The Blood-Red Beer
Humankind plotted rebellion against the aged sun god Ra, and Ra sent his "Eye" — Hathor in the form of Sekhmet — to punish them. She slaughtered without cease, and though blood ran in rivers she would not stop, and it seemed humankind would be wiped out. Unwilling to see them extinguished, Ra ordered seven thousand jars of beer brewed and dyed blood-red, and had them poured by night over the fields she would pass. Mistaking it for blood, Sekhmet drank deep and fell into a drunken sleep, and when she woke her fury had passed, and humankind survived. The Egyptians thereafter drank red beer at her festivals — using drunkenness to remember an all-but-realized end of the world.