Bastet as "isheru", not too dissimilar from that surrounding the temple of the mother goddess Mut in Karnak at Thebes. These lakes were typical of temples devoted to a number of lioness goddesses who are said to represent one original goddess, daughter of the Sun-God Ra / Eye of Ra: Bastet, Mut, Tefnut, Hathor, and Sakhmet. Each of them had to be appeased by a specific set of rituals. One myth relates that a lioness, fiery and wrathful, was once cooled down by the water of the lake, transformed into a gentle cat, and settled in the temple. In the temple,
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