Sekhmet Mythology Essay

1161 Words3 Pages

Religion and Mythology: The Best Tool to Control People
The statue of Sekhmet demonstrates the method pharaohs control people, unique culture and belief in ancient egypt. There is an art piece called Statue of the Goddess Sakhmet, which was created during 1417-1379 BCE, and made by granite. This is the 18th dynasty in new kingdom period, reign of Amenhotep III. This acquisition is seated upon a throne and her whole body in a really straight position. Also her head is facing front, and both of her hands are placing upon on her laps. This goddess is always depicted as a lion-headed woman with bared foots. This goddess always with a sun disk and uraeus on her head. However, in this case, there is no sun disk and uraeus. Ancient Egypt had millions …show more content…

The story of Sekhmet is violence and bloodlusting. Sekhmet is a goddess that meant to destroy every evil things in the world. However, she got so violent that she could not stop to ruin everything. Ra, her father realized that Sekhmet can not continue what she were doing. Therefore, Ra dyed all the wine in a lake into red and tricked his daughter drank all the wine to calm her down. “...She described to me once the moment when she felt that she came to understand the emotional power of what she called the dark Goddess. She had begun to draw the lion-headed Egyptian Sekhmet, whom she described as a ‘death aspect’ in Egyptian mythology and drew surrounded by flames.” (Luhrmann, 128) The auther told us a story about one of her artist friend. Her friend Chris described Sekhmet as the “dark goddess”. From here, the figure of Sekhmet is horrifying and use this figure, pharaohs were easy to took advantage from this kind of myths and threaten their populaces. In ancient Egypt, mythology is an important way to rule the kingdom. Everyone in the kingdom were obsessed and controlled by their deities. “Nor can there be any doubt that to many of the common people religion must have meant no more than a literal acceptance of the mythological gods.” (Tobin, 169) From this author 's journal the importance of religion. Also, religion and belief was the tool for pharaohs to control people. “The ancient Egyptians were neither philosophically nor theologically minded, and hence spiritual and religious values required an expression which was concrete and anthropomorphic.”(Tobin, 169) Additionally, many deities were human-like, which also is another evidence that the pharaohs able to use this kind of figure to control people. They can use this human-like figure as an advantage to tell people that they were gods/goddesses. Therefore region has a very important role in the egyptian

More about Sekhmet Mythology Essay

Open Document