Myths & Sacred Narratives

The Destruction of Mankind

Cosmic Event Myths

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "The Destruction of Mankind." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/myths-sacred-narratives/the-destruction-of-mankind-myth.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). The Destruction of Mankind. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/myths-sacred-narratives/the-destruction-of-mankind-myth

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-the-destruction-of-mankind,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {The Destruction of Mankind},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/myths-sacred-narratives/the-destruction-of-mankind-myth},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

An Egyptian narrative preserved in royal tomb inscriptions in which the sun god Ra, angered by humanity's rebellion against his rule, sends his eye in the form of the fierce goddess Sekhmet to slaughter them, then halts the massacre by flooding the land with beer dyed red to trick her into drunken sleep, after which Ra withdraws from the earth to rule from the sky.

Facts

Scholarship and Forensics

Scholarly Note

Egyptologists connect the myth's ending, Ra's withdrawal to the sky on the back of the goddess Nut, to the standard explanation Egyptian sources give for why the sun god no longer rules directly on earth. 2

Scholarly Note

The composition does not end with Ra's withdrawal alone: it closes with instructional material on funerary practice and on the handling of dangerous animals, addressed past the narrative to the living reader, which Egyptologists read as evidence the text functioned as protective and instructional writing for tombs as much as as a story to be told. 1

Meaning

Central Motif

A near total slaughter of humanity by the sun god's raging eye, halted by a trick and followed by the god's withdrawal to heaven 1

Text

Source Text

The Book of the Heavenly Cow, inscribed in the tombs of Tutankhamun, Seti I and Ramesses II 1

Controversy

Point in Dispute

Scholars are divided on whether the placated, gentler goddess who emerges from the beer trick, later identified with Hathor, represents a genuine transformation of Sekhmet's own nature or the substitution of a separate, calmer goddess for the dangerous one. 2

History

Historical Note

The earliest surviving copy is painted on a shrine from the tomb of Tutankhamun, fourteenth century BC, though the composition itself is generally judged to be older than its earliest surviving copy. 1

Sources

Primary Source

The fullest text is inscribed on the outermost golden shrine from the tomb of Tutankhamun, now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, collated against parallel versions in the tombs of Seti I and Ramesses II. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections