The story of the Distant Goddess is absolute proof that it’s a crime that Ancient Egyptian mythology hasn’t entered the popular conciousness in the same way as Greek stuff.
Short, super paraphrased version: Ra is sick of humanity being rebellious wee bastards, so he sends a goddess as an embodiment of his vengeance, usually Sekhmet in the form of a great fuckoff lion - first to the southern deserts to wipe out the followers of Set. She does so, and then for unspecified reasons, Ra decides maybe humanity is redeemable hey call off the murderlion. But being an embodiment of pure divine retribution, she isn’t really having it.
So Ra sends Thoth out in an effort to soothe the goddess before she arrives in the north and wipes out everything including the gods (she’s just that strong). He’s terrified, but he tries all sorts of cunning and wisdom and trickery and tells her moral tales and all that, but all he can do is delay her.
In the meantime, Ra’s priests of the north are hard at work. They brew thousands of barrels of beer, and mix pots and pots red dye. And when the goddess inevitably arrives, they mix it up and pour it into the reeds of the nile. Believing it to be the spilled blood of her enemies, she drinks it up proudly… And gets EXTREMELY drunk, calming down and transforming into Hathor, goddess of joy and love.
And once a year to celebrate this momentous occasion, Egyptians would get Absolutely Plastered.
All true. …There’s also a mention somewhere (different papyrus: I forget who mentions it) that the beer has also has had “mandrakes” mixed with it, so they not only got her drunk, but may have roofie’d her JUST TO BE SURE.
In modern Kemeticism we actually still celebrate the holiday dedicated to this event called the Pacification of Sekhmet. Although the version above isn’t the only version and Sekhmet being sent specifically to wipe out Sutekh’s followers is a “newer” (relatively speaking, Ancient Egyptian history spans literally thousands of years) version with the popular demonization of Sutekh
The goddess Ra sends out, an Eye of Ra, is actually Het-Hert (commonly known by Her Greek name Hathor) who transforms into Sekhmet in order to exact divine vengeance. There are actually multiple goddesses Who are all Eyes of Ra and all Eye of Ra goddesses are considered the embodiment of His vengeance, it’s not just Sekhmet
Rather than “unspecified reasons” the most popular canon attribution to why Ra wanted to call Her off was because She was slaughtering too many people and, like, they were literally gonna run out of people. Unlike some faith systems, the Netjeru need us to feed Their Kau so no people = no Ka getting fed which is Bad Times. Anyway, Sekhmet gets so White Girl Wasted that She falls asleep and turns back into Het-Hert–Who by the time of the telling, was already a well established goddess rather than Her origin coming out of the Pacification itself
Anyway, a lot of us still get super wrecked in celebration of the Pacification once a year (the Kemetic religious calendar is wobbly at best because it orbits on the position of certain stars and floodings so it largely depends on where you are as to when a thing is unless you’re like me and fix dates because Fuck It. I generally celebrate the Pacification some time in August, before Wep Ronpet which is the New Year)
I….actually have a meme for this, lemme find it
Anyway, I’m not sure when the mandrake part came into play, but it had to have been after the New Kingdom since Egyptians didn’t grow mandrake until then and while it was used for analgesic reasons, it was largely seen as an aphrodisiac (that’s absolutely not to say that the version with the mandrake drugging is wrong–like I said, the history is thousands of years and canon conflicts itself a lot depending on rulership at the time and geographical location)
Also, just as a general note of interest, Sekhmet has dominion over demons (not the way Abrahamic faiths think of them. Egyptian demons are not gods but they’re not humans or animals either) and since diseases and maladies were believed to be caused by demons, Sekhmet ended up with the role of healer as well and Her priests were often very skilled physicians
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