient DNA can be sequenced? Which will give interesting data about how domesticated they were. Bradshaw in _Cat Sense_ argues that the core work of domesticating cats was accomplished by the Ancient Egyptians as a byproduct of their large-scale breeding, necessary for the raising the vast volumes of cats to be sacrificed as offerings.

dmix 8y ago
Is putting underscores around titles a convention for some format? I see it around once in a while.
- scrollaway 8y ago
  Probably trying to make it italic, which is indeed a convention. Asterisks will work better on hn.
  - gwern 8y ago
    I'm too lazy to remember how HN's pseudo-Markdown does (not) work.
- kylek 8y ago
  Underscores usually means underline the words they're around. I believe underlining book titles is a MLA format thing (brb highschool english class flashbacks).

wyck 8y ago

It's a little deeper than that, cats were revered because they killed snakes, scorpions, rats, etc, around the house that did harm, pharaoh's having a particularity good pick of the litter, breeding was a part of temple life. The most common cats in ancient Egypt are still around today, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_wildcat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_wildcat and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_cat

drdeadringer 8y ago

There is an [ancient] Egyptian museum near where I live. Mummies, trinkets, sarcophagi, other artefacts. The cats pictured in the article are in line with what is in the museum, in both sarcophagus and trinket form. I know this does doesn't quite answer your "changed over time" question, but it is a data point.

woodpanel 8y ago

I'd put it differently. Not that aesthetics have changed, rather that the technique of displaying what you see (through painting or sculpting) has gone through considerable evolution since the days of the pharaohs. And thus the aesthetics of things were a result of that.