274
ISIS LIVED IN THE FORM
OF A WOMAN, WHO HAD
THE KNOWLEDGE OF
WORDS OF POWER
RA’S SECRET NAME
F
or the Egyptians, a name
was essential to a person’s
being. To erase someone’s
name after death was to destroy
that person in the afterlife. Ra, king
of gods and men, had so many
names that even the gods did not
know them all. Isis, the mistress of
magic, had power over words and
learned the names of all things,
so that she would become as great
as Ra. Eventually, the only name Isis
did not know was Ra’s secret name.
Ra sailed across the sky each
day, and each day he grew old. His
mouth went slack, and his spittle
dribbled to the ground. Isis caught
up Ra’s spittle and shaped it with
some dust into a snake, which she
left in Ra’s path. When he stumbled
over it, the snake bit him, and Ra
fell down with a terrible cry. The
other gods heard him and asked,
“What is wrong?” But Ra could
not reply. The snake’s bite had
taken the fire of life from him,
and his limbs trembled as the
poison surged through his body.When Ra regained his voice, he
summoned the other gods to him,
and asked for their help. Then Isis,
radiant with power, whose words
could make a man choked to death
live again, offered to cure the sun
god, but said that to do so he would
have to tell her his name. Finally,
in fear of death, Ra released his
secret name from his heart. Using
the name, Isis chanted a spell, the
poison left Ra’s body, and he was
made strong again. ■IN BRIEF
THEME
Rivalry between godsSOURCES
Papyrus Turin 1993,
Anonymous, ca. 12 9 5 –118 6 bce;
Papyrus Chester Beatty 11
Anonymous, ca. 12 9 5 –118 6 bce.SETTING
Ancient Egypt.KEY FIGURES
Ra The sun god; tricked into
revealing his secret name.Isis Goddess of magic;
Ra’s sister and wife; her
Egyptian name was Aset
(“Queen of the Throne”).Isis stands behind Ra as he receives
an offering on this carved stele from
Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period
(ca.10 69 – 664 bce). Ra is identifiable
by the sun disk over his head.US_274-275_Ra_Secret_Name.indd 274 30/11/17 4:56 pm
275
See also: The creation and the first gods 266–71 ■ The night barque of Ra
272–73 ■ Osiris and the Underworld 276–83ANCIENT EGYPT AND AFRICA
Isis saves Ra from death
by snake poison, but only as a
ploy to learn his name and so
assume some of the sun god’s
power, which she then passes
to her son, Horus.Flow out,
poison, and spill to the
ground! By the power of his
name, which has passed from
his heart to mine,
Ra shall live!Tell me your name.
That is the word of
power that will make
you live.Be quick, for my eyes
are blurring. I am shaking all over,
and covered in sweat.I am he who made
heaven and earth. I knitted
together the mountains, and made the
waters. When I open my eyes, it
becomes light, and when I close my
eyes, it becomes dark.Ra cries out in pain.What’s
wrong?Has a serpent
dared to lift its head
against you? I will
drive it away with my
words of power.Tell me your
name so that I can
heal you.I have been wounded by
some deadly thing—some thing
that I did not make.My name will pass from
my body into yours—the name
that I have kept secret since the
dawn of time.Ra Isis
Amun-Ra
Ra, the sun god, was visible to
the naked eye (especially in
his form as Aten, the disk of
the sun), but the creator god
was also worshipped by the
Egyptians as an unknowable
mystery in the form of Amun,
the hidden god. Amun was
often fused with Ra as Amun-
Ra. His cult center was at the
great temple of Karnak at
Thebes (now Luxor). Although
the temple’s rituals were the
exclusive preserve of its
priests, who acted in the
king’s name, there is some
evidence that Amun was
regarded as a god to whom
the poor and dispossessed
could plead for help. He is
described in an ancient
Egyptian hymn as “the great
god who listens to prayers,
who comes at the voice of the
poor and distressed, who
gives breath to the wretched.”
Under the merged identity of
Amun-Ra, Amun became the
chief god of the Egyptians,
worshipped as the creator of
all things, who brought
himself into being by saying,
“I am!”—the source and
sustainer of all existence.US_274-275_Ra_Secret_Name.indd 275 05/12/17 3:00 pm