In the beginning, during the era known as Zep Tepi or the First Time, there was no separation between the earth and the sky in the way we understand it today. The great sun god Ra, the creator of all that exists, lived among his subjects in the city of Iunu, which the Greeks would later name Heliopolis. This was a golden age where the Nile flowed with effortless abundance and the gods were not distant spirits to be reached through prayer, but tangible rulers who walked the dusty streets and sat upon golden thrones. Ra was the first King of Egypt, and under his radiance, the world was filled with light and perfect order. However, as the centuries stretched into millennia, even the sun god began to show the passage of time. His bones turned to silver, his flesh to gold, and his hair to lapis lazuli. As he grew older, the humans he had created from his own tears began to lose their reverence. They saw his trembling hands and heard his cracking voice, and they began to plot against him in the shadows of the mountains.
Ra, who possessed the all-seeing Eye, perceived their treason. He summoned the Ennead—the council of the most powerful gods—to secret chambers beneath the temple of Heliopolis. He asked for their counsel, for he was pained by the betrayal of those he had brought into being. The gods, led by the primal waters of Nun, advised Ra to send his Eye against the rebels. The Eye took the form of the goddess Sekhmet, a fierce lioness of uncontrollable rage. She descended upon the desert, and her slaughter was so terrible that the sands turned red with blood. Seeing the total destruction of his creation, Ra felt a wave of compassion. To save the remaining humans, he ordered thousands of jars of beer to be dyed with red ochre to look like blood and spread across the fields. Sekhmet, drinking the mixture in her fury, became intoxicated and fell into a deep sleep, transforming back into the gentle Hathor upon waking. Though the humans were saved, Ra's heart had grown heavy. He felt a deep weariness that the earth could no longer soothe, and he realized that the age where gods and mortals shared the same soil must come to an end.
Ra called upon Nut, the goddess of the sky, who took the form of a great celestial cow. With the help of the god Shu, who represented the air, Ra climbed onto Nut's back. As she began to rise, the world expanded. The ground beneath the feet of the people grew distant, and the horizon stretched out into the vast expanse we see today. The four legs of the cow became the four corners of the universe, and her belly, adorned with stars, became the night sky. The humans, seeing their creator receding into the heights, wept with regret and promised to fight his enemies and maintain his laws. Ra, looking down from his new vantage point, appointed Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing, to be his deputy on earth during the night, manifesting as the moon to provide light when the sun was in the underworld. Thus, the physical presence of the supreme creator was replaced by the cycle of day and night, and a new order was established where the gods watched from above rather than walking among the crowds.
Following Ra’s ascension, the throne was passed down through the generations of the Ennead. Shu ruled the air, and Geb ruled the earth, but the most significant transition occurred during the reign of Osiris. Osiris was a king of peace and civilization, teaching the people the arts of agriculture and the laws of the gods. He was the perfect bridge between the divine and the human, but his reign was cut short by the jealousy of his brother Set. The murder of Osiris and his subsequent resurrection as the Lord of the Underworld marked a second great shift. The gods were no longer just rulers of the living; they now presided over the transition to the afterlife. Isis, the great sorceress and wife of Osiris, used her magic to protect their son Horus in the marshes of the Nile Delta. When Horus came of age, he challenged Set for the right to rule Egypt in a series of epic battles and legal disputes that lasted eighty years. The 'Contendings of Horus and Set' were the final great dramas of the age of myths, played out in the divine courts and across the landscape of Egypt.