ABSTRACT
According to some modern historians, the pet animal is a product of modernity, and the pet relationship one which appeared in the nineteenth century as a response to urbanism and the growing importance of the private sphere in society. This chapter presents the documentation of the pet relationships that cover a wide range, from lapdogs and aquarium fish to farm animals as playmates for children, and from dangerous animals kept as status objects to working animals such as hounds and horses. The Greek Anthology contains many epitaphs in verse, for animals as well as humans, and several are epitaphs for cicadas and crickets. While pet cats are never represented in royal tombs, we know that pharaohs, queens, princes and princesses enjoyed their feline companions as much as the Egyptian did. In the New Kingdom, from the reign of Tuthmosis III, domestic cats are represented frequently in elite tomb art, suggesting that they had been fully integrated into the Egyptian home.
