Sekhmet (“The Mighty One”), lioness goddess of ancient Egypt, spread terror with her bloody rampages. Yet she became the protector of kings and a favorite personal goddess of millions of Egyptians.
Why did Egyptians have a goddess who required such assiduous and even obsessive propitiation? Why did other Egyptian goddesses play roles similar to Sekhmet’s? What explains Sekhmet’s dual nature as destroyer and protector? Why did Egyptians call her the Eye of Ra? Why did she originally appear with an oval disk on her head?
We now have good answers to these questions. But in order to understand them, we need to see why we should think that Sekhmet was Planet Venus. And that requires us to investigate a major case of scientific rejectionism.



If we can interpret certain ancient myths correctly, they could lead us to more accurate and penetrating views of the history of the Earth and the solar system. They might teach us about the forces at work and explain anomalies bequeathed to us by a long-hidden past. But how can we interpret these myths, the products of minds so far removed from ours? How do we know which interpretation is correct, if any? Are we doomed to speculate without ever achieving certainty?




American history contains two outstanding wrongs committed against groups of us: the killing, displacement, and mistreatment of Native Americans and the subjection of African Americans to slavery and ongoing discrimination. Various thinkers have suggested kinds of reparations for these acts; but views differ sharply on whether reparations are justified, who should pay them, who should receive them, and what amount is fair and feasible. Instead of serving to heal our country, reparations have become one more divisive issue.

The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020 set off a nationwide surge of protests over police brutality against African-Americans. On April 20, 2021, the jury found Derek Chauvin, the police officer who pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds, guilty of murder in the second and third degrees and manslaughter in the second degree. Worldwide attention to Floyd’s death has focused on racial disparities in the United States as well as on the specific issue of police brutality against African-Americans.