Sekhmet

In Egyptian mythology, Sekhmet (/ˈsɛkˌmɛt/[1] or Sachmis (/ˈsækmɪs/), also spelled Sakhmet, Sekhet, Sakhet, or Scheme, among other spellings), is a warrior goddess as well as goddess of healing. She is depicted as a lioness. She was seen as the protector of the pharaohs and led them in warfare. Upon death, Sekhmet continued to protect them, bearing them to the afterlife.

Sekhmet
Sekhmet with head of lioness and a solar disk/sun disk and uraeus on her head
Name in hieroglyphs
Major cult center	Memphis, Leontopolis
Symbol	Sun disk, red linen, lioness
Parents	Ra and/or Hathor
Consort	Ptah
Offspring	Nefertem

Sekhmet is a solar deity, sometimes called the daughter of Ra and often associated with the goddesses Hathor and Bastet. She bears the Uraeus, which associates her with Wadjet and royalty, and the solar disk.

Etymology

Sekhmet's name comes from the Ancient Egyptian word sḫm, which means "power or might". Sekhmet's name (Ancient Egyptian: sḫmt, /'sɛχmit/, later Old Coptic: ⲥⲁⲭⲙⲓ) is thus translated as "the (one who is) powerful or mighty". She also was given titles such as the "(One) Before Whom Evil Trembles", "Mistress of Dread", "Lady of Slaughter" and "She Who Mauls".

Roles

Sekhmet was considered the daughter of the sun god, Ra, and was among the more important of the goddesses who acted as the vengeful manifestation of Ra's power, the Eye of Ra. Sekhmet was said to breathe fire, and the hot winds of the desert were likened to her breath. She was also believed to cause plagues, which were called her servants or messengers, although she was also called upon to ward off disease.[2]

In a myth about the end of Ra's rule on the earth, Ra sends the goddess Hathor, in the form of Sekhmet, to destroy mortals who conspired against him. In the myth, Sekhmet's blood-lust was not quelled at the end of battle and led to her destroying almost all of humanity. To stop her Ra poured out beer dyed with red ochre or hematite so that it resembled blood. Mistaking the beer for blood, she became so drunk that she gave up the slaughter and returned peacefully to Ra.[3] The same myth was also described in the prognosis texts of the Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky Days of papyrus Cairo 86637.[4]

Sekhmet was considered the wife of the god Ptah and mother of his son Nefertum. She was also said to be the mother of a lion god, Maahes.[5]

Iconography

Sekhmet was envisioned as a fierce lioness, and in art, was depicted as such, or as a woman with the head of a lioness, who was dressed in red, the color of blood. Sometimes the dress she wears exhibits a rosetta pattern over each breast, an ancient leonine motif, which can be traced to observation of the shoulder-knot hairs on lions. Occasionally, Sekhmet was also portrayed in her statuettes and engravings with minimal clothing or naked.

The royal biers were fashioned to represent Sekhmet symbolizing her role as protector, even in death. They are depicted in all images of the embalming rites, showing her head, the characteristic tufted tail, and her feet. In the tombs, the coffins were placed on them.

It is estimated that more than seven hundred statues of Sekhmet once stood in one funerary temple alone, that of Amenhotep III, on the west bank of the Nile.

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  Sekhmet from the temple of Mut at Luxor, granite, 1403–1365 B.C., in the National Museum, Copenhagen
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  Upper torso and head of the goddess Sekhmet, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow.
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  Image from a ritual Menat necklace, depicting a ritual being performed before a statue of Sekhmet on her throne, she also is flanked by the goddess Wadjet as the cobra and the goddess Nekhbet as the white vulture, symbols of Lower and Upper Egypt respectively who always were depicted on the crown of Egypt and referred to as the two ladies, and the supplicant holds a complete menat and a sistrum for the ritual, circa 870 B.C. (Berlin, Altes Museum, catalogue number 23733)
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  Sekhmet shown with her sun disk and cobra crown from a relief at the Temple of Kom Ombo.
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  Gilded bier from the tomb of Tutankhamun with representations of Sekhmet, Cairo Museum

Worship

This golden cultic object is called an aegis. It is devoted to Sekhmet, highlighting her solar attributes. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

During an annual festival held at the beginning of the year, a festival of intoxication, the Egyptians danced and played music to soothe the wildness of the goddess and drank great quantities of wine ritually to imitate the extreme drunkenness that stopped the wrath of the goddess—when she almost destroyed humanity. This may relate to averting excessive flooding during the inundation at the beginning of each year as well, when the Nile ran blood-red with the silt from up-stream.

In 2006, Betsy Bryan, an archaeologist with Johns Hopkins University excavating at the temple of Mut in Luxor (Thebes) presented her findings about the festival that included illustrations of the priestesses being served to excess and its adverse effects on them being ministered to by temple attendants.[6] Participation in the festival was great, including by the priestesses and the population. Historical records of tens of thousands attending the festival exist. These findings were made in the temple of Mut because when Thebes rose to greater prominence Mut absorbed some characteristics of Sekhmet. These temple excavations at Luxor discovered a "porch of drunkenness" built onto the temple by the Pharaoh Hatshepsut during the height of her twenty-year reign.

During the Greek dominance in Egypt, note was made of a temple for Maahes that was an auxiliary facility to a large temple to Sekhmet at Taremu in the Delta region, a city which the Greeks called Leontopolis.

In popular culture

See also

• List of solar deities

References

1. "Sekhmet". Dictionary.com. Random House. 2012.
2. Wilkinson, Richard H. (2003). The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson. p. 181
3. Lichtheim, Miriam (2006) [1976]. Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume Two: The New Kingdom. University of California Press. pp. 197–199
4. Jetsu, L.; Porceddu, S. (2015). "Shifting Milestones of Natural Sciences: The Ancient Egyptian Discovery of Algol's Period Confirmed". PLOS ONE. 10 (12): e.0144140 (23pp). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0144140. PMC 4683080. PMID 26679699.
5. Wilkinson, Richard H. (2003). The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson. pp. 178, 181
6. "Sex and booze figured in Egyptian rites", archaeologists find evidence for ancient version of ‘Girls Gone Wild’. From NBC News, October 30, 2006

Further reading

• Germond, Philippe (1981). Sekhmet et la protection du monde (in French). Editions de Belles-Lettres.
• Hoenes, Sigrid-Eike (1978). Untersuchungen zu Wesen und Kult der Göttin Sachmet (in German). R. Habelt Verlag.
• von Känel, Frédérique (1984). Les prêtres-ouâb de Sekhmet et les conjurateurs de Serket (in French). Presses Universitaires de France.

External links

• Ancient Egypt: the Mythology - Sekhmet
• "Egyptian Temple Yields 17 Statues of Lion-Headed Goddess" Archaeologists working in Luxor, Egypt, have unearthed 17 statues of an ancient Egyptian goddess with the head of a lion and the body of a woman. March 14, 2006