Egyptian Mythology

The Myth of Isis, Osiris, and Horus

What was the Egyptian flood myth?

Like the Mesopotamian and Genesis flood stories, the Egyptian flood myth begins with the anger of the high god against the ungrateful evil of the human race. A late third millennium B.C.E. myth tells how humanity had gone so far as to plot against Ra himself and that Ra called the gods into council to decide what to do with these “children” of his Eye. Humans had been born of the tears of his Eye, represented by a goddess. In this case the Eye is Sekhmet, the lioness goddess—perhaps as the fiery sun—who, bent on the destruction of her miscreant children, descends upon humans and their world and unleashes all of her violent fury on them. The destruction is so terrible that Ra relents and decides he must put a stop to the terror wrought by his Eye. He creates beer from barley and red ochre and floods all of the fields of Egypt with it. Sekhmet is herself attracted by the beer and drinks so much of it that she becomes intoxicated and forgets about her destructive mission. A few humans are thus saved and are able to begin a new life.

