What is the meaning of  "cat" & "black cat" in ancient civilization(egypt,greece,others)?
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Cats have long been held sacred and linked to images of power. In ancient Egypt the Goddess Bast was not only the divine mother of cats, She was also protectress of the Pharoah and of women, Goddess of joy, dance, fertility & motherhood. The Egyptian term for cat was Mau, an imitation of a cats cry and a mother-syllable\n\nFeline reverence is not peculiar to Ancient Egyptian civilisation. Muslim theology maintains that the prophet Muhammad once found a cat sleeping on his robe; instead of waking it, he cut a hole through his robe so as not to disturb the animal. This reverence can be found in ancient Indian texts, where records of cats involved with human society can be found in two ancient Indian great epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, circa 500 BCE. As the Hindu and Parsee religions respected all forms of life and were especially sympathetic towards cats, all good Hindus were expected to take care of at least one cat during their lives. By contrast, the Islamic culture generally regards dogs as somewhat unhygienic animals.\n\nThe exaltation of cats in Ancient Egypt most likely began with their contribution to agriculture. Feral cats, or "reed cats", naturally preyed upon the rats and other vermin that would otherwise eat from the royal granaries. They earned their place in towns and cities by killing mice, poisonous snakes and other pests.\n\nThe Egyptians viewed their gods not as simple spirits but as intelligences that could be personified in a body. The earliest evidence of cats as deities comes from a 3100 BCE crystal cup decorated with an image of the lion-headed goddess Mafdet. The goddess Bast was originally depicted as a fiercely protective and warlike lion, but as her image "softened" over time she became more strongly associated with domestic cats.\n\nAs cats were sacred to Bast, the practice of mummification was extended to them, and the respect that cats received after death mirrored the respect they were treated with in everyday life. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that in the event of a fire men would guard the fire to make certain that no cats ran into the flame. Herodotus also wrote that when a cat died, the household would go into mourning as if for a human relative, and would often shave their eyebrows to signify their loss.\n\nSuch was the strength of feeling towards cats that killing one, even accidentally, incurred the death penalty. Another Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, describes an interesting example of swift justice imposed upon the killer of a cat: about 60 BCE, he witnessed the chariot of a Roman soldier accidentally run over an Egyptian cat. An outraged mob gathered and, despite pleas from pharaoh Ptolemy XII, killed the soldier.\n\nThe belief that a black cat brings bad luck started in the Middle Ages, with the Germanic peoples and the Normans. To some, they were an omen of impending death. On roads, a black cat crossing one's path was considered a signal of danger ahead.\n\nSince the 1880s, the color black has been associated with anarchism. The black cat, in an alert, fighting stance was later adopted as an anarchist symbol. More specifically, the black cat is associated with anarcho-syndicalism, a branch of anarchism that focuses on workers' rights. Anarchists, Situationists and Revolutionary Industrial Unionists (such as the IWW) believe that wildcat strikes could be the spark for revolution.\n\nIn the 1930s, the Wiccan religious tradition emerged. Since much of Wicca is reconstructed from supposed witchcraft practices, the black cat was adopted as a Wiccan symbol.\n\nThe archaic associations of black cats with bad luck or evil once appeared frequently in North American popular culture, but are no longer widely held. In the early years of television, several stations located on "unlucky" channel 13 made sport of the association by using black cats as mascots. \n\nContrarily, in the UK, black cats are the most well-known sign of good luck and
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In Greek mythology, the Vulture is the descendant of the Griffin.  It was a very Buddhist-like, Zen-like symbol of the non-dual oneness of heaven and earth, spirit and matter, good and evil, guardian and avenger.  The Vulture is the avenger of nature spirits.    Ancient Assyrians believed the Vulture was, like Nagarjuna's middle way, Sunyata, the encompassing overall non-separated union between the day and night.\n\nIn Egyptian mythology, Nephthys (spelt Nebet-het, and Nebt-het, in transliteration from hieroglyphs) is one of the Ennead of Heliopolis, a daughter of Nuit and Geb, and the wife of Set. \n\nShe was banished to the desert.  As she was also seen as a bird, she gradually became seen as a vulture, which the egyptians believed never had children due to being believed to all be female (they thought vultures were spontaneously created from air). Although vultures were seen in a positive light, their feeding behaviour nevertheless lead them to be associated also with decay and death, and so Nephthys too gradually became a goddess of death and decay.
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In ancient Egyptian mythology and in myths derived from it, the phoenix is a mythical sacred firebird.\n\nSaid to live for 500, 1461 or for 12594 years (depending on the source), the phoenix is a male bird with beautiful gold and red plumage. At the end of its life-cycle the phoenix builds itself a nest of cinnamon twigs that it then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix arises. The new phoenix embalms the ashes of the old phoenix in an egg made of myrrh and deposits it in Heliopolis ("the city of the sun" in Greek), located in Egypt. The bird was also said to regenerate when hurt or wounded by a foe, thus being almost immortal and invincible — a symbol of fire and divinity.\n\nOriginally, the phoenix was identified by the Egyptians as a stork or heron-like bird called a benu, (see Bennu), known from the Book of the Dead and other Egyptian texts as one of the sacred symbols of worship at Heliopolis, closely associated with the rising sun and the Egyptian sun-god Ra.\nOne inspiration that has been suggested for the Egyptian phoenix is a specific bird species of East Africa. This bird nests on salt flats that are too hot for its eggs or chicks to survive; it builds a mound several inches tall and large enough to support its egg, which it lays in that marginally cooler location. The convection currents around these mounds resembles the turbulence of a flame.
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Um,let's see. The Nile River, which I believe begins at Lake Victoria in Africa, every year had a "flood" (from melting snows in the mountains around the lake) in which the river would literally overflow flooding the surrounding areas which then created a "season" or "seasons " of planting and harvesting (I do have a point, hang on). This "cycle", if you will, eventually evolved and created the civilization of the Egytians whose economy, religion, societal regulations and the royal hierarchy form of government. Because of the development of this birth/death/rebirth concept of religion (if I am incorrect here someone kindly correct me) which evolved due to the above-mentioned river flooding (birth), planting (death) and harvesting (re-birth), the Egyptian religion and philosophy was one of "you CAN take it with you" because if your heart was "judged" to be "good" indicated by the symbol of a feather (paraphrasing for space issues here) you crossed over into the "underworld" of the god "Anubis". So, many of the pharoahs (kings), their relatives, and other 'high society' types were buried with not only their physical belongings but also with their "slaves" or servants and gold and money and anything they would need to live in the afterworld.\nNow, if you're still with me, according to the Time/Life "Great Ages of Man" "Ancient Egypt" book, many of the gods of Egypt were associated with the animals who lived in the areas around the river. If you look at some of the gods of Egypt, there are many with heads of animals:i.e. Horus with the head of a bird, Anubis with the jackal head and Thoth with both an ibis and a baboon head, to name a few. This is one way in which the environment had a direct impact on the Egyptians and their lives, deaths and especially their monuments such as the pyramids and burial temples in the Valley of the Kings. Because the weather of that general area of the world is and was hot and arid(dry)the temples and monuments of the Egyptian kings and queens took advantage of the heat to build such monuments as the pyramids (again,someone correct me if I am wrong)! The Nile river and it's relationship to the burial sites of the Egyptians was one of total involvement and influence. Everything about the Egyptians revolved around the river which literally created their civilization.\nI hope this helped.\nAlso: I have just read a news report this week(source unknown) that the waters which have and do supply the Nile river's life-giving waters since the record of human existence in that area will dry up in approximately 20 years!! This is a serious concern because this will have a worldwide impact on the earth and its living inhabitants! I don't know whom to contact about dealing with this problem immediately, but if anyone does, kindly let me and everyone else know!!
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Yes;\n\n'Hippopotamus' means 'river horse', which is what Greeks called this powerful beast. Ancient Egyptians, guessing more correctly, called it 'river pig'\n\nThe artiodactyls are even-toed placental mammals with hooves. Within this group, pigs, peccaries and hippopotamuses make up the suborder Suiformes (from the Greek: with the shape of a pig). The hippopotamus is genetically related to the pig.
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The ancient Egyptians culture was a very advance civilization in many cases they had schools for there young people the did have religion and they had a political system that they charished a lot. The took crime as a serious thing and they also was masters of architecture. And the most important thing is that the developed a writing system which I think was created before the aztecs and mayans. They had a unique way of buring there dead which we use a similar process today.\n\nThere culture shaped the way modern civilization is today. We still use some of the things that they used over a thousand years ago and we use it today.
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short answer is : coptic means Egyptian\n \nThe Arabs who invaded Egypt in, like the Greeks, had problems pronouncing the term, Aegypti, which means "Egyptian citizen". Essentially, they changed the word to Copti.\nwhich later became coptic in English\nOf course, at that time, Egypt was a Christian nation, so the term became limited to actual Egyptian Christians as the country became more and more Muslim. \n\ntoday coptic are about 10% of total population of Egypt\nmost of them are Orthodox (Coptic Orthodox)\nI am one of them :D
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What an insane, ridiculous, X-files question!  Everyone knows that cats are the transformed and eternal vessels for souls that escaped fiery destruction and watery death in atlantis.  Fnord.
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The ancient Egyptians, or "the Blacks", as the Greeks referred to them, are responsible for mathematics, physics, chemistry, astrology, I could go on and on.  They were reading, writing volumonous books, building libraries and monuments thousands of years before the caucasian emerged from the caves of the Caucas Mtns.  I think the ancient Egyptians should be respected by ALL for thier contributions to civilization.  There is not another people on the planet who contributed more.  They taught EVERYBODY.  Europeans studied there for years prior to giving birth to this thing called racism.  And keep in mind that Alexander the So-Called Great and his team of philosophers (either socrotes or aristotle I cannot remember which was on this trip) destroyed Egypt, stole all of the ancient books, burned down the famous library at Alexandria, took them back to Greece and put Aristotle and others names on it.  Do you actually think Aristotle wrote 10,000 books?  NO.  But the Eyptians over a span of thousands of years DID.
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Ancient Egypt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia\nEgyptian society was a merging of North and Northeast African as well as Southwest Asian peoples. ... Open problems Main article: Unsolved problems in Egyptology . There is a question as to the ... \n\nen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian Cached page \nShow more results from "en.wikipedia.org".\nThe Daily Summit - Egyptian Perspectives - \nCairo has gone a long way in ICT during the past decade but several problems still exist and ... Egyptian human rights activist sees the initiative similarly but says that the Egyptian society is ... \n\nwww.dailysummit.net/english/archives/2003/12/07/egyptian_perspectives_.asp Cached page \nMuslim American Society\n... on Immigrants' Rights • MAS Freedom Foundation Condemns Egyptian ... The Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation is seeking to raise ... Prospects and Problems • Muslims in American Politics\n\nwww.masnet.org
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My great-aunt once wrote an entire book about Greek mythology in a sort of story-telling form. It was a very informative book, and it helped me stay aware of Greek and Roman references more often. People (including me) often speak of the weather as being "hotter than Hades" as a more polite way of saying "hotter than hell." Hades was the Greek god of the underworld, which would be compared to a Christian concept of hell. Companies still use these references even today in shoes (like Nike), sporting equipment, technological equipment, flowers (think FTD Florist using Hermes as their symbol), and cleaning supplies (think Ajax). As an English major, I wrote at least two poems with mythological references. I love the musical "My Fair Lady" which is related to "Pygmalion" and the old myth of the man who created his ideal woman. If you watch Disney's "Monsters Inc." there is one part where the little one-eyed monster Mike is contemplating how to smuggle the little girl Boo back into the company, and he uses a Greek reference to the Trojan horse, but dismisses it as "Too Greek!" Children would probably not understand what he said, but those of us who have studied mythology would. I do not use mythology as a replacement for religion, but it helps to understand historical references and symbolism around us.
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THE CAT THROUGH EVOLUTION \n\nNote for Pet Owners:\nIt should be noted that all cats - including domesticated species - are obligate carnivores and they cannot survive without ingesting nutrients derived from animals. CATS MUST NEVER BE FED AN EXCLUSIVELY VEGETARIAN RATION.\n\nTopics on this Page:\nEvolutionary evidence\nGeneral characteristics of cats\nThe archeological record\nDomestication\nAnatomical characteristics\nDNA sequencing\nFunctional characteristics\nPictorial artifacts and written records\n\nEvidence\nThere are several ways in which the evolution of a species can be traced - but none of the existing records are complete - even for humans. As a result, we have to speculate about the missing "links" in the historical evidence.\n\nIn zoological classification cats belong to the Class : Mammalia (mammals - hair covered animals that suckle their young with breast milk), the Order : Carnivora (they are carnivores - they eat meat) and the Family: Felidae. Within this family there are three further subdivisions called genera (Panthera (cats that roar), Acinonyx (the Cheetah) and Felis (all other "small" cats)), and each genus contains individual species. A species of cats is a group that normally breeds and produces fertile offspring (see section on DNA below)
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I'm quoting myself, because this question has been asked several times before.\n\nMelanistic (black or almost black) individuals of panther or leopard (Panthera pardus) are known as black leopards. However, there are also melanistic jaguars (Panthera onca) which are native to South America, and look superficially similar to melanistic panthers. Both may be referred to as "black leopard".\nThis confusion has to do with common names, which frequently do not make much taxonomical sense because people tend to call animals by names that remind them of other animals they know. I agree it's confusing, but there it is. \nMelanistic individuals, which may be completely black or darker than normal ones to different degrees, occur in several felid species. These individuals mate with their own species (although the question of felid hybridization is another interesting issue). The common name "panther" can be applied to any big melanistic cat, or to any of the species in genus Panthera.\nHere in Argentina, a "pantera negra" is obviously a jaguar. \n\nhttp://answers.yahoo.com/question/;_ylt=Aj1OVdF04ZwTkh_DCM9nCOAjzKIX?qid=1006021211262
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&*&*&\nI HOPE THIS HELPS YOU.  GOOD LUCK!!!\n\n\nhttp://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/animalgods.htm\n\nAnimals and the Gods of Ancient Egypt\nby Caroline Seawright\n\nEgyptian towns usually had their own local sacred animal. It was thought that some gods and goddesses represented themselves on earth in the form of a single representative of a specific species, and honoring that species of animal would please the god or goddess associated with the animal. The animal believed to be the incarnation of the god or goddess lived a pampered life in and near the temples and religious centers.\n\nBaboon y`n baboon determinative y`n - The dog-headed baboon was one of the manifestations of both Thoth, god of writing, and Khonsu, the youthful moon god. Both deities were related to the moon. Hapy, the son of Horus who guarded the canopic jars that held the lungs, had the head of a baboon. There was also a baboon god in the Early Dynastic period named Hedjwer, 'The Great White One', who became closely linked with Thoth. Sometimes Thoth was shown in baboon form, perched on top of the scales of judgement in the underworld.\n\nBast, Egyptian Cat Goddess Cat myywcat determinative myw - Many deities were depicted as cats, both domestic or wild, and so they were seen as benevolent, sacred animals. Bast, originally a desert cat, was later depicted as a domestic cat. Ra was shown as 'The Great Cat of Heliopolis' who defeated Apep in 'The Book of the Dead'.\n\nCattle mnnmnntcattle determinative mnmnt - Hathor, Isis, Nut and Bat were three goddesses who were often depicted as cows, with the horns of cows or with the ears of cows. Because of this, and because of the relationship of the pharaoh as a living god, the cow came to symbolize the mother of the pharaoh. The cow was also a solar icon, where Nut carried the sun across the sky on her back, when she was in cow form. The cow was linked to female fertility and to the mother of the pharaoh. Osiris was related to the bull - the Apis bull, after death, became Osiris-Apis. While it was still alive, the Apis bull was seen as the Ba of Ptah, mummified god of creation. The Mnevis bull was regarded as the Ba of Ra-Atum. The bull, therefor, was linked to masculinity and the pharaoh.\n\nWadjet in her Human-headed Cobra Form Cobra djtcobra in a basket determinative djt - The cobra was sacred to Wadjet, the cobra goddess of Buto, who represented Lower Egypt and kingship. The cobra goddess Renenet was a fertility goddess who was sometimes depicted as nursing children and as protector of pharaoh. Another cobra goddess was Meretseger, 'she who loves silence', who could punish criminals with blindness or her venom.\n\nCrocodile mshcrocodile determinative msh - Ammut, the demoness at the judgement hall, had the head of a crocodile along with other fearful creatures, and was known as 'the devourer of the dead' who punished evildoers by eating their hearts. The god of the Athribis region, the solar god Horus Khenty-Khenty, was sometimes shown as a crocodile. But the crocodile was also sacred to Sobek, who was portrayed as a human with the head of a crocodile, or as the crocodile itself. The temples of Sobek usually had sacred lakes where crocodiles were fed and cared for. The hippo goddess of childbirth, Taweret, was thought to have the back and tail of a crocodile, or was shown with a crocodile perched on her back.\n\nFalcon / Hawk bykfalcon with a flagellum determinative byk - The sacred bird of the falcon-headed solar god Horus, it was also regarded as his Ba. The falcon was a bird that had protective powers, and was frequently linked with royalty, where it was depicted as hovering over the head of the pharaoh, with outstretched wings. The falcon was also sacred to Montu, god of war, and Sokar, god of the Memphite necropolis. The bird of prey was sometimes associated with Hathor, 'The House of Horus'. The son of Horus, Qebehsenuef who guarded the canopic jar of t
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_cat\n\nGenus Panthera:\n    * Lion (Africa, Gir Forest in India; in southeast Europe and the Middle East in classical times)\n    * Leopard (Asia and Africa)\n\nOther "big cats":\n    * Cheetah (Africa)\n\nHybrids:\n    * Tigon (male Tiger/female Lion)\n    * Liger (male Lion/female Tiger)\n    * Jagulep (male Jaguar/female Leopard)\n    * Lepjag (male leopard/female jaguar)\n    * Congolese Spotted Lion (Jagulep or Lepjag/Lion)\n    * Marozi (male Lion/female Leopard)\n    * Leopon (male Leopard/female Lion)\n    * For other hybrids see Panthera hybrid\n\nMedium-sized cats (much smaller than "big cats"):\n    * Caracal (Africa)\n    * Serval (Africa)\n    * African Golden Cat (Africa)\n\nhttp://www.agarman.dial.pipex.com/bco/spec_afr.htm
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They are distantly related.\n\nThey share the same taxonomic clade:\nKingdom (Animalia), phylum (chordata), subphylum (vertabrata), class (mammalia), order (Carnivora) but it ends there, cats go on to have the family Felidae and bears the family Ursidae\n\nAfter family there is still the clades genus and species.\n\nHumans spilt from bears and cats at the order level.\n\nA cat is just as related to a bear as it is a dog, a seal or a raccoon.
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The Name we use today derives from the Pyramid of Pepy I at Saqqara, which is Mennufer (the good place), or Coptic Menfe. Memphis is the Greek translation. But the City was originally Ineb-Hedj, meaning "The White Wall". \n\nSome sources indicate that other versions of the name may have even translated to our modern name for the country, Egypt. During the Middle Kingdom, it was Ankh-Tawy, or "That Which Binds the Two Lands".