Offerings to Goddess Bast – for her Birthday

Just a few days after the Winter Solstice, the Ancient Egyptians celebrated the birthday of the Goddess Bast (Bastet). The offerings to Bast included fine wine, beer, chocolate, water, fruit, fruit juices and meat – Bast, the Cat Goddess, was certainly a carnivore.

The colors identified with Bast are green and gold as well as other solar colors including black, orange, yellow or red as the avenging Eye.

Here are a few invocations and litanies to Bast in celebration of her birthday:

Litany to Bast (Bast-Mut)
Bast, Lady of Bubastis
Bast, Eye of Heru
Bast, who resides in the Meadows of the God
Bast, of the Campaign of Bubastis
Bast, of the Place of Her Power
Bast, with innumerable faces
Bast, who presides over the Mysteries
Mut, the Great Lady of Isheru.

Invocation to Bast
Lady of the Shrine, Daughter of Heru, Residing in Bubastis.

Invocation to Bast
Bast, Lady of Bubastis, Eye of Ra, Mistress of the Gods,
Great of Magic, Mother of the God,
Lady of Heaven, Mistress of Both Lands.

Invocation to Bast
Lady of Per-Bast, Daughter of Ra, Queen of the Sky, Who Rules over all the Gods,
Great One, Lady of Per-Bast, Priestess Heri Sesheta of Tum, Only One,
Who has no descent, the Goddess of the North, Who rules.

Litany to Bast
Bast, Lady of Bubastis, Eye of Ra, Mistress of the East, who protects Her beloved son, Heru Hekenu, Mistress of the Birthplace of Her beloved son.

Invocation to Bast
Bast, Lady of Bubastis, Princess,
Mistress of Philae, Eye of Ra,
Who gleams on His forehead,
Richly adorned in God’s Land.

Invocation to Bast
Bast, Princess, Lady of Bubastis,
Worthy One, Powerful at the Head of the Birth House,
Anat, who protects Her son Heru.

Bibliography

Edouard Henri Naville. Bubastis (1887-1889). (London: Kegan Paul, Trubner and Co. 57 & 59, 1891).

Goyon, Jean-Claude. Confirmation du Pouvoir Royal au Nouvel an : Brooklyn Museum papyrus 47.218.50. (Institut Francais D’Archeologie Orientale et Brooklyn Museum, 1972). Translated by Chelsea Bolton.

Junker, Hermann. Der Grosse Pylon des Tempels der Isis in Phila. (Wien: Kommission bei Rudolf M. Rohrer, 1958), Translated by Chelsea Bolton.

Junker, Hermann and Eric Winter. Das Geburtshaus des Tempels der Isis in Phila. (Wien, 1965), Translated by Chelsea Bolton.

Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson. Ramesside Inscriptions: Merenptah and the Late Nineteenth Dynasty: IV. (Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 251.