Eye of Ra- Egyptian ConceptConcept"The Burning Eye"

The First Eye

Atum existed alone in the primeval waters of Nun. He sent forth his Eye to search for his first children, Shu and Tefnut, who had become lost in the formless darkness. The Eye found them and brought them back. But when it returned, a new eye had grown in its place.

The original Eye wept in fury at being supplanted. From its tears, remyt, humanity, remet, was born: an etymological pun the Egyptians preserved as literal truth. To appease the wrathful Eye, Atum placed it upon his brow as the uraeus and granted it sovereignty over all creation. The right to burn. The right to rage.

The Uraeus

The Eye sits on the pharaoh's brow as the uraeus, a rearing cobra identified with the goddess Wadjet. It spits fire at the king's enemies. Every pharaoh from the earliest dynasties wore it, and to appear without the uraeus would have been as unthinkable as appearing without the crowns of kingship.

Royal inscriptions called the king "beloved of the Eye of Ra," shielded by her flame. In battle, the uraeus burned foreign enemies. In peace, the king channeled her warmth through daily ritual. The Pyramid Texts already speak of the Eye's fire defending the throne, and two thousand years later, Roman-era pharaohs still wore the cobra on their brows.

The Wandering Eye

In the Myth of the Distant Goddess, the Eye leaves Egypt. Offended or restless, she retreats to Nubia, and without her the land dries up. Crops fail. The Nile shrinks.

Ra sends Thoth to bring her back. In the Demotic narrative preserved in Papyrus Leiden I 384, Thoth tells the goddess a series of animal fables during the long journey home, stories about the cost of uncontrolled anger. She listens. She relents. She returns, and the Nile floods, and Egypt comes back to life. Her homecoming festivals were loud with music and heavy with drink.

The Destruction of Mankind

The Book of the Heavenly Cow tells of Ra grown old. Humans conspired against him, and he convened the gods to respond. He sent forth his Eye in the form of Hathor to punish the rebels.

Hathor descended and began her slaughter. As she drank human blood, her rage transformed her into Sekhmet. The lioness killed so ferociously the Nile ran red. She waded through the carnage and would not stop.

Ra relented, but Sekhmet could not be halted by command. The gods brewed seven thousand jars of beer and dyed them red with ochre from Elephantine. When this crimson flood was poured across the fields at Dendera, Sekhmet drank deeply, mistook it for blood, and collapsed into a stupor. Humanity survived. Ra withdrew from the earth on the back of the celestial cow and left the world below to govern itself.

Appeasing the Eye

Because the Eye could slip beyond control, the Egyptians built rituals to calm her. The annual festival of Sekhmet offered hymns and intoxicating drink to turn the lioness from destroyer to healer. Sekhmet's priests were physicians: her power over death made into power over disease.

At Dendera, the Festival of Drunkenness drew worshippers who drank themselves into ecstatic states. They reenacted the moment beer saved humanity. Temple musicians played sistra and shook menat necklaces to soothe the goddess. Priests made daily offerings of ma'at to "cool" the Eye, the word itself a ritual formula spoken over incense and food. The next morning, the priests would begin again.