2023

Information About Goddess Sekhmet

Sekhmet means "she who is strong", and embodies the aggressive and offensive side, appearance and form of the mythological goddesses. Her body is female and her head is that of a female lion. She was the wife, companion and consort of a mythological figure called Ptah (Ptah in hieroglyphics), in addition to being the daughter of Ra, the mythological sun god.

The fact that Sekhmet appears twice in the Pyramid Texts indicates that she was expecting the king. The earliest ceremonial and funerary texts in Egyptian history are found in the Pyramid Texts. The goddess Sekhmet is considered the god of war, as she is the fiery power of the sun, and also the god of diseases and epidemics, and it was also believed that she cured diseases.

The "Theban Triad" gained prominence during the New Kingdom's reign (1550–1069 BC), which led to the formation of Sekhmet as an aggressive and violent embodiment of the mythological god "Mut." This explains why there are so many statues of Sekhmet in the funeral temple on the West Bank of Luxor and the Temple of Mut at Karnak that date back to Amenhotep III's period (1390–1352 BC).

There is a historical source that says that there are more than 730 statues of Sekhmet, and this is what led to a theory explaining that the reason for this huge number of statues of Sekhmet is the fear of the threat of the spread of epidemics, so the king made statues of the goddess Sekhmet to keep epidemics away from his community.

There is a theory that the number 730 statues of Sekhmet resembles the number of days in two consecutive years, so the king issued a decision to make a statue of Sekhmet every day for fear of epidemics. In a suggestion, it is said that the king himself was suffering from an illness and designed statues of Sekhmet so that he could approach her and be healed