What do Ra and Sekhmet have in common?

They share no domain in this atlas: Ra is associated with sun, creation, kingship, order, and light, and Sekhmet with war, plague, healing, vengeance, and fire.

Which traditions do they belong to?

Both belong to the Egyptian Pantheon.

Side by sideParent and child

Ra vs Sekhmet

Ra and Sekhmet are recorded as parent and child in the Egyptian Pantheon.

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At a glance

Ra and Sekhmet compared
	Ra	Sekhmet
Tradition	Egyptian Pantheon	Egyptian Pantheon
Domains	sun, creation, kingship, order, light	war, plague, healing, vengeance, fire
Symbols	sun disk, falcon, solar barque, cobra, scarab beetle	lioness, red color, sun disk, uraeus
Also called	Re, Ra-Horakhty, Atum-Ra, Amun-Ra	Sakhmet, Lady of Slaughter, The Scarlet Lady

Where they meet

They share a symbol: sun disk.

sun disk

Where they part

Only Ra

Associated with sun, creation, kingship, order, and light.

Only Sekhmet

Associated with war, plague, healing, vengeance, and fire.

How each was worshipped

Ra

Cult sites: Great Temple of Ra at Heliopolis (Iunu); Solar sanctuaries of the Fifth Dynasty (Abu Ghurab and beyond)
Festivals: Daily solar barque rites; Sed festival (king as Ra's son)

The king is his son. Morning and evening barques, the benben stone, the sun's twelve night hours. Heliopolis set the theology; later Amun-Ra at Thebes absorbed it without erasing the Heliopolitan cult.

Sekhmet

Cult sites: Memphis, with Ptah and Nefertem; Hundreds of seated lioness statues from Amenhotep III
Festivals: Pacification of Sekhmet; New Year plague-aversion rites

Plague and its cure. Priests sang her quiet. Beer dyed red to look like blood is the myth of her pacification turned into rite. She is the same eye of Ra that Bastet can also be.

The two figures

Egyptian Pantheon

Ra

The supreme solar deity and creator god. Ra travels across the sky each day in his solar barque and through the underworld each night, battling the serpent Apophis.

Ra emerged from the primordial waters of Nun at the dawn of creation, creating himself. He then created Shu (air) and Tefnut (moisture), establishing the cosmos.

Ra is the supreme creator and king of the gods. He travels across the sky in his solar barque by day and battles the chaos serpent Apophis in the underworld by night.

Read the full Ra entry

Egyptian Pantheon

Sekhmet

Fierce goddess of war, plagues, and healing. The destructive aspect of the sun. Ra sent her to punish humanity.

Sekhmet was created by Ra from the fire of his eye to punish humanity for their rebellion and mockery of the aging sun god. She is the fierce, destructive aspect of the gentler Hathor, representing the burning heat of the midday sun. In essence, Sekhmet and Hathor are two faces of the same goddess: Sekhmet the destroyer and Hathor the nurturer. Her leonine form symbolizes the fierce power of the sun that can bring both life and death to the land of Egypt.

Sekhmet is the fearsome lioness-headed goddess whose name means "She Who Is Powerful." She embodies the scorching, destructive heat of the sun and is one of the most formidable deities in the Egyptian pantheon. Warriors prayed to her before battle, and her breath was said to create the desert.

Read the full Sekhmet entry

About this comparison

Comparisons pair figures that play a similar role across traditions, or that the myths connect within one. A shared role does not, by itself, establish a shared origin.