Family Learns Statue From A Garage Sale Is Actually An Ancient Treasure

There was a lot of junk in the house, but given Doreen’s penchant for digging through garage sales and thrift stores, the family felt there was something of value hiding in storage. They never suspected the most valuable item was sitting right on the mantle.

David Lay honed right in on a 7-inch cat statue. Sure it was something valuable, he asked the family where Doreen had first found the decoration. He couldn’t believe the answer.

The Liddells said Doreen bought the cat at a garage sale! She never showed it off much, so visitors never paid much attention to it. David Lay, however, was not like most visitors. Some marvelous details popped out at him. This wasn’t an ordinary cat.

The auctioneer took the statue back to his office, where he gave it a closer glance. After examining the cat’s ornate markings and the brilliant carving job, David Lay had a hunch about there this statue came from. He just needed one piece of information about Doreen.

So, David picked up the phone, and he called the Liddells, who were taken aback by the information he was asking for. He needed a key piece of information about the previously deceased Mr. Douglas Liddell — Doreen’s husband.

Specifically, he needed to know about Douglas Liddell’s career. Where did he work? The Liddells filled David Lay in: He worked at the Spink and Son auction house in London. David was elated. Suddenly, the cat figure started making sense.

See, Spink and Son has been in business since 1666 and is known for specializing in ancient Egyptian artifacts. If you were looking for genuine pieces of Egyptian history, Spink and Son was the place to go.

Part of the reason why the firm is so well-known for selling Egyptian goods is because they handled the estate of archaeologist Howard Carter. Howard is one of the most renowned archaeologists in history for his groundbreaking discoveries.

In 1922, Howard discovered the tomb and sarcophagus of Tutankhamun. Recording the contents of the massive gravesite was an 11-year process — one that brought great notoriety to the Egyptologist.

This find was so exciting because it was the only tomb in the Valley of the Kings that hadn’t been plundered by various other explorers over the years. Howard was the first modern person to have rediscovered the Egyptian ruler.

After the 11 years of cataloguing, Howard was an agent for art collectors and museums — he probably got tired of looking at artifacts after spending that much time examining them. When he died in 1939 of lymphoma, he died with an illustrious legacy.

So, David Lay wondered: was the little bronze cat statue from Howard’s personal relic collection? Or was it a phony knockoff? The auctioneer dug deeper and deeper into this statue’s history.

The cat dates back to 600 B.C., putting it at about 2,500 years old. The Lidells believe that Douglas purchased the feline during Howard’s Spink and Son-managed estate sale, but there isn’t a record of this.

Here’s what we do know about this one-of-a-kind, extremely valuable trinket. The statue was crafted during the 26th Dynasty of ancient Egypt. Under the leadership of King Psamtik I, there were major increases in associating deities with animals, like cats.

Cats themselves were linked to Bastet, who protected them along with households, fertility, and childbirth. Felines who died were often buried around her temples to honor both her and the animal too. She wasn’t the only deity linked to cats.

A less-gentle cat connection is the goddess Sakhmet. When Ra, the sun god, was angry with humanity, he sent ferocious, lion-headed Sakhmet to punish them. She got carried away with her task and was a bit too violent while she was eating them alive. Oh, those silly lion goddesses and the deaths they enact.

Ra knew he had to do something or Sakhmet wouldn’t stop killing, so he gave her a red-colored beer, which mimicked all the human blood she satiated herself with. Once she drank the beer, she fell asleep and stopped eating the humans.

Even though Sakhmet has a violent past with the people who worship her, there were still plenty of detailed, gorgeous statues of her. For instance, at the “Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt,” exhibit at Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., there were plenty of ornate Sakhmet figures.

Though ancient Egyptians didn’t worship cats, the museum’s curatorial fellow Antonietta Catanzariti explains, they were obsessed with their nature as animals. “What they were [actually] doing was associating cats to specific deities because of their attitude, how they were behaving in the natural world,” Antoiniette said.

“Everything had a meaning. A cat protecting the house from mice. Or it might just protect kittens. These were attitudes that were attributed to a specific goddess,” Antoiniette said. Egyptians just truly appreciated cats — a people after our own hearts.

So, what does this have to do with the bronze cat statue? Because of its connection with both a famous Egyptologist, it’s condition, and its depiction of an animal extremely important in an ancient society, the figurine is worth a great chunk of change.

David took to the cat figurine to the British Museum to check for authenticity, and was delighted to tell the Liddells that the institution was excited to examine such a wonderful example of ancient art.

Penzance Auction Rooms estimated ‘very conservatively’ that the family could get £5,000 to £10,000 but could even receive £50,000, or about $64,000. Even David Lay knew, that when auctioning off pieces from history, the selling point was anyone’s guess.