Many years ago, I had a guide in Luxor who knew I was always searching for something beyond the ordinary to show my guests at Mara House.
One morning, he said, “I want to show you something special.” He took me to the Temple of Amun at Karnak, and I’ll admit, I was skeptical. I thought I’d seen it all.
The Portal at Karnak
As we walked through the portal in the outer wall of Karnak Temple, I felt a shiver run up my spine and stopped in my tracks.
After that day, this opening would act like a signpost for me. I would accompany my guests on their tour of the temple and take them through this portal — in the moment we pass through, they might say a phrase or a word or I would just know instantly whether to take them to the special place I was now going to visit for the first time — or not. I was learning that not everyone is always ready.
Stepping through the portal at Karnak Temple felt like stepping into another dimension, another timeline. We fell silent, as we walked a sandy, winding track, the grains finding their way into my sandals and between my toes. We were both deep in our own thoughts.
Then, around a final bend, over a sea of long yellow grass waving in the sunlight, I saw it: a small square stone building with yet another open doorway.
It seemed half-swallowed by the grass, a place that didn’t want to be found, yet tolerated our approach. This was the Chapel of Sekhmet at Karnak Temple
The Silence of Sekhmet
The guardians, who knew my guide, welcomed us. A turbaned man in a long white robe smiled and ushered me inside the dim building. I saw three tiny rooms side by side. He motioned to the one on the right, gently pushed me inside, and pulled the door quietly shut and one second later the lights went out…
Inside, the air changes the moment you are truly alone and in the dark with Sekhmet. The Egyptian sun outside is a hammer on bare stone, a dry, blinding heat that speaks of crowds and the living. In here, the air is still. It is cool and heavy, tasting of ancient dust and silence. It smells of time.
The chapel is small, surprisingly intimate for a place dedicated to such a monumental force. The walls are a blank canvas, their edges softened by centuries. But my eyes don’t linger on them. They are drawn to the center. To her. (On looking back I found it odd that my eyes scanned the room first before coming to rest on her, but others say the same – as we needed or wanted time to gather ourselves before meeting her gaze).
She is carved from a single block of black granite, polished to a dull gleam by the hands of time, not by modern curators. Sekhmet. The lion-headed goddess. She stands tall and proud, back rigid, a sun disc upon her head. One leg steps forward, and in her paw she holds a long papyrus sceptre, staring straight ahead into an eternity I cannot see.
“The silence in the room isn’t empty; it is full of her.”
The fine hairs on my arms rise. It feels less like I am looking at a statue and more like I am standing before a presence that has consented to be still, for now. Her lioness face is not snarling. It is serene, impossibly ancient, and utterly pitiless. The sun disk on her head is a cold, stone crown. The scepter she holds is not just a symbol of power but a reminder of who wields it.
I take a step closer. My breath is too loud. The scrape of my sandal on the stone floor is a jarring intrusion on the sacred quiet. I stop, and the silence rushes back in, thicker than before. I dare to place my hand lightly on her arm… almost expecting a reaction… in this place, anything feels possible.
I look into her eyes. They are carved, unseeing, yet I have the overwhelming sense that I am the one being seen. That she is looking straight through the thin veneer of my 21st-century self, down to the primal core of me—the part that knows what it is to be prey, that understands the fundamental laws of blood and survival.
This is not the rage of a hot temper. This is the cold, precise, and necessary function of a natural law. She is the disease and the cure. She is the scorching wind that withers the crop and the heat that burns away the infection. She does not hate. She simply is. And I wait … for a message, for a sign.
Then it comes. A strange peace settles over me, a peace that comes not from comfort, but from absolute clarity. In her presence, all my modern anxieties — the emails, the tour logistics, my family back home — seem absurdly small. They are dust. She is the mountain.
A Lesson in Fire and Control
Not for the first time in an Egyptian temple, I feel an urge to apologize. but for what? I’m not sure. But in that moment, looking at Sekhmet, I understand. I see the balance between destruction and healing. The necessity of the fire that clears the old wood, allowing sunlight to nourish new growth.
In a flash, it seemed I realised that I had already experienced such fires within myself, living in Luxor as a woman, a foreigner, daring to navigate a man’s world. I was no stranger to the uncontrolled anger she embodied, nor to the new beginnings that bloomed when the fire has died out.
Living in Luxor had forced me to find a fire I never knew I carried — a fierce, unleashed anger that could summon strength far beyond my size or years. But I was also learning how unchecked fury can destroy when angry words carry you over a cliff there is no returning from, while part of you stands back as the calm, silent watcher.
Sekhmet’s own story is much the same: on her first rampage, unleashed at Ra’s command, she went too far, unstoppable until sleep overtook her and she awoke again as the goddess Hathor. Yet Sekhmet never disappeared. She remained in the background, the still silent powerhouse, her statues radiating a sense of immense power held in check, waiting. And in that moment I recognised something that had probably been in my subconscious for a while before that day — that true power is not in the outburst, but in the control. Now that energy rises in me only when it is needed, not just in moments of anger but in moments that call for a strength deeper than muscle. The flame must be held, not feared, and only if and when the moment is right, released.
I bowed my head, not in worship, but in acknowledgment. I see you. I understand.
For a long moment, we stood there together in the cool, dark silence — the goddess of annihilation and a single, fleeting human heart.
Then, from outside, a distant laugh echoed, a sound from another world. The spell was not broken, but it was softened. I took a final breath of the ancient air, offered one last look to the impassive granite face, and turned to go, leaving the goddess to wait alone in the silence, in the shadows, for the next pilgrim seeking wisdom, clarity or guidance…
Stepping Back Into the World
Stepping back out into the blinding Luxor sun, passing through the courtyard’s protective doorway, was, once again, like crossing to another dimension. The world was loud and bright and hot again. But I felt different. Calmer. As if I had placed all my fears on a scale and found them infinitely lighter than a single, black granite paw.
If something in my experience stirred you and you’d like to talk about coming to Luxor, write to me maraegypt@gmail.com
Sekhmet is known by other names: The Lady of Slaughter. The Scarlet Goddess. She who breathes fire. Do you know her full story? Sekhmet – Egypt’s Fierce Goddess of Power and Protection
Would you like to meet with Sekhmet yourself?
Today the Sekhmet Chapel can only be entered with special, pre-booked permission, The permit carries a cost that some find significant. I keep a rolling calendar of people who have expressed interest – if your preferred dates align with others, the cost is divided. I will always tell you whether shared dates are possible before you commit to anything.
The possibility of matching dates increases if I am also coordinating your other Luxor experiences, as this gives me more flexibility to arrange the timing.
Why are you interested in Egypt? Why are you really coming? What do you hope to experience?
There are two Egypt’s for me – the ordinary, mundane, in-your-face-Egypt where everyone is busy working at making a living and the hidden, invisible Egypt that most cannot “see” with their eyes but can, in some indescribable way “feel” and the latter is the one that keeps me here. would you like to hear more of my experiences in this realm?
Last updated on 16/05/2026 by Marie Vaughan