Sekhmet: The Egyptian Goddess Of Healing

The Egyptian Goddess of healing, plagues and war and destruction was Sekhmet. Sekhmet means “The Powerful One.”

Sekhmet is shown as a woman with a lioness head. She will often have a sun disk and uracus on her headdress.

Sekhmet symbolizes the heat of the sun. She is worshiped in Memphis along with her husband Ptah and their son Nefertum. Sekhmet is connected to Bast, the cat-headed Goddess of pleasure and luxury.

The story is that Ra, the old king of the Gods, became angry with mankind and in his anger he ripped out his eye and he threw it to mankind. It is said that goddess Sekhmet is the Devin 's eye. She became a lioness, and she started killing humans. She butchered them and drank the blood. Ra decided that at the rate Sekhmet

He tricked Sekhmet into thinking it was blood, and she drank it all and fell asleep. When she woke up, she was calmer with a terrible headache but she stopped her rampage of killing.

At times, Sekhmet was a violent Goddess. She was also a healer and would set peoples broken bones. She would start epidemics if she were not honored properly, but she would also stop them.

Over time, the Egyptian Cat Goddess Bast developed many areas of influence. She was the lion headed Goddess of the Lower Nile in the early days. She was responsible for protecting the Pharaoh and Ra the sun God. She is considered the Goddess of protection. While Bast was in this role, she became Goddess of the rising sun. She holds the Utchat which is the seeing eye of Horus. People placed statues of Bast in their homes to keep the thieves out.

Bast is mentioned in the book of the Dead as having destroyed the bodies of the dead with the royal flame if they failed the judgment hail of Maat.

She was later shown with the dead of a domestic cat that represented her nurturing ways. Women of this time would buy amulets of Bast with different number of kittens on them. The kittens represented the number of children they

At first Amon was a god of Thebes. They say before that he was god of Hermopolis. Amon represented fertility and he was illustrated as a ram. When Amon was in Thebes he formed a triad with his wife and son. When Amon became a patron of the pharaohs he became a national god of Egypt.

In Heliopolis Amon was identified with the god Re. The names were put together and became Amon-Re. The father of all gods was Amon-Re. Amon-R crated all human and creatures.

The Amon-Re cult became very powerful. Amon-Re 's high priest was very important and he rivaled the pharaohs power. The largest temple for Amon-Re was Karnak.

Akhenaten disputed Amon and he said Aten was the only god. This led to the fall of Amon 's cult. Other pharaohs restored Amon as god and ruler.

Amon went into a new triad with Ptah and Re in 1500BCE. Many people still considered him the sole power and that the other gos were just manifestations of him.

His cult spread beyond Egypt during the last millennium.

Thebes was attacked in 85BCE and Amon 's cult was weakened. An earthquake further damaged Thebes in 27BCE. Amon 's cult finally became