{"id":1928,"date":"2010-01-19T18:15:16","date_gmt":"2010-01-19T18:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2010\/01\/egypt-announces-find-of-ancien.php"},"modified":"2010-01-19T18:15:16","modified_gmt":"2010-01-19T18:15:16","slug":"egypt-announces-find-of-ancien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/01\/egypt-announces-find-of-ancien","title":{"rendered":"Egypt Announces Find of Ancient Cat Goddess Temple"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CAIRO &#8211; Archaeologists have unearthed a 2,000-year-old temple that may have been dedicated to the ancient Egyptian cat goddess, Bastet, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said Tuesday. The ruins of the Ptolemaic-era temple were discovered by Egyptian archaeologists in the heart of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C.<br \/>\nThe city was the seat of the Greek-speaking Ptolemaic Dynasty, which ruled over Egypt for 300 years until the suicide of Queen Cleopatra.<br \/>\nThe statement said the temple was thought to belong to Queen Berenice, wife of King Ptolemy III who ruled Egypt in the 3rd century B.C.<br \/>\nMohammed Abdel-Maqsood, the Egyptian archaeologist who led the excavation team, said the discovery may be the first trace of the long-sought location of Alexandria&#8217;s royal quarter.<br \/>\nThe large number of statues depicting Bastet found in the ruins, he said, suggested that this may be the first Ptolemaic-era temple dedicated to the cat goddess to be discovered in Alexandria.<br \/>\nThis would indicate that the worship of the ancient Egyptian cat-goddess continued during the later, Greek-influenced, Ptolemaic period, he said.<br \/>\nStatues of other ancient Egyptian deities were also found in the ruins, he added.<br \/>\nZahi Hawass, Egypt&#8217;s chief archaeologist, said the temple may have been used in later times as a quarry as evidenced by the large number of missing stone blocks.<br \/>\nModern Alexandria was built squarely on top of the ruins of the classical-era city and many of its great temples, palaces and libraries remain undiscovered.<br \/>\nThe temple was found in the Kom el-Dekkah neighborhood near the city&#8217;s main train station and home to a Roman-era amphitheater and well preserved mosaics.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CAIRO &#8211; Archaeologists have unearthed a 2,000-year-old temple that may have been dedicated to the ancient Egyptian cat goddess, Bastet, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said Tuesday. The ruins of the Ptolemaic-era temple were discovered by Egyptian archaeologists in the heart of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Egypt Announces Find of Ancient Cat Goddess Temple<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/01\/egypt-announces-find-of-ancien\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Egypt Announces Find of Ancient Cat Goddess Temple\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"CAIRO &#8211; Archaeologists have unearthed a 2,000-year-old temple that may have been dedicated to the ancient Egyptian cat goddess, Bastet, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said Tuesday. 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The ruins of the Ptolemaic-era temple were discovered by Egyptian archaeologists in the heart of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/01\/egypt-announces-find-of-ancien","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2010-01-19T18:15:16+00:00","author":"mconsoli","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/01\/egypt-announces-find-of-ancien","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/01\/egypt-announces-find-of-ancien","name":"Egypt Announces Find of Ancient Cat Goddess Temple","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-01-19T18:15:16+00:00","dateModified":"2010-01-19T18:15:16+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/01\/egypt-announces-find-of-ancien#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/01\/egypt-announces-find-of-ancien"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/01\/egypt-announces-find-of-ancien#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Egypt Announces Find of Ancient Cat Goddess Temple"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6","name":"mconsoli","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","caption":"mconsoli"},"description":"\"Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d -Benjamin Disraeli","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/mconsoli"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}