Prayer and private offerings are generally called "personal piety": acts that reflect a close relationship between an individual and a god. Evidence of personal piety is scant before the New Kingdom. Votive offerings and personal names, many of which are theophoric, suggest that commoners felt some connection between themselves and their gods, but firm evidence of devotion to deities became visible only in the New Kingdom, reaching a peak late in that era. Scholars disagree about the meaning of this change—whether direct interaction with the gods was a new development or an outgrowth of older traditions. Egyptians now expressed their devotion through a new variety of activities in and around temples. They recorded their prayers and their thanks for divine help on stelae. They gave offerings of figurines that represented the gods they were praying to, or that symbolized the result they desired; thus, a relief image of Hathor and a statuette of a woman could both represent a prayer for fertility. Occasionally, a person took a particular god as a patron, dedicating his or her property or labor to the god's cult. These practices continued into the latest periods of Egyptian history. These later eras saw more religious innovations, including the practice of giving animal mummies as offerings to deities depicted in animal form, such as the cat mummies given to the feline goddess Bastet. Some of the major deities from myth and official religion were rarely invoked in popular worship, but many of the great state gods were important in popular tradition.