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The ancient egyptians worshipped cats as gods. Cats are really smart creatures as you can see in this video. Even non-sentient/intelligent cats played a big role in the egyptian culture.

If the egyptian cats were twice as intelligent as an adult human: How would it have affected the development of their religion,Would they become monotheists focusing their religion on the cats? If yes how if not why?

Let's say these cats cannot communicate with humans verbally. Instead they communicate with body language and signs. Hey, some humans can't talk, but they can express themselves very well!

Seraph Myrmidon
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    As it stands, this question is extremely broad. As a start I'd recommend limiting the scope to just one of the three categories you mention (religion, history, or society) and even then I think it would still be too broad, so you'll need to narrow down the question even more, and focus on a specific target. Remember that a question needs to be definitively answerable, and not just an open-ended prompt for a discussion. "What-if" scenarios in history often have this problem, because there is really no telling how one small change might butterfly and propagate forward. – MozerShmozer Apr 27 '17 at 18:24
  • @MozerShmozer I know...I think i must split this question into a series of questions. – Seraph Myrmidon Apr 27 '17 at 18:26
  • When you say "their religion" do you mean the cats or the peoples? – cobaltduck Apr 27 '17 at 18:43
  • @cobaltduck The religion of the humans i mean that. – Seraph Myrmidon Apr 27 '17 at 18:43
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    Come on, these are cats. They will all think themselves gods, every single one of them. – Spencer Apr 27 '17 at 23:33

2 Answers2

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No, they would not become monotheists with more than one cat-god around.

Cats would create a civilization where humans are their servants, and design all the social structures and be the leaders.

Writing would be more important, since the cats can’t speak.

JDługosz
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Not necessarily. Remember that cats were worshiped in ancient egypt, even though cats are less inteligent than humans, even the human slaves and servants the egyptians exploited for their civilization. If inteligence came into the figure, then slaves would be worshiped ahead of cats, but they weren't.

The closer the egyptians came to monotheism was at the time of the reign of Pharaoh AKhenaton, when they worshiped the Sun. However, the sun is not inteligent, but rather a non-sentient being.

Pagan peoples worshiped gods that were personifications of forces of nature. See my answer here. They worshiped them to gain a little control over their mortal lives, since they were under the influence of mighty forces they could not control.

Even the egyptian cat-gods were forces of nature, in a sense. Mafdet was a goddess of justice and Bastet was a goddess of war. Cats were only divine in that they participated in Bastet's identity, not the other way around.

For the feline monotheism to kick in, the cats would have to convince the egyptians that cats (and only cats) were able to control the forces of nature they feared... the Nile floods, the harvests, the astrological influence of the stars... So, only by appeasing the cats, would the egyptians be able to survive.

In my opinion, the cats' best bet would be to convince the egyptians that they were masters of the Underworld, since that claim could not be falsifiable and they wouldn't need to know a lot about astronomy or meteorology.

The other way would be for the cats to become rulers of the egyptians. Remember, the Pharaoh was worshiped as a god.

Pedro Gabriel
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