The Getty Museum in Los Angeles announced this past March that the Egyptian cat statuette in its collection is a genuine ancient artifact after all. Acquired by J. Paul Getty in 1955, it was long suspected to be a forgery or imitation and, thus, was never put on display. Measuring almost 13 inches tall, the bronze statuette represents the Egyptian goddess Bastet as a sitting cat with a wedjat (sacred eye) amulet pendant around her neck. Following the 1887–1889 Swiss excavations at Tell Basta—the epicenter of Bastet’s worship, about 35 miles north of Cairo—the European art market was flooded […]
