Mehen

Mehen is a snake wrapped round the thing you love rather than round the thing you are killing. In the underworld books he is drawn as a series of loops enclosing the cabin on the solar barque, and the sun rides inside him through the dangerous hours. The same name belongs to a board game — a stone disk carved as a coiled serpent with the playing track spiralling from the tail to the head — which is among the oldest board games anyone has found. The sets survive and the rules are entirely lost.

Domains

• protection

Relations

• enemy: ApepSet against Apep in the barque: the serpent that encircles to protect against the serpent that encircles to crush.Underworld books, on the coiled protector against the attacking serpent. (primary)

Sources

• Mehen is the Egyptian serpent who coils protectively around the sun god's shrine in the night barque, and whose name is also that of an Old Kingdom board game played on a coiled-snake track.: The Amduat and the Book of Gates. (primary); Mehen game boards of the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom periods. (archaeological)