Bastet and those who could would have them embalmed or buried in cat cemeteries—pointing to the great prevalence of the cult of Bastet. Extensive burials of cat remains were found not only at Bubastis, but also at Beni Hasan and Saqqara. In 1888, a farmer uncovered a plot of many hundreds of thousands of cats in Beni Hasan. Herodotus also relates that of the many solemn festivals held in Egypt, the most important and most popular one was that celebrated in Bubastis in honor of the goddess. Each year on the day of her festival, the town was said to have
Bastet Egyptian as "pr-bꜣstt" (also transliterated as "Per-Bastet"), carries her name, literally meaning "House of Bastet". It was known in Greek as "Boubastis" ("Βούβαστις") and translated into Hebrew as "Pî-beset", spelled without the initial "t" sound of the last syllable. In the biblical Book of Ezekiel 30:17, the town appears in the Hebrew form "Pibeseth". Herodotus, a Greek historian who traveled in Egypt in the fifth century BCE, describes Bastet's temple at some length: The description offered by Herodotus and several Egyptian texts suggest that water surrounded the temple on three (out of four) sides, forming a type of lake known