THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
Ra is usually shown as a man with a falcon's head, crowned by a red solar disk encircled by a rearing uraeus cobra. His cult was centered at Heliopolis in Lower Egypt, where priests merged him with the primeval god Atum as head of the Ennead: Ra-Atum arose self-created from the waters of Nun, stood upon the first mound of earth, and engendered Shu and Tefnut, from whom the rest of the pantheon descended. From the Fourth Dynasty onward, pharaohs bore the title 'Son of Ra' as a fixed element of the royal titulary for the next three thousand years.
Ra's daily work is the voyage of the solar barque: by day he crosses the sky in the day-boat Mandjet, and at night he boards the night-boat Mesektet to travel through the twelve hour-regions of the Duat, where the chaos serpent Apep attacks the vessel and must be driven off before dawn. The Book of the Heavenly Cow preserves another famous episode: the aging Ra, learning that humanity plotted against him, sent out his Eye in the form of the lioness Sekhmet, whose slaughter was halted only when Ra flooded the fields with beer dyed red like blood.
In the New Kingdom Ra fused with the Theban god Amun as Amun-Ra, supreme deity of the empire, while his combination with Horus produced Ra-Horakhty, 'Horus of the Two Horizons.'
