Long ago, so the Egyptians thought, the gods ruled as kings on Earth. The longest and most glorious reign was that of Ra, the sun-god, and one of the ultimate...
Long ago, so the Egyptians thought, the gods ruled as kings on Earth. The longest and most glorious reign was that of Ra, the sun-god, and one of the ultimate authorities in the Universe. But humankind got complacent, given the luxury in which they lived under Ra’s rule. Some even began to plot against him. Ra heard of the plot and became angry. He summoned to his side his daughter, the lion-headed Sekhmet. He ordered her to hunt out the conspirators, and to devour them. This she did, with some glee, but the killings increased her bloodlust. Soon, her hunger threatened to rid the world of the entire human race. Ra became concerned that his creation might not survive, so sourced an entire lake’s worth of beer, coloured it red with ochre, until it resembled blood. He showed the lake to Sekhmet, who drank heartily of it. After a while, the inebriated goddess found her bloodlust waning, and she settled down for a nap. Thus, humanity was saved, but Ra decided that the time had come to retire, and abdicated his earthly throne.
Sekhmet’s fearsome reputation was, then, clearly established in myth. But the goddess also became associated with healing, a patron of physicians. Sekhmet’s power to bring illness and destruction was paralleled by her ability to keep those forces at bay. It was for this reason that the wab-priests of Sekhmet practiced medicine alongside the professional physicians (swnw). In the Edwin Smith Papyrus, a New Kingdom copy of a Middle Kingdom medical text, various practical remedies are listed, and are described as being carried out both by physicians and priests of Sekhmet. ‘If,’ Case 1 reads, ‘the priests of Sekhmet or any physician put his hands or his fingers upon the head […] he measures the heart, because its vessels are in the back of the head.’ On the reverse of the papyrus are various incantations designed to offer magico-religious assistance to the afflicted, which profess to exorcise ‘the demons of disease, the malignant spirits, the messengers of Sekhmet.’ The association between Sekhmet and healing was early: in the Fifth Dynasty (c. 2575 BC – c. 2140 BC), a wab-priest of Sekhmet, Wenen-Nefer, is listed in his tomb as ‘the inspector of physicians’ (sehedj swnw).
The use of Sekhmet amulets to protect individuals from illness and misfortune was, however, a late phenomenon. They seem to appear in the Third Intermediate Period (1077 BC – 664 BC), a time of political disunity and foreign rule. It was perhaps the unprecedented instability of Egyptian life at this time that prompted individuals to seek a more personal connection with this warrior-nursemaid. Usually made from faience, a kind of opaque natural glass, Sekhmet amulets became extremely popular, and various forms are known from museum collections. This unusual carnelian example depicts the goddess as a lioness-headed woman, in the traditional striding pose. Her right arm rests by her side, while her left hand holds a tall staff fashioned from a stem of papyrus. Her leonine features are gracefully proportioned, and even at this small scale, one can see the heavy wig which disguised the join between animal and human components. On her head is the brilliant solar disk, which associates her with her father Ra. The entire composition is supported by a back-pillar, which was often used in full-sized sculpture to add rigidity and stability. This representation follows closely the model of some of the sculptures of Sekhmet commissioned by the great Pharaoh Amenhotep III (e.g. British Museum EA80), whose own close relationship to the goddess expanded her cult greatly.
References: a similar Sekhmet amulet in faience is in London (British Museum EA26311).