Pagan to Christian

Egypt has been a Muslim country for so long that we forget the country followed Christianity long before Islam even existed. As Christianity spread from its home in Palestine, Egypt gradually changed its religion from pagan to Christian. Old habits die hard, and some people were slow to give up worshipping their old gods, including the cat-headed Bast.

The Christian writer Clement, writing about the year A.D. 200 in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, mocked the old religion and its worship of animals and animal-headed gods. He wrote of the huge temples, each with an inner sanctum, and in that inner sanctum, curled on a purple cushion was . . . an animal, often a cat. Clement, like many Christian writers, claimed that Christians were wiser in worshipping their invisible God than pagans, who were fools to build a temple to honor a cat or crocodile.

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