I was watching Black Panther the other night and it clicked with me that they name the god Bast as the deity who gave Wakanda the purple flower that gives the Black Panther their powers. Since the writers often drew from mythology, I wondered if Bast was an actual mythological figure and turns out, they were!

That made me wonder about Bast in the KKC and if that might be where the inspiration for the character came from, but I didn’t see anything about when I searched the sub. Since there’s a lot of discussion here about who Bast is and what Bast wants with Kvothe, I thought I’d share.

The god Bast is from Egyptian mythology. Every site I looked at had slightly different ideas on what Bast’s role was, but they all linked Bast to cats and protection. All said Bast was female. Some said Bast was a goddess of war and rage and some said she had a secondary duty of helping ferry the dead into the afterlife.

Thoughts?

Edit: it’s been a couple months since I last reread the books so I don’t remember, but does Bast interact with cats in the books? The protection role definitely fits though.