The Powerful One, and the Beer That Saved the World

Sekhmet means the Powerful One, and she is the lioness-goddess of the burning heat of the sun, of war and of plague, the raging form of the Eye of Ra. Her defining story is the Destruction of Mankind: when humanity plots against the aging sun-god, Ra sends out his Eye as Sekhmet to punish them, but she slaughters with such joy that she threatens to wipe out the human race entirely, and Ra, to stop her, floods the fields with beer dyed red like blood, which she drinks in mistake for gore until she falls asleep and her rage passes. The myth explains both her terror and the festivals of drunkenness that pacified her, and it makes her the model of divine power that must be appeased rather than merely worshipped.

Archaeological excavation at the Precinct of Mut in Karnak, led in recent decades by the Egyptologist Betsy Bryan, has recovered direct physical evidence for the myth's ritual reenactment: a specially built porch structure associated with the Festival of Drunkenness, along with large quantities of broken ceramic wine vessels and residue, dating mainly to the reign of Hatshepsut in the fifteenth century BCE. The find confirms that the beer-soaked pacification of Sekhmet described in the Destruction of Mankind myth was acted out as an actual annual rite involving genuine mass intoxication meant to appease the goddess and to identify worshippers, however briefly, with the moment her rage was finally calmed.