The Destruction of Mankind

Ra has grown old, and humanity plots against him. He consults the other gods and sends out his Eye, in the form of the goddess Hathor, to punish them. She becomes Sekhmet, the lioness, and slaughters people across Egypt, wading in their blood.

Ra changes his mind. Humanity is nearly gone, and he wants what is left of it to survive. But the goddess cannot be recalled: she is his own power in action, and she is enjoying herself. So he has seven thousand jars of beer brewed and dyed red with ochre, and poured out over the fields overnight. At dawn she finds the flooded land, takes it for blood, drinks until she is too drunk to continue, and forgets what she was doing.

Ra then withdraws from the world, rising on the back of the sky-cow Nut to rule from a distance, and the direct rule of gods on earth ends. The text is followed in the tomb versions by a long stretch of ritual and cosmological material, including the sky-cow itself, which is why it is usually called the Book of the Heavenly Cow.