Week 6 Storytelling: "The True Name of Ra"

(Anansi in Spider form from American Gods GIF made with giphy.com)

I am Ra the ancient. I am the sun. I am the giver of life. A king among men and I am in a damn wheelchair. How did I get this way? Where have I gone wrong? Ra thought to himself as the nurse wheeled him down the hall to the cafeteria. Breakfast was about to be served. 

Probably porridge again. He sighed. He hated porridge. 

Ra was a god, but he had aged like a man. He was all-powerful - the father of men and gods. His father, Nu had bestowed upon him a great gift. His true name. Ra had many names that men did not know and some that they did; but his true name resided in his heart and no one, mortal nor immortal knew it. Ra was an aged man whose body had been worn by years in the desert sands. He had seen kingdoms rise and fall. He had conquered. He had ruled. Now the only time he was king was during a game of chess at the nursing home’s weekly game night. None of his children visited.

Ungrateful. He thought in disgust. He had given them great power yet none showed appreciation. Not even Isis, his favorite daughter. He had made her a great enchantress but she had grown wicked and thirsted for power. 

While Ra thought about his children and ate his porridge Isis was watching. She had disguised herself as a nurse and watched as her father - bent and twisted with age - struggled to shovel cold gruel into his mouth. 

Pitiful. She thought. Why should he posses such immense power when he cannot even properly feed himself? That power should be mine. She had devised a plot to steal the power from the heart of her father. She watched until Ra had finished his meal. The old god sat at a table with elderly mortals, hunched over in his wheelchair with porridge on his mouth, chin, and shirt. Isis, in her nurses' disguise, approached her father. He did not recognize her. She wiped his mouth and chin with a handkerchief. 

“There we go, let's get you cleaned up,” she cooed in the sweetest voice she could manage. She wheeled the elderly Ra back to his room and helped him into his reclining chair. After she had gotten him settled she hurried out of his room, the handkerchief that she had used to wipe his mouth tucked away in her pocket. When she was safely away from the nursing home she removed the handkerchief from her pocket and began to recite words of power over it, she crafted the cloth into the form of a spider. Her words of power brought the spider to life. She used Ra’s own spittle to fill the spider with a deadly venom. At night, after shift change, when all of the patients were in bed Isis snuck back into the nursing home, carrying her handkerchief spider in her pocket. She stopped outside of her father’s room and carefully placed the spider on the floor. She uttered more words of power under her breath, the spider scurried under the door to Ra’s room, carrying out its orders. 

The spider scurried through the room and crept up the side of Ra’s bed. The sleeping Ra heard nothing. The spider crawled across the bed toward the ancient god. Ra stirred but did not wake. The spider crawled up Ra’s face and stopped at the tip of his nose and bit. Ra once again stirred but did not wake. After the spider was done injecting its venom it collapsed, becoming a handkerchief once more. 

When Ra awoke in the morning he felt like there was fire running through his veins - yet he was as cold as ice to the touch. The nursing home staff could not figure out what ailed him so they sent for a specialist. The doctor said that he was suffering from an unknown ailment and she did not know how to treat it. She prescribed something to numb his pain and something for his fever. Ra writhed in agony in his bed.

What evil has befallen me? He wondered.

Isis watched from afar as her father suffered. Ra asked the nursing home staff to call his children for he feared he was dying. All of his children answered their father’s call - even the wicked Isis. 

“My children, I have been stricken with some deadly malady, I beg you, chant your words of power over me so that I may best this disease,” he begged. Ra’s children cast their best spells and chanted their best words of power. Nothing helped. The ancient Sun was dying. Finally, Isis came forward and said,

“Father, I can help you, but I am not powerful enough on my own. I need to know your true name. The name your father bestowed upon you, this is the only way I will be able to draw this ailment from your body,” she said in a cool tone. 

Ra knew that without his true name in his heart his power would be lost. But he was in so much agony that he agreed. 

“Bend down my child, put your ear to my lips,” he said to Isis. Isis obeyed. Ra uttered the syllables of his true name into Isis’ ear. As soon as the words passed his lips his fever broke. The power of his true name passed from his heart to the heart of Isis. She felt the power coursing through her body. Ra would live to see another day but without the power in his heart. That is how Isis became all-powerful. Until her brothers figured out what she had done…

Author’s Note: “The Secret Name of Ra,” tells the story of the powerful ancient Egyptian god, Ra and the jealousy that his daughter, Isis, had for his power. She wished to possess her father’s power but knew that his secret name was in his heart and that the only way to get to it was by getting her father to tell her himself. In the original story, Isis forms a spear out of clay made from earth and her elderly father’s drool. The spear then turns into a serpent that bites Ra. Ra then becomes deathly ill and summons all of his children to him and commands them to “pronounce words of power” over him to cure his ailment. None of the words of power work so Isis tells him she can heal him but she doesn’t have enough power. She tells him that she needs the power from his secret name. Once Ra relinquishes his secret name the power transfers to Isis and then she heals her father. I updated my version of the story and set it in a modern nursing home. Ra is elderly in the original story so I thought a nursing home was fitting. Instead of a snake, I made the thing that bites Ra into a spider. I think a lot of people find spiders creepy and crawly so it worked well in the tale. I like the idea of writing a follow-up story so I left the ending open to that possibility.

Bibliography: Egyptian Myth and Legend by Donald Mackenzie (1907)