Cats serving mice
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 6). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Plausible
Date or witness: Ramesside Egypt, approximately 1292–1077 BCE
Region: Deir el-Medina / Thebes, Egypt
Workbook date-sort bounds: 1292 BCE to 1077 BCE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
Cats act as servants to seated, privileged mice: preparing tables, presenting food or fanning them. Turin Suppl.6296 is one securely dated example, and British Museum papyrus EA10016-2 supplies another.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
Cat-serving-mouse imagery repeats across limestone ostraca and illustrated papyri; a Turin ostracon has excavated Deir el-Medina provenance, an artisans community.
What remains uncertain
Strong social-context candidate when grouped with 7–11, but the purpose and transmission route remain inferred. Skilled royal craftsmen were a distinctive community; papyrus was an elite material, and cheap ostraca are not proof of low-status consumption.
Candidate-index family 8: Animal role reversals in Egyptian artisans’ visual culture
The workbook groups records 6–11 here and rates the family Plausible. This is a research shortlist, not proof of an independently established meme family.
Dated evidence: c.1292–1077 BCE; individual witnesses have narrower dates
Region: Deir el-Medina / Thebes, Egypt
Shortlist uncertainty: One related visual family. Artisans’ settlement context is documented; use, meaning and independent circulation remain partly inferred.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria
Related image: this is Brooklyn Museum object 37.51E, dated ca. 1295–1070 BCE; the catalogue separately names Turin Suppl.6296 and British Museum EA10016-2. Credit: Brooklyn Museum, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons. Delivery derivatives use the same license.
