Bastet worship changed from being a lioness deity into being predominantly a major cat deity. Because domestic cats tend to be tender and protective of their offspring, Bastet was also regarded as a good mother, and she was sometimes depicted with numerous kittens. Consequently, a woman who wanted children sometimes wore an amulet showing the goddess with kittens, the number of which indicated her own desired number of children. The native Egyptian rulers were replaced by Greeks during an occupation of Egypt in the Ptolemaic Dynasty that lasted almost 300 years. The Greeks sometimes equated Bastet with one of their goddesses,
Column of the Goddess while the statue was sculpted by Théophile Bra as an allegory of the besieged city wearing a mural crown. It was nicknamed the "Goddess" by the inhabitants of Lille soon after the erection of the memorial, as some local poems suggest. Column of the Goddess The Column of the Goddess is the popular name given by the citizens of Lille (France) to the Memorial of the Siege of 1792. The memorial is still in the center of the "Grand′ Place" (central square) of Lille, and has been surrounded by a fountain since around 1990. The siege of September 1792 was