The goddess Sekhmet

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Ptah’s consort, sekhmet, was called the” great lady, beloved of ptah, holy one, powerful one “she was both wife and sister of ptah, a common situation in Egyptian mythology. Usually she was depicted with the body of a woman and the head of a lioness. Her head peace consisted of a solar disk which associated her with the son god and a uraeus or cobra and she was often dressed in red.

Her physical description and her name, which meant to be strong, mighty, violent reflected her character. She was renowned for her violence and power. The book of the dead attributed her power to her use of the destructive forces of the sun’s heat and also associated her with the hot winds of heaven. Other sources associated the hot winds of the desert with her breath.

She was a goddess of war and accompanied the king into a battle. Her weapons were arrows swift darts and the fiery heat of her own body which supposedly derived from the heat of the sun. She said to herself: I am the fierce heat of the fire for a distance of millions of cubits between Osiris and his enemy and I keep away from him the evil ones and remove his toes from his habitation.

Apparently her power was great enough not only to assist Osiris but at time to dominate even him. According to the book of the dead at times of storms and great floods she had power even over the great god of the underworld.    

Sekhmet’s father was said to have been Re himself and many of her attributes connected her with the sun god. In the early Egyptian writings she was often called the Eye of Re which was supposed to have represented the god when he was forced to take action against his enemies and was vindictive and fierce. The traditional evil eye, judging from the hieroglyph for this eye, we can assume that its power was derived from the combativeness of the uraeus that the heat of the sun.

When Re sent Hathor out to avenge his mistreatment by men, he sent her in the form of Sekhmet, the lioness. This merging of the two goddesses accentuates the fact that in later years Sekhmet was connected with the character of numerous other goddesses including Hathor, Mut and Baset (who is a domestic cat of Sekhmet) Amenhotep III placed several hundred statues of her in his temple dedicated to Mut at Karnak.

There were two minor characteristics of this goddess that seem at odds with her predominantly violent nature. First, she was of ten depicted holding or carrying the anx sign of life. Second, she is depicted holding or she was renowned for her role as a healer because of her knowledge of magic and sorcery. These indications or care and concern for others are not easily reconciled with what else is known about her activities.

The legend of the destruction of the man kind:

 In this legend Sekhmet was represented having the solar disk. It tells that Re became old and he was in a very strange form, so the people began to laugh at him. He became angry and decided to teach them a lesson. He assembled with the council of gods and decided to make a destruction of man kind. He asked Hathor to make this destruction but she refused because of her kind nature. So he returned Hathor in the form of Sekhmet who had a destructive nature and she began to kill people and drink their blood. Later on he became sad for the people and decided to stop this destruction but it was so late because Sekhmet had drunk a lot of blood of men so once more Re assembled with the gods’ council and they decided to stop her. So he filled a lake of red wine and the plant of mandrake. Sekhmet began drinking this liquid and she felt asleep. At this time he returned it once more to goddess Hathor. After that goddess hathor decided to return back to her place at the eye of Re but she didn’t find her place empty, so she went to Nubia and stayed there.

Later on god Re grew old and felt lonely so he went to his daughter or to his eye goddess Hathor and lived with her. According to her living in Nubia she had the title of Lady of Nubia. Here we can see goddess Sekhmet represented with the solar disk and this is a clear evidence for the identification between them in this legend.

Sekhmet was one of the members of the Memphite triad consisting of Ptah the main god, Sekhmet his consort and Nefertem who was considered later on as the local god. She was called the Lady of the red linen because of her destructive nature and because of her correspondence with there home land Lower Egypt which had the red color. She was identified with many goddesses the most important of which was goddess Mut and for this reason may be they found many statues for the goddess Sekhmet in the temple of goddess Mut at Karnak. These statues were made during the reign of Amenhotep III. All these statues were for ritual purposes. They were represented standing and holding either the anx sign or a scepter.

The statue:

These two statues were found at karnak cachette between the years 1901-1906. They were made out of grey granite. She is represented here sitting on the throne having a high back pillar. She is represented wearing the Hathoric hair wig upon which the solar disk lies having the representation of the uraeus as a sign of protection. She is putting her two hands upon her thighs, one of them is free and the other one holding the anx sign. She is represented wearing a side collar around her neck at the end of which we can notice the xkrw sign which is the sign of eternity. We can also notice that there are some representations at the sides of the statue representing the smA tAwy sign.

There are also some hieroglyphic inscriptions to the sides of the statue giving the titles of this goddess to gather with the king during his reign this statue was made

The first side:

sA ra n xt.f  Htp HqA wAst mry sxmt nbt snDw di anx Dt

The son of god Re of his divine body, Amen is happy. The ruler of Was beloved of Sekhmet lady of Fear, given life for ever

The other side:

Nfr nTr nb ir xt nb mAat ra mry sxmt nbt snDw di anx Dt

The good god, lord of action, the lord of justice of god Re, beloved of goddess Sekhmet, lady of fear, given life for ever