Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today’s video,
we’re going to discuss the Eye of Ra: the most powerful force in Egyptian Mythology in terms
of destructive power and the goddess from whose tears humanity was created.
Let’s get into it.
In the time of the Ancient Egyptians, the word for eye was ‘irt’, and it was a homophone for
the word meaning ‘doing’ or ‘acting', quite appropriate as the eye served as the divine
enforcer on many occasions, intervening in drastic fashion on behalf of the gods. As the word ‘irt’
was feminine, so too were the goddesses who personified the Eye of Ra, a complex entity.
She was an aspect of Atum-Ra, the syncretic fusion of the creator god Atum and the sun god Ra,
but she was also a goddess. As a goddess separate from Ra, she could operate independently,
as was in the case when Atum sent her to find his children in the waters of Nun before the world was
created. More often, though, when removed from Ra, she would manifest herself through another
goddess, becoming a compound deity, which is what happened when she merged with Sekhmet to unleash
destruction upon humanity. In this way, she was almost like an awesome weapon who possessed and
worked through other goddesses, including: Tefnut, Bastet, Mut, Hathor, and Sekhmet.
The Eye was depicted as a red sun disk. Portrayals of Ra usually have the sun
disk positioned just above his head, and when goddesses fused with the Eye of Ra,
they were often portrayed with a red sun disk just above their heads. Depending on the circumstances,
the Eye was associated with a number of celestial objects, such as the morning star, the full moon,
and of course, the sun. The eye of Ra, as well as the eyes of other deities, could
be portrayed by the Wedjat Eye, in appearance an amalgamation of a hawk eye and a human eye.
The eye of Ra was both an aspect of Ra and a goddess who was Ra’s daughter and protector.
Both fire and water were associated with the Eye: fire representing divine wrath and water
representing the power of creation, an example of the latter being when her tears created humanity.
Sometimes the destructive and creative aspects of the Eye were each thought of as a distinct eye:
the eye of Ra representing the destructive power of the sun, and the eye of Atum representing
creative power, the pupil symbolizing the womb from which gods and humans emerged.
We’re going to spend the rest of the video looking at three of the main myths in which the Eye of Ra
features. In the first, Atum, the creator aspect of Ra, sends out his Eye to find his
lost children; in the second, the Eye sheds tears, either of anger or sadness, humanity created from
these tears, and in the third, the goddess Sekhmet is sent forth as the Eye to destroy humanity.
Atum is the demiurge, which is a being to whom the creation of the universe can be attributed to,
in one of the main creation myths in ancient Egyptian mythology.
His first two children were Shu, the personification of air, a son, and Tefnut,
the personification of moisture, a daughter. At this time, the world was not yet created,
so Atum and his two children existed in the waters of Nun, an infinite body of water pregnant with
all the potential of creation and basically the Egyptian version of chaos. Atum became
separated from his children, so he sent out his eye to search the infinite waters and find them.
Though it was Atum who sent out his eye, this eye was generally thought to be an aspect of the sun
god and a daughter of Ra, himself a distinct deity but also the solar aspect of Atum, the two of them
becoming the compound deity Atum-Ra with the first rising of the sun. As an aspect of the sun god,
the eye is an integral part of Ra, but it can also function independently, usually in the
capacity of champion as the incarnation of Ra’s wrath. One spell in the Coffin Texts says that
Shu created light in the darkness so that the eye could find him and his sister, and another
Coffin Texts’ spell says that Shu created an air bubble in the waters of Nun so that,
for the first time, the solar eye could shine, one of the many versions of the first sunrise.
Where we know our planet to exist in the void of space, the ancient Egyptians believed the world
was surrounded by the waters of Nun, so the air bubble Shu made was the bubble in which creation
was to exist. Another version, the one given by the Brmner-Rhind Papyrus, says that Shu and
Tefnut, escorted by the Eye, returned to their father when he first emerged atop the primeval
mound as Atum-Ra, his fully realized form. This reunion, though, wasn’t wholly joyous,
for in the time Atum and his children were lost to each other, Atum had grown a new eye; when his
original eye returned, to its dismay and fury, it found another eye in its place. To mollify
his original eye, Atum transformed her into the Uraeus cobra, the first snake, placing her on
his forehead, a place of honor. The Uraeus cobra is often portrayed wrapped around the sun disk.
The Eye also appears in connection with the creation of humanity in Egyptian mythology. One
of the versions is that the genesis of humanity was the product of tears shed by the creator,
by his Eye. One of the Coffin Texts spells says that Atum created the gods from his sweat and
humanity from the tears of his eye. Similarly, there are a multitude of versions in which Atum
creates Shu and Tefnut, either through, spitting, sneezing, or ejaculating. One source says that
humanity came from the eye while it was out searching for the children of Atum. A hypothesis
is that the eye was shedding tears out of the loneliness it experienced in this solitary search.
Geb, the personification of the earth, and Nut, the personification of the sky, were born to Shu
and Tefnut, and as was the case with Gaia and Uranus in Greek mythology, earth and sky were
originally conjoined in Egyptian mythology, life unable to begin until they were split apart. Shu
separated his children, and this image was one commonly portrayed: Shu pressing Nut overhead,
Geb underfoot. With earth and sky now in their proper places, life could begin,
this including the emergence of humanity. Because of this, the creation of humanity can be seen as
manifesting from the power of more than one god: Atum through his eye as the actual procreative
power and Shu facilitating the emergence. Another source says that the humanity-creating tears
shed by the eye resulted from the extreme anger the Eye felt upon returning to Atum
and seeing a new eye in her place. This would make humanity the product of rage and misery,
which, as has been pointed out, is a fitting brew given the rebelliousness humanity often exhibited.
Ra was the first king, succeeded by Shu, who was succeeded by his son, Geb. Osiris, the eldest
child of Geb, then ascended to the throne. He was usurped by his younger brother Set, who murdered
him. Set ruled until he was challenged and defeated by Horus, and after Horus, the kingship
was passed to the pharaohs, who were said to be descended from the gods and thus divine. Early on,
the earth was cohabitated by the gods and by humanity. During the rule of Ra, his Eye became
angry and she left for a far off realm, this place sometimes said to be the Nubian or Libyan desert.
There she was gripped by a fit of fury, and in her leonine form, she lay waste to anything that,
or anyone who, crossed her path. Without his eye, the incarnation of his destructive power,
Ra was left vulnerable, so he dispatched the gods to find and bring her back, a daunting task;
for as measured by pure destructive power, no other god in Egyptian mythology was her equal,
the burning might of the eye in this capacity described as being greater than that of
any other deity. In one version, Onuris, a hunter god whose name means something like
‘the one who brings back the distant one’, was dispatched by Ra to find and bring back the eye,
a task in which he succeeds using his prowess and cunning as a hunter. In another, Thoth is sent,
and he succeeds using his clever speech to pacify the eye, and in yet another,
Shu is sent, for here, it is Tefnut, his consort, who became the Eye of Ra.
As said, Ra was the first king, and after years uncounted, old age was upon him. Humanity thought
him vulnerable in his aged state and so began to plot against him, and word of these machinations
reached his ear; so he summoned his eye and the elder gods, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, and Nut,
to hold council. He said that humanity, birthed from the very tears shed by his own eye, had grown
rebellious and asked the gods he had gathered for advice. It was decided that the eye should
be sent out, manifested as the goddess Sekhmet, to wreak destruction upon humanity and quell their
rebelliousness. The eye slaughtered all those who were guilty and soaked the land in their blood.
After the first day, for reasons not explained, Ra had a change of heart, no longer wishing for
the devastation of his divine retribution to continue, but at this point, Sekhmet,
filled with the unfettered wrath and unequalled power of the eye, had developed a taste for blood,
the need to kill now a compulsion. Given the number of people killed after only the first day,
it was clear that if the eye wasn’t hindered in some way then the extermination of humanity
would not be long in coming. Unable to oppose her strength against strength, the gods contrived a
clever ruse to deter and possibly incapacitate her. They gathered a vast quantity of a red
mineral. Servants were ordered to grind the mineral to powder while other servants mashed a
vast quantity of barley to make beer. 7,000 jars of beer were brewed, and then the red mineral,
now pulverized, was mixed into the beer to make it look like blood. All 7,000 jars were poured out
where the eye intended to continue her killing, so when she arrived the next day, she came upon what
looked to be a lake of blood. Her reflection caught her attention, and she began to drink;
later, now incredibly intoxicated, she returned to the gods, having forgotten
all about humanity and about the desire that once burned inside her to see them all dead.
And that’s it for this video. If you enjoy the content,
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