Picture the first king of Egypt with golden flesh, silver bones and hair of lapis lazuli, a ruler who sweat and cried his subjects into existence. This deep dive constructs a narrative biography of Ra, the ancient Egyptian sun god, not as a distant orb but as a living, aging and struggling ruler whose life story explains how Egyptians understood order, fragility and the passage of time.

We begin in the watery chaos of Nun, the benben mound and the lotus from which Ra emerged, and show how the Nile's annual flood shaped that image. The episode covers his reign as first pharaoh and the principle of maat, the human rebellion that brought isfet, and the Eye of Ra sent as the lioness Sekhmet, pacified only by a field of red-dyed beer. We then follow his abdication to the sky, the day boat and night boat, the crew of Sia, Hu and Heka, the nightly ...