Bast or Bastet was ancient Egyptian goddess. According to Wikipedia Bast worshiped from the Second Dynasty period. She was the symbol of home, domesticity, fertility, women's secret, childbirth and cats. She protected house, women and children from evil spritis and diseases. Bast was one of the daughters of Egyptian sun god, Ra. The cat was the symbol of Bast. There were found lots of cat statues during archaeological excavations in Egypt. Also, there was found Bast figure from Ganja city, Azerbaijan. It is dated to the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age. This little figure is exhibited in the exposition of National Museum of Azerbaijani History. The photo below is the Bast figure found from Ganja.
The map included to this blogpost was published in 1910 in Saint Petersburg, the capital of Russian empire. "A. F. Marks spciety" made big geographical atlas. It was named "Mark's Big World Table Atlas". That included in itself many maps of those times. Why we show this map in post. The main reason is that when we observe in this map - which were made by Russian geographers in Saint Petersburg - toponyms of modern Armenia are all in Azerbaijani language. There is no any Armenian words in the map in 1910. After Soviet occupatian of Azerbaijan, and creating Armenia SSR in the lands of Azerbaijan these toponyms were changed and armenized. The map is being exhibited in the National Museum of History of Azerbaijan.

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