Eye of Ra

This goddess, also known with the theonym Wedjat, can be equated with several particular deities, including Hathor, Sekhmet, Bastet, Raet-Tawy, Menhit, Tefnut, and Mut.

Its life-giving power was celebrated in temple rituals, and its dangerous aspect was invoked in the protection of the pharaoh, of sacred places, and of ordinary people and their homes.

[12] In Egyptian mythology, the sun's emergence from the horizon each morning is likened to Ra's birth, an event that revitalizes him and the order of the cosmos.

The eye is thus a feminine counterpart to Ra's masculine creative power, part of a broader Egyptian tendency to express creation and renewal through the metaphor of sexual reproduction.

Shu and Tefnut, the children of this creator god, have drifted away from him in the waters of Nu, the chaos that exists before creation in Egyptian belief, so he sends out his eye to find them.

The creator god appeases her by giving her an exalted position on his forehead in the form of the uraeus, the emblematic cobra that appears frequently in Egyptian art, particularly on royal crowns.

The solar uraeus represents the eye as a dangerous force that encircles the sun god and guards against his enemies, spitting flames like venom.

They include both humans who spread disorder and cosmic powers like Apep, the embodiment of chaos, whom Ra and the gods who accompany him in his barque are said to combat every night.

Some unclear passages in the Coffin Texts suggest that Apep was thought capable of injuring or stealing the Eye of Ra from its master during the combat.

Evidence in early funerary texts suggests that at dawn, Ra was believed to swallow the multitude of other gods, who in this instance are equated with the stars, which vanish at sunrise and reappear at sunset.

[24] In the myth called the Destruction of Mankind, related in the Book of the Heavenly Cow from the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC), Ra uses the eye as a weapon against humans who have rebelled against his authority.

The eye goddess drinks the beer, mistaking it for blood, and in her inebriated state returns to Ra without noticing her intended victims.

[25] Nadine Guilhou suggests that the eye's rampage alludes to the heat and widespread disease of the Egyptian summer, and in particular to the epagomenal days before the new year, which were regarded as unlucky.

In some versions the provocation for her anger seems to be her replacement with a new eye after the search for Shu and Tefnut, but in others her rebellion seems to take place after the world is fully formed.

In one version, known from scattered allusions, the warrior god Anhur searches for the eye, which takes the form of the goddess Mehit, using his skills as a hunter.

[35] Joachim Friedrich Quack points out that when Sirius reappears in the sky it first appears reddish before turning blue-white, and he suggests the Egyptians connected this change in color with the pacification of the eye goddess.

Mehit becomes the consort of Anhur, Tefnut is paired with Shu, and Thoth's spouse is sometimes Nehemtawy, a minor goddess associated with this pacified form of the eye.

"[39] This same view of femininity is found in texts describing human women, such as the Instruction of Ankhsheshonq, which says a man's wife is like a cat when he can keep her happy and like a lioness when he cannot.

[43] The Egyptians associated many gods who took felid form with the sun, and many lioness deities, like Sekhmet, Menhit, and Tefnut, were equated with the eye.

[50] Many eye goddesses appear mainly in human form, including Neith, a sometimes warlike deity sometimes said to be the mother of the sun god,[51] and Satet and Anuket, who were linked with the Nile cataracts and the inundation.

[52] Other such goddesses include Sothis, the deified form of the star of the same name, and Maat, the personification of cosmic order, who was connected with the eye because she was said to be the daughter of Ra.

[53] Even Isis, who is usually the companion of Osiris rather than Ra,[54] or Astarte, a deity of fertility and warfare who was imported from Canaan rather than native to Egypt, could be equated with the solar eye.

Similarly, Mut, whose main cult center was in Thebes, sometimes served as an Upper Egyptian counterpart of Sekhmet, who was worshipped in Memphis in Lower Egypt.

[64] In other cities, two goddesses were worshipped as the belligerent and peaceful forms of the eye, as with Ayet and Nehemtawy at Herakleopolis or Satet and Anuket at Aswan.

These uraei are sometimes identified with various combinations of goddesses associated with the eye, but they can also be seen as manifestations of "Hathor of the Four Faces", whose protection of the solar barque is extended in these rituals to specific places on earth.

[72] In addition, certain magical spells from the New Kingdom involve the placement of clay model uraei around a house or a room, invoking the protection of the solar uraeus as in the temple rituals.

Models like those in the spells have been found in the remains of ancient Egyptian towns, and they include bowls in front of their mouths where fuel could be burnt, although the known examples do not show signs of burning.

[74] Whether literal or metaphorical, the fire in the cobras' mouths, like the flames spat by the Eye of Ra, was meant to dispel the nocturnal darkness and burn the dangerous beings that move within it.

Egyptian funerary texts associate deceased souls with Ra in his nightly travels through the Duat, the realm of the dead, and with his rebirth at dawn.

[76] A spell in the Coffin Texts states that Bastet, as the eye, illuminates the Duat like a torch, allowing the deceased to pass safely through its depths.