Sekhmet - Classic Mythology

Here is a sketch art card of Sekhmet from Egyptian Mythology that I drew for the Classic Mythology trading card set produced by me & my wife Elaine (Perna Studios) - Sketch card measures 2.5" x 3.5".


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Sekhmet – Egyptian Mythology – Sekhmet was originally the warrior goddess as well as goddess of healing for Upper Egypt. She is depicted as a lioness, the fiercest hunter known to the Egyptians. It was said that her breath created the desert. She was seen as the protector of the pharaohs and led them in warfare. She was an early Egyptian sun deity also, her body was said to take on the bright glare of the midday sun, gaining her the title Lady of Flame. Sekhmet also is a solar deity, sometimes called the daughter of the sun god Ra and often associated with the goddesses Hathor and Bastet. She bears the solar disk and the Uraeus which associates her with Wadjet and royalty. With these associations she can be construed as being a divine arbiter of the goddess Ma'at (Justice, or Order) in the Judgment Hall of Osiris, associating her with the Wedjat (later the Eye of Ra), and connecting her with Tefnut as well.

Sekhmet was believed to protect the pharaoh in battle, stalking the land, and destroying the pharaoh's enemies with arrows of fire. In a later myth developed around an annual drunken Sekhmet festival, Ra, the sun god, created her from his fiery eye, to destroy mortals who conspired against him (Lower Egypt). In the myth, Sekhmet's blood-lust was not quelled at the end of battle and led to her destroying almost all of humanity, so Ra had tricked her by turning the Nile as red as blood (the Nile turns red every year when filled with silt during inundation) so that Sekhmet would drink it. The trick was, however, that the red liquid was not blood, but wine so that it resembled blood, making her so drunk that she gave up slaughter and became an aspect of the gentle Hathor to some moderns. It is said that when Sekhment awoke from her drunken sleep, the first thing she laid eyes on was the creator god, Ptah and fell in love in him and the result was Mahees and Nefertem.


PLEASE, NEGATIVE CRITIQUES ARE NOT WELCOME AND WILL BE DELETED. THESE ARE MY INTREPRETATIONS OF THESE CHARACTERS. DESCRIPTIONS ARE BASED ON VARIOUS STORIES THAT ALL DIFFER FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. THANK YOU.