Bubasteion of Saqqara

The Bubasteion was a Ptolemaic-Roman temple precinct for the cat goddess Bastet, carved into the desert escarpment at Saqqara. In Arabic the site was called Abouab el-qotat, the gates of the cats. Behind the sanctuary, archaeologists found a vast underground labyrinth of galleries holding hundreds of thousands of mummified cats offered to the goddess, from the 7th century BC into Roman times. Some galleries were tunneled through older New Kingdom rock tombs, which makes the stratigraphy notoriously messy. French and Swiss missions still dig here; the precinct itself is not open to the public. From Djoser's pyramid you can look across to the cliff that hides it.