Eye of Ra

The Eye that leaves and returns

The Book of the Heavenly Cow (New Kingdom temple myth of the Destruction of Mankind) has Ra send his Eye against rebellious humans. It becomes Sekhmet, drinks blood, and is pacified with red-stained beer. Coffin Texts and later hymns also know the Distant Goddess: the Eye as Hathor, Tefnut, or uraeus, who can storm off and must be coaxed home. It is a mythic organ and a goddess, not a jewel in a chest. Cult belongs to those goddesses, not to a detached relic in a museum sense.