Thread: What does your username mean?

Sekhmet is an ancient Egyptian goddess. I used to really love mythology of all kinds and Sekhmet was always my favourite of all the gods and goddesses I read about (and mildly studied as a hobby).

She's a bare-breasted, lion-headed, warrior woman who represents the power of the sun, as well as contradictory things such as: war and healing, motherhood and death, etc.

Spoiler for Sekhmet's most famous myth:

In Sekhmet's most well known myth, the sun god Ra is despondent about humans being disrespectful towards him and he sends Sekhmet to straighten them out. A war is fought and won, but Sekhmet does not stop the killing when the battle ends. She starts slaughtering the human race indiscriminately, delightfully drinking their blood, which fuels her desire for more death and also makes her a sort of mythological proto-vampire. When Ra realized what was happening he tries to stop Sekhmet but she is too far gone in her bloodlust to reason with. Ra wanted the human's punished, not completely destroyed, yet even the greatest of the gods (who created all the others) had to back down before her ferocious power in fear of his own existence. Ra and the other gods then mixed thousands of liters of beer with pomegranate juice, making the beer turn a red colour like blood, and poured it out into the deserts ahead of Sekhmet's destructive path. When she came across what she thought was a river of blood, Sekhmet eagerly drank and drank and drank... and kept drinking pretty much till she had ingested it all and was so drunk she passed out. When she woke up she was so hungover she had forgotten all about destroying the humans and became a more passive goddess of healing and motherhood, rather than one of destruction and death.

The ancient Egyptian "festival of intoxication" was celebrated in honor of Sekhmet and was one of the largest festivals of the year. It was a drunken reverie of wild dancing and music, much like the Roman Bacchanalia, but existing thousands of years before. In another myth, the festival of intoxication was created to recognize Sekhmet saving humankind from drowning in the flooding of the Nile river every year. The Nile would turn a red color as it picked up sediments as it overflowed its banks. To stop this, Sekhmet would drink the overflowing red river, then dance wildly across the desert to celebrate her victory over the flooding.

I just think she's awesome.