Justin Stone

The ancient Egyptians spoke a time when the gods tried to wipe out humanity. then they abandoned the Earth. There's an ancient Egyptian text that describes something far more disturbing than most people realize. It's called The Book of the Heavenly Cow, and surviving copies date back more than 3,300 years. The story is preserved in the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I, with an earlier version appearing on a shrine belonging to Tutankhamun. According to the Egyptians, there was once a time when the gods actually lived among human beings. Ra, the great sun god, ruled directly over the Earth. Eventually, something went wrong. Ra was growing old. His bones were described as silver, his flesh as gold, and his hair as lapis lazuli. Humanity noticed his weakness and began plotting against him. When Ra discovered the rebellion, he summoned the other gods and asked what should be done. Their answer? Destroy the rebels. Ra sent his divine Eye, the goddess Hathor, associated with the terrifying lioness Sekhmet, to punish humanity.And she began slaughtering people. The goddess apparently enjoyed the killing so much that she didn't want to stop.Ra realized that humanity was facing destruction and decided to intervene. But rather than confront the goddess directly, he came up with a deception. He ordered 7,000 jars of beer to be prepared and mixed with red ochre until the liquid resembled human blood. The gods poured it across the fields during the night, covering the ground to a depth of roughly three handbreadths. When the goddess returned the following morning, she discovered what appeared to be an enormous field of blood. She drank it. Until she became so intoxicated that she could no longer recognize the humans she had been sent to kill. The slaughter stopped. Humanity survived. Now, most retellings end the story there. But that's not where the Egyptian account ends, and this is the part I find particularly interesting. Ra decides he's finished living among human beings. He announces that he's exhausted and no longer wishes to remain on Earth. The other gods try to persuade him to stay.He refuses.Instead, the goddess Nut transforms into an enormous celestial cow. Ra climbs onto her back, and she carries him away from the Earth into the heavens. The Egyptians describe this departure as part of a fundamental reorganization of the cosmos. Heaven and Earth become separated. The gods receive new responsibilities. Thoth is given authority in the heavenly administration, while other deities assume duties over different parts of creation. And Ra no longer rules humanity directly from the Earth. When the surviving humans see Ra leaving, they offer to attack the people responsible for the rebellion. Even after nearly being exterminated, humanity responds with more violence. And Ra still leaves. Now compare this with the much older Mesopotamian traditions. In Atrahasis, humanity becomes troublesome to the gods. Divine authorities unleash catastrophes, including a devastating flood, before a new arrangement for human existence emerges. In Egypt, the gods nearly destroy humanity through a supernatural agent, then withdraw from direct earthly rule. There was supposedly an earlier age when divine beings directly governed humanity. Something went terribly wrong. Humanity nearly disappeared. And the relationship between gods and humans was permanently changed. The Egyptians carved this account into royal monuments more than three thousand years ago. They were explaining why the gods were no longer physically present among humanity, and why the world had become fundamentally different from the one that supposedly existed before. Across the ancient world, we repeatedly encounter traditions describing an earlier age of direct divine rule, followed by rebellion, catastrophe, and withdrawal. Were these independent religious explanations for the human condition? Were cultures exchanging and adapting older traditions? Or were some of these stories shaped by memories of real upheavals whose original circumstances had long been forgotten? The Egyptians clearly believed that the world had not always operated as it did in their own time. According to their own mythology, the gods had deliberately withdrawn. And humanity was left behind.