Episode 77 – How Beer Saved the World – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 77 Show Notes

Source: Egyptian Mythology

This week on MYTH, we’re headed back to the primordial mists of creation itself. You’ll learn that you should never piss off a giant lion goddess, that the Eye of Sauron needs to step up its game, and that dyeing your beer can be a religious experience. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll meet the OG phoenix. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 77, “How Beer Saved the World”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
Thanks to Rose for suggesting this week’s episode (although it’s taken far too long for me to get to it, what with the whole Odyssey thing), which involves two of my favorite topics – beer and badass goddesses. The goddess in question is one of the oldest known Egyptian deities, with numerous titles such as The Powerful One, The Lady of Life, and The One Before Whom Evil Trembles – Sekhmet the warrior goddess. She was one of several deities who were known as the Eye of Ra, a feminie counterpart to the sun god himself. The eye goddesses, usually Hathor, Bastet, Raet-Tawy, Mut, and of course Sekhmet, act as all the feminine roles of Egyptian society – mother, sibling, consort, and daughter but also act as the force of violent destruction that subdues Ra’s enemies. In many stories, Bastet (also known as Bast) is considered either Sekhmet’s sister or her alter ego, much like Hathor (as we’re about to see) though before the uniting of Upper and Lower Egypt, Bastet was the warrior goddess of Lower Egypt, counterpart to Sekhmet in Upper Egypt. The duo represents the eternal cycle of the sun, born anew each day and dying each night so that he may reenter the womb to be reborn yet again; the sun is the giver of life and the bringer of terrible ruin, and the different incarnations represent these different aspects. The deadly wrath of the Eye of Ra was often depicted as a lioness or by the uraeus, the stylized upright cobra that was the symbol of protection and royal authority.
In the beginning, before creation existed, Ra (or Atum depending on the version) is floating in the waters of Nun, the chaos that existed when nothing else did, the formless waters from which Ra sprang. Some say that it was Ptah (the god of artisans and blacksmiths, who the Greeks associated with Hephaestus) who dreamt all of creation into existence and spoke it into being. Others say it was Ra himself who summoned the land up from the watery depths of Nun. Either way, one of Ra’s first acts in the new universe was to transform himself into the powerful, radiant sun simply by naming himself so. He then conceived of day and night and named himself Ra at noon and Tum in the evening, creating time and the first day. He decided that he did not wish to exist alone, so he created his first children Shu and Tefnut (the god of air and the goddess of moisture, brother and sister but also spouses). He created the land, which he called Geb, and the sky, which he called Nut. Last of all, he created the mighty Nile river, named Hapi.
After a time, his children drifted away through the chaos waters, leaving Ra alone. The progenitor god therefore sent out his eye to find his lost children. The eye is successful in her quest and returns with Shu and Tefnut but is furious to discover that Ra has formed a new eye while she was gone. To make amends, Ra turns the eye into the uraeus and places her on the crown of the pharaoh, a companion and symbol of divine rule. Ra wept at their return, though the story doesn’t make it clear if this is happy tears because his children are back or bitter tears because his eye is angry with him. In another version, it is the eye herself that weeps. Either way, from these tears arise the first humans. The eye is also linked to the star Sothius, also known as Sirius, which would rise before the sun at the beginning of the Egyptian year in summer, a herald for the coming floods of the Nile that restored the fertility of the delta for another year. Thus is the Eye a symbol of both life and death.
Ra looked upon humanity, and the animals that had been created at some point as well, and decided that these people were like unto the gods, but they needed a leader. Naturally, no one was as suited to rule as Ra himself, so he descended to earth and clothed himself in human flesh as the first Pharaoh. His reign was a golden age lasting thousands of years, and life was good. In time, even Ra’s divine flesh began to wither and the Pharaoh grew old. The people’s faith began to waiver, and some turned away from Ra to worship the evil forces of chaos that threatened the ma’at, the force of truth, balance, order, and justice – foes like the great serpent Apep (also known as Apophis), the harbinger of chaos whose own malevolent eye is said to be a potent weapon even against Ra. The Eye of Ra was one of the very few forces powerful enough to defeat the wicked snake. Some passages from the Coffin Texts hint that Apep might be capable of stealing or perhaps injuring the Eye of Ra, but these passages are unclear and hard to decipher.
The Book of the Heavenly Cow tells how Ra grew angry as more and more people abandoned him to revel in the wickedness of Apep. They became lazy and selfish and cruel until they were agents of chaos themselves, enemies of the ma’at. Some even began to wonder if the ancient Ra weren’t weak and wizened enough that someone with the right moxie could overthrow him and take his throne. They said of the ancient king that his bones had become silver, his skin gold, and his hair lapis lazuli (which is apparently either insulting or blasphemous, though it really isn’t explained why). Whispers sprang up as the wicked began to plot a coup. Of course, being an ancient and powerful god, even in human flesh, Ra soon heard of these whispers and he grew furious at his ungrateful creations. This couldn’t be allowed to stand. Ra needed to do something.
Or, better yet, he needed to tell someone else to do something. It’s good to be the god-king. He called together an assembly of the other gods and goddesses to discuss the issue and seek their advice in a secret meeting kept hidden from the fallen humans. Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, and even Nun came to speak with Ra, who also brought his daughter Hathor with him. Hathor was, like Ra, a sky god and was one of the aspects of the Eye of Ra, the feminine counterpart to the sun god. She was often depicted as a celestial cow (hence the Book of the Heavenly Cow), symbolizing her role as a maternal figure. She is usually portrayed as a human woman with a cow-horn headdress holding the disc of the sun between them along with the cobra, the uraeus of royal authority. She is also a psychopomp goddess, helping the souls of the dead transition between the land of the living and the land of the dead
The council all agreed that humanity had betrayed the ma’at and had rebelled against their god-king; thus, they deserved to be punished. Ra wanted to exterminate all of humanity with the burning glare of his Eye (which makes the Eye of Sauron look like a toy by comparison and even puts the Eye of Balor from Episode 17 to shame). Nun, the god of the watery abyss, father of Ra, and eldest of all of them, objected. If Ra unleashed the devastation of his fiery eye, he would not only slay all of mankind, he would burn the very earth to barren, uninhabitable desert forever. There had to be another way, something Ra could do that would harm the evil men and women without destroying the good or the fertile land in the process.
Ra thought this a good suggestion and contemplated what he could do to make such a power a reality. After a moment of thought, he reached into his Eye and plucked out Hathor, the burning protectress who was also the embodiment of the rearing cobra uraeus. He sent the flaming cobra down to earth to be his divine vengeance. Hathor is a goddess of transition, and so she changed during her descent, aided by the power of Ra as the embodiment of the magic of his Eye. Gone was the cobra and the maternal cow – in its place stood a lioness as large as a house. Thus was born Sekhmet, the warrior goddess known as the Lady of Slaughter.
Skehmet was the embodiment of Ra’s fury and desire for revenge, and this new goddess was a devastating force of destruction. Not only was she a gigantic lioness (as if that was pants-shittingly terrifying enough on its own), she could breathe fire (the hot, scalding winds of the open desert were often likened to her deadly breath). She was also said to be the bringer of plague and disease, though she also could be called upon to ward off those same diseases from those who pleased her.
Her tail twitching with anticipation for the coming red harvest, Sekhmet began to prowl Egypt in search of her wicked prey. Hunting by night, she came upon a camp of conspirators upon the banks of the Nile. With a terrifying snarl, the lioness goddess launched herself into the unsuspecting followers of Apep and slaughtered them. Limbs and viscera were scattered on the winds, painting the desert sands red with their blood (and staining her muzzle bloody as well). By the time she was done, none of the conspirators remained alive (or even in one mutilated piece). Her work was done, but Sekhmet’s bloodlust had been ignited by the glorious slaughter. She had now tasted human blood and she lusted after more. She wasn’t ready to stop killing until her terrible thirst had been slaked.
For three days, she roamed the countryside, hiding in the rocks during the day and stalking the wicked and the innocent alike by night. Thousands and thousands of people died under her fiery breath and snapping jaws. Ra had been pleased with her initial efforts, but he hadn’t meant to unleash such fury on the innocent people as well. The surviving good men and women who had not turned to Apep began to cry out to their god-pharaoh for help, for mercy, for salvation. Ra called on his daughter to end her ravages through the population, but Sekhment no longer had any thought but red slaughter. She lusted for blood and nothing else would satisfy her. So powerful was the destroyer that not even the gods could halt her frenzied rampage. Something had to be done before Eye of Ra annihilated every last living soul on the planet. If everyone was dead, who would worship the gods?
The ancient god-king thought and then he had a clever idea. Ra ordered the people of the Elephantine Island (near the First Cataract of the Nile) to bring him all the red ochre (a natural clay pigment) they could lay hands on (though other sources say it was pomegranate juice instead). He ordered the priests of the sun temples around the empire and all of the members of his court to crush barley and brew up jugs and jugs of beer mixed with the ochre dye. While the sun was high in the sky and Sekhmet slept off her latest meal of innocent blood, the priests drenched the land outside her cave with seven thousand jugs of the red-dyed beer, making a deep pool of it. Once the trap was set, Ra ordered everyone to hide.
Night fell and Sekhmet awoke, once more thirsting for blood. As she strolled out of her cave to begin the night’s hunt, she saw the shimmering pool of red liquid and thought it must be blood from her slaughtered victims. Eagerly, Sekhmet guzzled down the red beer without realizing it wasn’t in fact human blood. That’s either really good or really bad beer, and I’m not sure which. Sekhmet might be enormous, but even giants have their limits and Sekhmet had never had beer before so she was a real lightweight. The savage lioness promptly became drunk off her ass, staggered off in a boozy stupor, and then passed the fuck out to sleep it off.
So drunk was the savage lion goddess that she slept for three straight days. When she finally managed to open her bleary eyes again, the bloodlust of battle had abated. She looked up and the very first thing she saw were the eyes of Ptah, the creator god from earlier who dreamt the universe into existence. Maybe it was destiny, maybe it was the hangover, but the two fell instantly and deeply in love and were soon married, thus binding creation to destruction and restoring the balance of the ma’at. From their union came Nefertum, god of healing and the embodiment of this renewed harmony. Sekhmet was once again the gentler Hathor, protector of humanity (and especially of women) from sickness and evil though she always had her personal She-Hulk to call on if she needed to smash things. In either aspect, she maintained her power over humanity – passion, both hate and love.
In another version of this story, the Eye of Ra rebelled against Ra’s control in the guise of the Distant Goddess, which is sometimes another form of Hathor. She leaves the sun god and goes on a rampage in the distant land of either Libya to the west of Egypt or Nubia to the south. The loss of his Eye weakened Ra greatly and diminished the strength of the sun, which worried everyone. Desperate, Ra sent another god (usually Thoth, god of wisdom, science, and magic) to talk her into coming back home. She eventually relents and returns to become the consort of the sun god, the feminine counterpart to his solar power. In both versions, Hathor/Sekhmet are a duality – beautiful and joyful but also violent and deadly, embodying both extremes of the passion of fury and love.
It’s no accident that Hathor, the goddess of sexuality, beauty, fertility, and love, gets drunk off her ass and falls in love with the creator god. The ancient Egyptians held an annual celebration known as the Tekh festival, or the Festival of Drunkenness, in commemoration of Sekhmet’s bender. The object was to drink as much beer stained with pomegranate juice as you possibly could and, hopefully, pass out just like Sekhmet had. Given that Sekhmet is also Hathor, the festival naturally included a great deal of drunken fucking because of course it did. In time, as the worship of Hathor spread beyond Egypt to the Greeks and Romans, people would travel from all around the Mediterranean to join the massive drunken orgy of a festival, kind of like an ancient Spring Break or Saint Patrick’s Day (complete with colored beer), and celebrate the Mistress of the Tomb and Destroyer of Rebellion.
And with everyone well and truly inebriated and feeling good, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster is Bennu.
Bennu was a massive heron-like bird whose existence stretches back to the primordial beginnings of creation itself. The animal deity played a pivotal role in the time before time. The ancient Egyptians believed that, since the gods (either Atum or Ra) had used his magic to create the world from the formless waters of Nun, they also believed that all of creation was imbued with that magic as were all living things. For humans, that magic was incarnated in the soul, which had multiple parts (the number varied from one dynasty to another). These parts included: the khet or physical body, the sah or spiritual body, the ren or identity/name (since names were fundamental to identity), the ba or personality, the ka or double, the ib or heart, the shut or shadow, and the sekhem or power. These different aspects worked together in a virtuous person to give them access to forms and powers after death to help or harm the living.
Many depictions of Bennu show him as the ba of Ra (with the ba traditionally represented as a bird with a human head) to the extent that the hieroglyph for Ra in the New Kingdom featured the Bennu Bird. Other depictions describe Bennu as a companion not of Ra but of Atum, another god of creation – both Ra and Atum are credited with the creation of reality in different versions. Some stories from the Middle Kingdom use Bennu to bridge the gap between Atum and Ra, involving both in the creation myth.
Often described as ‘the one who came into being by himself’, Bennu created himself without help from any other being. At the beginning, when nothing existed but Nun’s vast waters, Bennu flew over the waters until at last he came to a single rock (presumably summoned into existence by the great bird god). There, Bennu perched and let out a great cry that echoed over the rippling water, calling for creation to take place and determining what would and would not come into existence. In some versions, Bennu as the ba of Ra provided the creative power that brought Atum into being in the primeval waters of Nun.
Bennu was believed to arise each morning with the rising sun to perch on the top of the persea tree in Heliopolis, wherein the bird would be renewed and invigorated. Herodotus wrote that the Bennu bird lived for 500 years before building a nest of aromatic boughs and spices in the branches of the persea tree before setting it ablaze to die in the fire. From the ashes rose a new Bennu bird who, after embalming his father’s ashes, flew them to the temple of Ra in Heliopolis. The only problem with this story is that, in actual pharaonic tradition, Bennu never actually dies. This is a conflation with the much better known Greek mythical bird, the phoenix. It is possible, though not certain, that the phoenix was a variation on the Bennu bird (and the name itself might even be a derivation from Bennu).
While the mythological Bennu never died in the original tradition, the bird that inspired the animal god might have. The remains of an enormous, human-sized heron species that went extinct sometime around 1500 BC were discovered in the United Arab Emirates. There is speculation that this great bird may have been the inspiration for the deity Bennu and so archaeologist Dr. Ella Hoch named it the Bennu heron in honor of the mystical bird from the dawn of creation.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, on Vurbl, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff.
Next time, we’ll get up close and personal with an ancient Celtic vampire that may have been an inspiration for the famous Count Dracula in our annual Halloween Special. You’ll see that you should always be careful with Druids, that hiring a foreign king to kill your own king may not work out, and that you can’t keep a bad king down. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll join Ichabod Crane in his desperate attempt to flee the Headless Horseman. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.