Iconography

The Coffin Texts (CT 758-60) tell how the serpent god exists as nine concentric rings which are ‘roads of fire’ encircling and protecting the sun god and Peter Piccione has shown that the so-called ‘coiled serpent board game’, examples of which have survived from the Predynastic Period through to the

(Opposite) Scene from the third hour of the Book of Gates showing tlie serpent Mehen protectively encircling the cabin of the sun god who passes through the undemorld in his evening fortn, accompanied by tlw gods Sia and Heka. Beneath the sun god’s barque, the great serpent Apophis is also shown. 19th dynasty. Tomb of Ramesses I, Valley of the Kings, ivestern Thebes.

(Below) The deceased king encircled by the protective serpent Mehen. At the right and left of this image an enigmatic text states ‘He Wlw Hides the Hours’. Detail, second gilt shrine of Tutankhamun. 18th dynasty. Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

Tl'ie protective and assistive deity Nehebu-Kau, in the form of a serpentman, feeds the deceased. Detail of a cartonnage mummy case. Louvre, Paris.

Old Kingdom in Egypt, was based on this image of Mehen. Later, in the New Kingdom, Mehen is extensively represented in the vignettes of the ‘Underworld Books’ such as the Amduat. There the god is depicted as an immense serpent, often shown coiled around or above the shrine-like cabin of the boat of Re, protecting the sun god from evil and especially from the inimical underworld serpent Apophis.

Worship

As with most of the more bizarre denizens of the underworld Mehen was primarily the subject of myth rather than an object of ritual worship.