In the primordial age when the gods walked among men as kings, Ra, the Lord of the Sun, reigned over a flourishing Egypt. For eons, his word was law and his presence brought light and life to the Two Lands. However, as the cycles of time turned, even the Great God felt the creeping touch of age. His divine bones began to turn to silver, his flesh transformed into pure gold, and his hair took on the deep, dark blue of lapis lazuli. Seeing this transition, the mortals he had created from his own tears began to lose their fear. In the shadows of the great temples and in the remote reaches of the Western Desert, humans gathered to whisper of rebellion. They believed that Ra had become weak and that the time of the gods was coming to a close. They plotted to seize the world for themselves, ignoring the cosmic balance of Ma'at that Ra had established.
Ra, however, was not as blind as the rebels hoped. His divine essence was still tied to the fabric of existence, and he sensed the disturbance in the hearts of his creation. To address this treachery, he called a secret council of the eldest deities. He summoned Nun, the personification of the primeval waters; Shu, the god of air; Tefnut, the goddess of moisture; Geb, the earth; and Nut, the sky. He invited them to his secret palace where no human could overhear their discourse. Ra spoke to Nun, the eldest among them, explaining that the children of his own Eye were speaking ill of him and plotting in the Red Land—the Deshret, or the Western Desert. Nun advised Ra to remain on his throne but to send his Eye against those who had conspired against him. The gods agreed that no power on earth could withstand the fury of Ra's Eye when unleashed as a force of divine retribution.
Ra looked upon the world and chose his daughter, the goddess Hathor, to be the instrument of his justice. But as she prepared to descend, she underwent a terrifying transformation. The gentle, cow-headed goddess of love and beauty vanished, replaced by Sekhmet, the 'Powerful One.' She appeared as a towering woman with the head of a fierce lioness, her breath the hot wind of the desert and her eyes burning with the intensity of the midday sun. Sekhmet did not hesitate. She leaped from the heavens and landed in the Western Desert, where the rebels had fled to escape the sun's scorching gaze. The slaughter began immediately. With claws of bronze and teeth of iron, she tore through the ranks of the conspirators. The sands of the Western Desert, once white and golden, began to turn a dark, sticky crimson as she hunted them from oasis to oasis.
Sekhmet did not stop at merely punishing the guilty. The taste of blood on her tongue awakened a primal, insatiable hunger within her. She became a whirlwind of destruction, moving across the dunes with a speed that defied mortal comprehension. Day after day, she waded through the blood of the fallen, her heart filled with a terrible joy. Even those humans who had remained loyal to Ra began to fear that their end was near. The Western Desert became a graveyard of the gods' creation. From his solar barque, Ra watched the carnage and felt a sudden, deep pang of regret. He had intended to punish the rebels, not to extinguish the flame of humanity entirely. He realized that if Sekhmet continued her rampage, there would be no one left to offer sacrifices or to maintain the temples of the gods.
Ra called out to Sekhmet to cease her killing, but the goddess was consumed by her 'sekhem'—her divine power and fury. She was deaf to his commands, her mind lost in the red haze of slaughter. Ra knew that he could not stop her by force without destroying his own daughter, so he turned to Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing. Together, they devised a plan to save the remnants of mankind. Ra sent swift messengers to Elephantine to fetch a vast quantity of didi, a red mineral or ochre found in the earth. He then commanded the high priests and his divine servants to brew seven thousand jars of barley beer. Once the beer was ready, it was mixed with the red didi until it perfectly resembled the color and consistency of human blood.