The Gayer-Anderson cat is an ancient Egyptian statue of a cat, which dates from the Late Period (around 664–332 BC). It is made of

bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloid ...

, with

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

ornaments.

Style and detail

The sculpture is known as the Gayer-Anderson cat after major

Robert Grenville Gayer-Anderson Robert Grenville Gayer-Anderson (29 July 1881 – June 1945), known as John to his friends, was an Irish surgeon, soldier, colonial administrator and collector, perhaps best known for his connection with Egypt and Egyptian antiquities. The Gayer ...

who, together with Mary Stout Shaw, donated it to the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

. The statue is a representation of the female cat deity

Bastet Bastet or Bast (), also known as Ubasti or Bubastis, is a goddess of ancient Egyptian religion, possibly of Nubian origin, worshipped as early as the Second Dynasty (2890 BC). In ancient Greek religion, she was known as Ailuros (). Bastet was ...

. The cat wears

jewellery Jewellery (or jewelry in American English) consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment such as brooches, ring (jewellery), rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the ...

and a protective

Wadjet Wadjet (; "Green One"), known to the Greek world as Uto (; ) or Buto (; ) among other renderings including Wedjat, Uadjet, and Udjo, was originally the ancient Egyptian Tutelary deity, local goddess of the city of Dep or Buto in Lower Egypt, ...

amulet An amulet, also known as a good luck charm or phylactery, is an object believed to confer protection upon its possessor. The word "amulet" comes from the Latin word , which Pliny's ''Natural History'' describes as "an object that protects a perso ...

. The earrings and nose ring on the statue may not have always belonged to the cat. A scarab appears on the head and a winged scarab is shown on the chest. The statue is 42 cm high and 13 cm wide. A copy of the statue is in the Gayer-Anderson Museum, located in

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

.Gayer-Anderson Cat
Ancient Egypt.co.uk, retrieved 6 December 2014

Construction

Gayer-Anderson Cat in British Museum by Glenn Ashton

The statue is not as well preserved as it appears.

X-ray An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...

s taken of the sculpture reveal that there are cracks that extend almost completely around the centre of the cat's body, and only an internal system of strengthening prevents the cat's head from falling off. The repairs to the cat were carried out by Gayer-Anderson, who was a keen restorer of antiquities in the 1930s. When he bought it, the surface of the cat was "covered with a heavy coating of crystalline

verdigris Verdigris () is a common name for any of a variety of somewhat toxic copper salt (chemistry), salts of acetic acid, which range in colour from green to a blue-green, bluish-green depending on their chemical composition.H. Kühn, Verdigris and Cop ...

and crisp flakes of red patina" which he carefully chipped away. The cat was manufactured by the

lost-wax casting Lost-wax castingalso called investment casting, precision casting, or ''cire perdue'' (; borrowed from French)is the process by which a duplicate sculpture (often a metal, such as silver, gold, brass, or bronze) is cast from an original scul ...

method, where a wax model is covered with clay and fired in a kiln until the wax flows out, and the hollow mould is refilled with molten metal. In this case the metal was 85% copper, 13% tin, 2% arsenic with a 0.2% trace of lead. The remains of the pins that held the wax core can still be seen using X-rays. The original metalworkers would have been able to create a range of colours on a bronze casting and the stripes on the tail are due to metal of a differing composition. It is also considered likely that the eyes contained stone or glass decorations.

Style and detail

Construction

References

Further reading