9. The Udjat Eye (The Eye of Ra) “Symbol of Protection & Power”

The Eye of the Ra is a famous ancient Egyptian symbol amulet capable of repelling all negative energy and creating total harmony. The origin of the symbol can be traced to a number of connected tales like the time when he sends his eye as a loving father to look for his lost children. During the absence of Ra’s original eye, another one grew. When the first eye successfully returned with the children, the eye was used as a weapon by other gods. The sun god Ra does his routine of sailing his boat across the sky during the day and then goes to the underworld at night when he was weak and vulnerable. The myth says the daughter of Ra used the power of the eye to punish the humans who ignored his instructions and laws, but many gods feared the eye would destroy mankind, so they capture and calmed the eyes and then returned to Ra. The symbol represents royal power & authority, regeneration, and peace. The eye of Ra is associated with the destructive power of the sun, but the Egyptians also used it to protect buildings and themselves. The amulets were painted with a dark red color and worked to protect against evil entities or spells and create good health. Another representation of the eye of Ra is the symbol of a cobra wrapped around a solar disk. Note: The Eye of Ra is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection, love, good health, royal authority, and power. The Eye of Ra represents the power of the sun to provide protection and destructive force. The Eye of Ra is believed to repel all negative energy and establish balance & harmony and the power to see everything.

Origins The ancient Egyptian god Horus was a sky deity, and many Egyptian texts say that Horus’s right eye was the sun and his left eye the moon. The solar eye and lunar eye were sometimes equated with the red and white crown of Egypt, respectively. Some texts treat the Eye of Horus seemingly interchangeably with the Eye of Ra, which in other contexts is an extension of the power of the sun god Ra and is often personified as a goddess. The Egyptologist Richard H. Wilkinson believes the two eyes of Horus gradually became distinguished as the lunar Eye of Horus and the solar Eye of Ra. Other Egyptologists, however, argue that no text clearly equates the eyes of Horus with the sun and moon until the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC); Rolf Krauss argues that the Eye of Horus originally represented Venus as the morning star and evening star and only later became equated with the moon. Katja Goebs argues that the myths surrounding the Eye of Horus and the Eye of Ra are based around the same mytheme, or core element of a myth, and that “rather than postulating a single, original myth of one cosmic body, which was then merged with others, it might be more fruitful to think in terms of a (flexible) myth based on the structural relationship of an Object that is missing, or located far from its owner”. In the myths surrounding the Eye of Ra, the goddess flees Ra and is brought back by another deity. In the case of the Eye of Horus, the eye is usually missing because of Horus’s conflict with his arch-rival, the god Set, in their struggle for the kingship of Egypt after the death of Horus’s father Osiris.