Cats 'Remember Being Worshipped' In Ancient Egypt in Hilarious Online Trend

Cat videos are everywhere on the internet in the modern day, but a current trend is taking felines back to a time way before the web.

According to TikTok, cats are being reminded of a time when they were more than just house pets—a time of god-like worship in ancient Egypt. With the help of a popular TikTok sound, owners are seemingly sending their pets into a trance.

According to Know Your Meme, the trend began with Portuguese TikTok user @juliusscesar in August, who uploaded the sound of an ancient Egyptian flute called a Ney.

The clip has gained over two million views since, and has now prompted a series of videos with the sound across Portuguese TikTok.

Just one day after the first upload, @nathaliabbq paired the sound with a cat for the first time, writing: "They say cats were treated like gods in ancient Egypt, so I put on the sound of their supposed flute." The video showed her cat captivated by the sound as it stared deeply to the tune of it.

In the month since, the trend has spread to TikTok accounts across the world, and produced some highly entertaining clips.

Four days ago, TikTok user @crazycris94 gained over five million likes with a clip of their cat reacting to the sound. The cat's ears perked up as it froze, before it stared intensely at the camera, almost as if in a trance.

@boleshuli's cat however took a different approach, seemingly taking on its past life completely, drawing comparisons of looking like a god. In the slow-mo video, its fur is blowing in the wind as it stared deeply into the camera. "Bro, I think my cat is still an ancient god," wrote the owner, as the video gained over 2.9 million likes.

The trend might have cats believing or looking like they were once worshipped, but technically it isn't quite true.

According to historians, cats were regarded highly in ancient Egypt, and gods were sometimes believed to embody felines, but the animals weren't worshipped themselves.

Julia Troche, an Egyptologist, assistant professor of history at Missouri State University, and author of Death, Power, and Apotheosis in Ancient Egypt, The Old and Middle Kingdoms told HISTORY: "Though it is hard to say the Egyptians thought one thing or another, since so much change happened across their 3,000-plus years of history, the ancient Egyptians, in general, did not worship animals. Rather, [they] saw animals as representations of divine aspects of their gods."

"Cats were not worshipped as gods themselves, but as vessels that the gods chose to inhabit, and whose likeness gods chose to adopt," explained Monique Skidmore, a professor of anthropology at Deakin University to HISTORY.

"These gods could not just appear with the head of a cat, for example, but could inhabit the bodies of cats. That's why cats were mummified, and a whole economy around breeding and mummifying cats was created in ancient Egypt."

Goddesses like Bastet, the daughter of Ra and Isis, were often depicted by Egyptians as a domestic cat, for example.

Regardless of whether or not gods inhabited cats, the animals were still looked at with love by ancient Egyptians, who admired their intelligence and benefits to daily life.

Cats would chase away unwanted and dangerous animals including snakes and scorpions, and were often depicted on the walls of tombs, showing how appreciated they were.

Factual or not, the TikTok trend is taking over, and proving pretty hilarious.

Stray cat in Egypt
Stock image of a cat. Getty Images