Ra (also Re)

The eastern horizon catches fire before anything else moves. Light spills down the Nile valley, warming mudbrick walls still cold from the night, drying the film of dew on the barley, and a god rides into the day on a boat. The Egyptians did not think of sunrise as a thing that simply happened. It was a voyage, and a voyage can fail.

Ra was the sun, and more precisely the sun at its highest and fiercest, the white noon glare that flattens shadows and bakes the desert beyond the floodplain. Artists gave him the body of a man and the head of a falcon, usually a lanner or a peregrine, crowned with a solar disk that a cobra encircled, reared and ready to spit fire at anything that came near. The disk was not decoration. It was the thing itself, the sun set above his brow. In other moments he wore different shapes entirely. At dawn he could be Khepri, a man with a scarab beetle for a head, the insect that rolls its ball across the ground the way the sun is rolled across the sky. By evening he aged into Atum, and in the dark hours below the world he took the head of a ram. One god, several faces, depending on where the light was.

His beginning is told more than one way, which the Egyptians seem to have found acceptable. Before anything, there was only Nun, a black and motionless ocean with no shore. Out of that water rose a mound, and on the mound the sun appeared, self-made, owing its existence to nothing. Some priests said Ra was Atum bringing himself into being and then shining; others said he climbed from the bud of a lotus floating on the deep. What the versions agree on is that he was first, and that everything after him came from his body. He spat, and the gods of air and moisture followed. He wept, and where his tears fell, human beings stood up. People walked the earth because a god had once been moved to cry.

The work of being the sun never stopped. By day Ra crossed the sky in a vessel called the Mandjet, the barque of millions of years, and the hours of light were simply the hours of that crossing. At dusk he passed through the western horizon and boarded the night boat, the Mesektet, to sail the hidden river beneath the world. Twelve gates waited there, one for each hour of darkness, each guarded, each demanding the right words before it would open. He did not travel alone. A crew of gods sailed with him, and the coiled serpent Mehen wrapped the deck as a living shield. In those depths his light dimmed to a ram-headed shadow of itself, and for a single hour he joined with Osiris, the dead king, so that the realm of the dead was lit.

Every night something was waiting for him. Apophis was a serpent the length of the horizon, the enemy of order itself, and he had no myth of his own beyond the wish to end Ra’s. He would rear up in the dark water and try to swallow the boat whole, or throw his coils around it to hold the sun fast below the earth. The crew fought him each time. Set, the god of storms and violence, stood near the prow with a spear and drove it into the serpent, and the other gods bound and cut and burned the thing until the way cleared. The battle was never won for good. Apophis was hacked apart and rose again the next night, and the next, because chaos does not stay dead. The Egyptians understood the stakes plainly. If the boat ever failed to come through, the sun would not rise, and that would be the end of everything.

Even a god grows old. In the most unsettling of his stories, Ra had ruled Egypt as a human pharaoh for a long age, his bones turned to silver and his flesh to gold and his hair to lapis lazuli, and humankind began to whisper that the old king was weak and to plot against him. Ra did not argue. He pulled the burning eye from his own face and sent it down as the lioness Sekhmet, and she waded into the rebellion and did not stop. She drank blood and wanted more, and it became clear she would not leave a single person alive. To save what was left of his own creation, Ra had the fields flooded with seven thousand jars of beer dyed red with ochre until they shone like a tide of blood. Sekhmet drank the fields dry, grew drunk, and slept, and humanity survived its maker’s temper by the width of a hangover.

His age was a weakness in a quieter tale as well. Isis, hungry for power of her own, gathered the spittle that dripped from the old god’s mouth, mixed it with earth, and shaped a serpent that bit him as he walked. The poison was made from his own substance, so nothing could draw it out. Isis offered to heal him, but only if he told her his secret name, the true name that held his power. Ra resisted, reciting every title he owned, and at last, in pain, let the name pass from his heart into hers. She healed him. She also now held the lever of his strength.

What Ra could do followed from what he was. He had made the world and could speak things into being; he was light and warmth and the swelling of crops; he was kingship itself, and every pharaoh ruled as his living son. As Egyptian religion absorbed other gods, Ra absorbed with it, joining with Amun to become Amun-Ra and with Horus to become Ra-Horakhty, the sun on the horizon. But his limits were real. He aged as the sun ages through a day, blazing at noon and frail at dusk. He could be wounded by his own creations and tricked into surrendering the name at the center of him. And his survival was never solely his own. It depended, every single night, on a crew with spears and a serpent that always came back.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ra in Egyptian mythology?

Ra is the ancient Egyptian sun god and a creator deity, identified especially with the sun at noon. He was one of the most important gods in Egyptian religion, worshipped as the source of light, warmth, creation, and cosmic order. His main cult center was Heliopolis, the “city of the sun.”

How did Ra travel across the sky?

Ra sailed across the sky each day in a solar barque called the Mandjet, which is why the sun appeared to move from east to west. At sunset he passed through the western horizon and boarded a night boat, the Mesektet, to journey through the twelve gates of the underworld. He emerged at dawn in the east to begin the crossing again.

Who was Ra’s enemy?

Ra’s eternal enemy was Apophis, an enormous serpent representing chaos and disorder. Each night Apophis attacked Ra’s barque in the underworld, trying to swallow it or trap it with his coils to stop the sun from rising. Ra’s divine crew, including the storm god Set, fought and defeated Apophis every night, though the serpent always returned.

How did Isis steal Ra’s power?

Isis gained power over Ra by tricking him into revealing his secret name. She collected the saliva of the aged Ra, shaped it with earth into a serpent, and let it bite him, creating a poison that only she could cure. She agreed to heal him only after he surrendered his true name, which carried the secret of his power.

Why did Ra try to destroy mankind?

In the myth known as the Destruction of Mankind, Ra had grown old while ruling Egypt as a pharaoh, and humans began plotting against him because they thought him weak. In anger, he sent his eye as the lioness Sekhmet to punish humanity, but she slaughtered so many that he feared she would wipe out everyone. He stopped her by flooding the fields with beer dyed red to look like blood, which she drank until she fell asleep.

Related Entries

Atum, Khepri, Apep/Apophis, Amun-Re, Sekhmet, Hathor, Isis, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth, Maat, Shu, Tefnut, Bennu