Bastet

I believe, like you, that civilization is a natural and inevitable consequence, whether good or evil I am not prepared to state.

~ Robert E. Howard

In the last years of my life as U Kai, your kind began to wander off to the far reaches of the globe. Sometimes you were following great herds of animals. Other times you had discovered that fire and the tools or structures you made from it had opened the path to lands that you would never have been able to inhabit before. But more often than not it was curiosity. Some insatiable desire to learn and discover. It was out of this need that great civilizations grew from the earth. These groups became incredibly powerful. Agriculture sprang up and began to flourish. Your people were now growing stronger than ever, living longer than before. They began to forge inventions that allowed them to overcome their own weakness: wagons and baskets, levers and pulleys.

In a way that makes sense, given humanity's talent to overcoming its own weakness. Man began to subjugate the animals around them. They created contraptions to bind them to their will with harnesses, collar, and whips. Those animals that they could not bind, they began to worship alongside the deities of old, like myself. It was in this world that I became Bastet. At first, I was worshiped in Egypt alongside the lions of the savanna as a fierce and vicious being. I was still wild and uncivilized like the cats off the street who would not yet bow to man. Many of my fellow deities followed a similar path, becoming figures of worship to mankind throughout the world, some retaining their animal forms, others taking a more human figure, and some becoming human-like entirely.

However, once man had succeeded in subduing the animals they turned on one another. This turn of events may have been the natural order, like that of a wolf pack, had it not been for the greed of those men. It was not out of kindness that they rose to the top, but cruelty and greed. A desire to be above all others. They began to oppress one another, creating the vast kingdoms of Babylon and Egypt (where I resided at the time). They began enslaving one another. Torturing and pillaging their neighbors for resources that were abundant elsewhere. In the midst of this undertaking, I began to shed my wildness. I became a guardian of the cats who sought refuge and comfort in the homes of humans. I became domestic myself, a household name in Egypt. There I lived amongst the last of the animal deities as a protector and joy-giver.

I continued to watch as dynasties fell and sprang up. African Kings, blessed Judea, the children of Greece and Rome, Persia, the Olmecs and Mayans across the ocean, I saw it all come and go with the tides of time. Then I watched on the eve of my last life, as Rome changed from a shattered war-torn empire into the power of a new world as that clever Octavius conned a nation into believing him a blessing to the state. Here I abandoned my old title, now obsolete in a world of change. No longer was I needed to watch over men as divinity, caring for a singular people. I could do more helping those with power, with ideas and the ability to use those ideas, to make a change. But as I looked out over this world in my last days as Bastet, I could not help but wonder if all this was worth it. Was all the war and bloodshed, the pain and heartbreak, worth the progress? If I had stayed in my original position, the one the unknown had originally given me, could I have done better?

This question would continue to haunt me for many more lifetimes. I am still not sure if there is an answer. In my next life, things did not change. Man still killed man for petty reasons, but there was hope. As Muezza, I would sit alongside great men who attempted to make a change in the hearts of their fellow mankind.