Mehen

About Mehen

Mehen is the coiled serpent-deity of ancient Egypt who surrounds and protects the sun-god Ra in the solar bark during its perilous journey through the duat, the underworld, each night. His name means 'the coiled one,' and he is depicted as a great serpent wound in protective coils around the cabin or shrine in which the sun-god sails, a living barrier shielding Ra from the dangers of the night, above all from the chaos-serpent Apep who attacks the solar bark. The same name, Mehen, was also borne by a Predynastic and Old Kingdom board game played on a board in the form of a coiled serpent, and the two, the protective serpent-god and the serpent-shaped game, are linked by their shared coiled-serpent imagery and, in the view of many scholars, by a common connection to the solar journey.

The serpent-god Mehen belongs to the world of the books of the underworld, the great compositions inscribed in the royal tombs of the New Kingdom that describe the nocturnal journey of the sun through the twelve hours of the night. In these compositions, the Amduat, the Book of Gates, and others, Ra sails through the underworld in his bark, and Mehen the protective serpent is coiled around the shrine in which the god travels, defending him against the serpents and demons of the night. Where Apep is the great serpent of chaos who threatens the sun, Mehen is the great serpent of protection who shields it, a striking instance of the Egyptian use of the serpent for opposite purposes, as both the embodiment of chaos and the agent of protection against it.

Mehen's protective role connects him to the central drama of the Egyptian cosmos, the nightly struggle of the sun-god to pass through the underworld and be reborn at dawn. The journey through the duat was beset with dangers, and the survival of the sun, and with it the renewal of creation, depended on the defeat of the forces of chaos that sought to halt the bark. Mehen, coiled around the god, was among the defenders who made the safe passage possible, his protective coils a shield against the hostile powers of the night. The god is attested in the funerary literature from the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom, where an embryonic 'Book of Mehen' appears, through the great underworld books of the New Kingdom, where his protective role is fully developed.

The Mehen board game, attested from the Predynastic period and the Old Kingdom, was played on a board shaped as a coiled serpent, the playing-spaces marked along the serpent's spiralling body from the tail at the outer edge to the head at the center. The game was played with lion-shaped pieces and small balls or marbles, and its rules are not fully known, the game having disappeared after the Old Kingdom. The shared serpent-imagery of the game and the god, and the possibility that the spiralling course of the game ritualized the journey of the sun through the coils of the protective serpent, have led scholars to connect the two, though the precise relationship remains uncertain. The board game thus gives Mehen a presence in the material culture of early Egypt alongside his role in the later funerary literature.

The Story

The story of Mehen is the story of a protective serpent coiled around the sun-god in the dangerous passage of the night, and to understand it is to understand the nightly journey of the sun through the underworld that lay at the heart of Egyptian solar theology. Each day, in the Egyptian conception, the sun-god Ra crossed the sky in his bark, bringing light and life to the world; and each night, after setting in the west, he entered the duat, the underworld, and sailed through its twelve hours of darkness before rising again in the east at dawn. This nocturnal journey was perilous, for the underworld was filled with dangers, with serpents and demons and the forces of chaos that sought to halt the bark and prevent the sun from being reborn. The survival of the sun, and with it the renewal of creation, depended on the safe passage of the bark through the night.

The greatest of the dangers was the chaos-serpent Apep, the gigantic embodiment of disorder who lay in wait in the underworld to attack the solar bark and devour the sun. Each night Apep rose against the bark, seeking to halt it and to end the cycle of light, and each night he had to be defeated so that the sun might pass and be reborn. The defenders of the bark, the gods who sailed with Ra and fought for him, repelled the chaos-serpent and ensured the safe passage of the sun, and among these defenders was Mehen, the protective serpent coiled around the god.

Mehen, whose name means 'the coiled one,' was depicted as a great serpent wound in protective coils around the cabin or shrine in which the sun-god sailed. Where Apep was the serpent of chaos who threatened the sun, Mehen was the serpent of protection who shielded it, his coiled body a living barrier around the god, defending him against the serpents and demons of the night. The Egyptians used the serpent for opposite purposes, as both the embodiment of chaos and the agent of protection, and in Mehen the protective power of the serpent was set against the chaotic power of Apep, the coiled defender against the coiled destroyer. As the bark sailed through the hours of the night, Mehen's coils enclosed and guarded the god, a shield of serpent-flesh against the hostile powers that beset the passage.

The protective role of Mehen is developed in the great books of the underworld, the compositions inscribed in the royal tombs of the New Kingdom that describe the nocturnal journey of the sun. In the Amduat, the earliest of these compositions, and in the Book of Gates, Ra sails through the twelve hours of the night, and Mehen is shown coiled around the shrine in which the god travels, present through the hours of the journey as the protector of the sun. The serpent's coils around the divine cabin are a recurring image in these compositions, the visual sign of the protection that enclosed the god in his passage through the dangers of the duat.

The god is attested in the funerary literature from earlier than the New Kingdom underworld books. In the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom, an embryonic 'Book of Mehen' appears, an early form of the material concerning the protective serpent, showing that the conception of Mehen as the guardian of the sun-god reached back before the great New Kingdom compositions. The development from these early appearances to the fully elaborated role in the underworld books traces the growth of the figure across the funerary tradition, the protective serpent becoming a fixed element of the imagery of the solar journey.

The same name, Mehen, was borne by a board game of the Predynastic period and the Old Kingdom, and the relationship between the game and the god is a matter of interest and some debate. The Mehen game was played on a board shaped as a coiled serpent, the playing-spaces marked along the serpent's spiralling body from the tail at the outer edge to the head at the center. The game was played with pieces in the form of small lions and with balls or marbles, and examples of the boards survive from early contexts, including the tomb of the high official Hesy-Re at Saqqara of around 2650 BCE. The rules of the game are not fully known, for it disappeared after the Old Kingdom and no full account of its play survives.

The shared serpent-imagery of the game and the god, both centered on the coiled serpent, has led scholars to connect the two, and some have suggested that the spiralling course of the game, from the tail to the head along the serpent's body, ritualized the journey of the sun through the coils of the protective serpent, the players' movement along the board mirroring the passage of the sun through the night under Mehen's protection. The precise relationship between the game and the god remains uncertain, and the game's disappearance after the Old Kingdom, long before the full development of the protective serpent in the New Kingdom underworld books, complicates any simple connection. But the coiled serpent unites the two, the Mehen of the game-board and the Mehen of the solar bark sharing the form of the wound serpent, and the figure of Mehen thus has a double presence in Egyptian culture, in the material world of the early board game and in the funerary theology of the nocturnal journey of the sun.

Mehen, then, is the protective serpent of the sun-god, the coiled defender who enclosed and guarded Ra in his passage through the dangers of the night, set against the chaos-serpent Apep as protection against destruction. His coils around the divine bark were a shield in the great nightly struggle on which the renewal of the world depended, and his name, carried also by the serpent-shaped game of early Egypt, ties him to the enduring Egyptian fascination with the coiled serpent as an image of both danger and protection, of the threat that beset the sun and the guardian power that brought it safe through the night to its rebirth at dawn.

Symbolism

Mehen is built on the symbolism of the coiled serpent as protection, the wound body of the serpent enclosing and shielding what it surrounds. The protective coils of Mehen around the sun-god symbolize the encircling defense that guarded the vulnerable god in his passage through the dangers of the night, the serpent's body a living barrier between the god and the hostile powers of the underworld. This symbolism of the encircling serpent as a shield is the core of Mehen's meaning, the coiled one whose coils were a wall of protection around the sun.

The opposition of Mehen to Apep symbolizes the Egyptian use of the serpent for opposite purposes, as both the embodiment of chaos and the agent of protection. Apep, the chaos-serpent, threatened the sun; Mehen, the protective serpent, shielded it; and the two together symbolize the doubleness of the serpent in Egyptian thought, the same form serving as both the great destroyer and the great defender. Mehen symbolizes the protective pole of this serpent-symbolism, the coiled guardian set against the coiled threat.

The protection of the sun-god in the night symbolizes the cosmic stakes of the nocturnal journey and the dependence of the world's renewal on the safe passage of the sun. The journey through the duat was the nightly crisis of the cosmos, on which the rebirth of the sun and the renewal of creation depended, and Mehen's protection of the god in this passage symbolizes the guardian powers that made the renewal possible, the defense of the sun in its hour of greatest danger so that it might rise again at dawn.

The encircling coils of Mehen symbolize the broader Egyptian use of the encircling form as protection, the loop or ring that encloses and guards what it surrounds. The coiled serpent around the divine cabin belongs to a family of protective encircling forms in Egyptian thought, and Mehen's coils symbolize the power of the surrounding boundary to protect, the enclosure of the god in a ring of serpent-flesh that kept out the forces of chaos.

The serpent-shaped game-board symbolizes, in the view of those who connect the game to the god, the ritualization of the solar journey in the form of play. If the spiralling course of the game from tail to head mirrored the passage of the sun through the coils of the protective serpent, then the game symbolizes the bringing-down of the cosmic journey into the form of a game played by the living, the coiled board a small image of the great coiled serpent that protected the sun in the night. The shared serpent-form unites the symbolism of the game and the god.

The figure of Mehen symbolizes, finally, the guardian power that brings the threatened through danger to safety. Coiled around the sun-god in the perilous night, defending him against the chaos that sought to halt the bark, Mehen embodies the protective force that shields the vulnerable in their passage through danger, and his coils around the god symbolize the Egyptian hope that the dangers of the dark journey, whether of the sun through the underworld or of the dead through the afterlife, might be passed under the protection of guardian powers, brought safe through the night to the renewal of the dawn.

Cultural Context

Mehen belongs to two distinct domains of Egyptian culture, the funerary theology of the solar journey and the material culture of the early board game, and his cultural context spans both. As a protective serpent-god, Mehen belongs to the world of the books of the underworld, the great compositions inscribed in the royal tombs of the New Kingdom that describe the nightly journey of the sun-god Ra through the twelve hours of the duat. These compositions, the Amduat, the Book of Gates, and others, are among the principal documents of New Kingdom solar theology, and Mehen, coiled around the divine bark, is a recurring figure in them, the protector of the sun in its passage through the dangers of the night.

The theology of the solar journey rested on the Egyptian conception of the daily death and rebirth of the sun. Each night the sun-god entered the underworld and sailed through its hours of darkness before rising again at dawn, and this passage was beset with dangers, above all the chaos-serpent Apep who sought to halt the bark and devour the sun. The defeat of the forces of chaos and the safe passage of the sun were the nightly crisis on which the renewal of creation depended, and the defenders of the bark, including Mehen, were the guardian powers that made the renewal possible. Mehen's protective role places him within this central drama of Egyptian cosmology.

The god is attested in the funerary literature from the Middle Kingdom onward. The Coffin Texts include an embryonic 'Book of Mehen,' an early form of the material concerning the protective serpent, showing that the conception of Mehen as the guardian of the sun-god reached back before the great New Kingdom underworld books. In the Amduat and the Book of Gates of the New Kingdom, the protective serpent is fully developed, coiled around the shrine of the god through the hours of the night, and these compositions are the principal sources for the figure. The study of Mehen draws on the underworld books and on the broader scholarship on Egyptian solar theology and the nocturnal journey of the sun.

The Mehen board game belongs to a much earlier period, the Predynastic and the Old Kingdom, and to the material culture of games and play. The game was played on a board shaped as a coiled serpent, with playing-spaces along the spiralling body and pieces in the form of small lions together with balls or marbles. Examples of the boards survive from early contexts, including the tomb of the official Hesy-Re at Saqqara of around 2650 BCE, and the game is attested in various Old Kingdom contexts. But the game disappeared after the Old Kingdom, and its rules are not fully known, so that the reconstruction of its play depends on the surviving boards and pieces and on the scattered evidence of its depiction.

The relationship between the game and the god is a matter of scholarly discussion. The shared serpent-imagery, both centered on the coiled serpent, has led some to connect the two and to suggest that the game ritualized the solar journey, the spiralling course of play mirroring the passage of the sun through the coils of the protective serpent. But the game's disappearance after the Old Kingdom, long before the full development of the protective serpent in the New Kingdom underworld books, complicates the connection, and the precise relationship remains uncertain. The study of the game has been undertaken in the scholarship on Egyptian board games, which examines the surviving boards, the pieces, and the possible connections to the serpent-god and the solar theology, and the figure of Mehen thus has a double presence in the cultural record, in the early game and in the later funerary literature.

Cross-Tradition Parallels

Mehen poses a question about the relationship between cosmic order and the serpent: a coiled body can be an agent of destruction or a shield, and which one it is depends entirely on which side of the coil you inhabit. The same form — the wound, encircling serpent — appears across traditions in both valences, but what drives the divergence, and what each tradition stakes on the protective coil versus the threatening one, reveals how differently each culture imagined the cosmos's vulnerability.

Vedic — Vritra and the Blocked Waters (Rigveda 1.32, c. 1500–1200 BCE)

In the Rigveda's Vritra hymn (1.32), the vast serpentine asura Vritra coils around the cosmic mountains and holds the life-giving waters captive, blocking rain and river until Indra smashes him with the vajra and releases the flood. Vritra is precisely the destructive coil made permanent — a serpent whose encirclement is the problem, not the solution. The structural parallel with Mehen is the coiled serpent as a cosmological force, not merely a monster. The inversion is clean: Vritra coils and constricts, preventing life-sustaining force from flowing; Mehen coils and contains, preventing the life-sustaining solar god from being attacked. Both traditions assigned the coiled form to an agent at the center of cosmic order or disorder. They disagreed about which side of the coil cosmic survival depended on.

Norse — Jörmungandr and the World-Encircling Serpent (Prose Edda, Gylfaginning, c. 1220 CE; Völuspá)

Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent, the child of Loki, lies in the ocean encircling the entire world, its body so vast it bites its own tail. Its encirclement maintains a precarious cosmic containment — the world-order holds as long as the serpent remains in the sea. At Ragnarök, Thor kills Jörmungandr but is killed by its venom, and the encircling body is released. The Norse coil is ambiguous in a way neither Mehen nor Vritra is: Jörmungandr's containment is both a threat and a structural boundary, its presence both monstrous and cosmologically load-bearing. Mehen's coil is purely protective, Vritra's purely destructive; the Norse serpent occupies both positions at once, a guardian whose death ends the world along with the threat it poses.

Mesopotamian — Ningishzida and the Caduceus Serpent (attested on the Gudea libation vase, c. 2100 BCE; Descent of Inanna, c. 1800 BCE)

Ningishzida, a Mesopotamian chthonic deity associated with healing and the underworld, was depicted as paired entwined serpents, precursors to the caduceus image, rising from the earth around a central staff. The entwined serpents of Ningishzida are protective — guardians of the threshold between the underworld and the living world, mediators between life and death. Like Mehen, the serpent's coiled or entwined body guards a passage. The difference is in what the serpent guards: Mehen guards the god himself in transit through the underworld; Ningishzida's serpents guard the boundary between realms, stationed at the threshold rather than accompanying the traveler. Egyptian protection moves with the protected; Mesopotamian protection is placed at the fixed point of passage.

Chinese — Fuxi and Nüwa, the Entwined Serpent-Creators (attested in Han dynasty art, c. 200 BCE–200 CE; Shanhaijing)

Chinese tradition depicts the primordial creator-couple Fuxi and Nüwa with human upper bodies and entwined serpentine lower bodies, their tails spiraling around each other to form the shape of creation's act. The coiled serpent here is not a guardian or a threat but a cosmogonic image — the entwined form of the two bodies symbolizes the generative union of yin and yang, the making of the world. The coil is creative rather than protective or destructive. Of the three functions the coiled serpent carries across traditions — creation (Fuxi-Nüwa), protection (Mehen), and obstruction (Vritra) — the Egyptian tradition chose the one that serves an already-established cosmos under threat. Mehen presupposes a world worth defending; the coiled creator makes the world before the question of its defense arises.

Modern Influence

Mehen has attracted modern attention in two distinct fields, the study of Egyptian funerary religion and the study of ancient games, reflecting his double existence as a protective serpent-god and as the name of an early board game. As a figure of the underworld books, Mehen is treated in the modern scholarship on the nocturnal journey of the sun and the compositions of the royal tombs, where the protective serpent coiled around the divine bark is among the recurring figures of the imagery of the solar passage, and he is illustrated and discussed in works on Egyptian solar theology and the books of the underworld.

The Mehen board game has become a subject of considerable interest in the modern study of the history of games, as one of the oldest board games known, attested from the Predynastic period and the Old Kingdom. The serpent-shaped boards, with their spiralling playing-spaces, have been studied and reconstructed, and the game figures in histories of ancient games and in museum displays of the material culture of early Egypt. The mystery of the game's rules, lost with its disappearance after the Old Kingdom, has stimulated attempts at reconstruction and has given the game a particular fascination as a puzzle of ancient play.

The possible connection between the game and the god has interested both Egyptologists and historians of games, and it is a recurring topic in discussions of both. The suggestion that the spiralling course of the game ritualized the solar journey, the players' movement along the coiled serpent mirroring the passage of the sun through the night, has given the game a religious dimension in modern interpretation, and the relationship between the Mehen game and the Mehen serpent-god is regularly examined as an instance of the possible religious meaning of ancient games, a question of broad interest in the study of play and ritual.

The protective serpent Mehen has contributed to the modern appreciation of the Egyptian use of the serpent for opposite purposes, as both chaos and protection. The contrast between Mehen, the protective serpent coiled around the sun, and Apep, the chaos-serpent who threatens it, is a striking instance of the doubleness of the serpent in Egyptian thought, and it is cited in discussions of Egyptian serpent-symbolism and of the broader ambivalence of the serpent in the religions of the ancient world, the same form serving as guardian and as destroyer.

Within Egyptology and the study of ancient games, Mehen remains a subject of interest in both his aspects, treated in the scholarship on the underworld books and the solar journey and in the scholarship on Egyptian board games. The protective serpent-god is studied for his role in the imagery of the nocturnal passage of the sun, and the game is studied for its place in the history of play and its possible religious meaning, ensuring that this coiled serpent, guardian of the sun in the night and namesake of an ancient game, continues to inform the modern understanding of Egyptian solar theology and the material culture of early Egyptian play, the coiled one whose form united the protection of the sun and the spiralling course of the game.

Primary Sources

Mehen as protective serpent-god is first attested in the funerary literature of the Middle Kingdom. The Coffin Texts contain a cluster of spells forming an embryonic 'Book of Mehen': Coffin Texts Spells 493 and 495 describe 'the mysteries of Mehen,' and Spells 758–760 (R.O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, vol. II, Aris & Phillips, 1977, pp. 266–268; Adriaan de Buck, The Egyptian Coffin Texts, vol. VI, OIP, 1956) place the bark of Mehen within a realm of nine concentric roads, four of which are of fire, and depict the protective serpent coiling around the solar bark. These spells are the earliest substantial description of Mehen's protective function and establish the coiled serpent's role as a guardian of the nocturnal solar passage.

The New Kingdom Books of the Netherworld are the principal sources for the fully developed protective serpent. The Amduat (also called 'That Which is in the Duat' or 'The Book of the Secret Chamber'), the oldest of these compositions, first inscribed in the tomb of Thutmose I (c. 1490 BCE) and appearing in multiple New Kingdom royal tombs, depicts Mehen coiled around the cabin of the solar bark through several of the twelve nightly hours. Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, trans. David Lorton (Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 26–54, gives the standard modern survey of the Amduat's contents and the serpent's role, with illustrations. Hornung's earlier German editions with full hieroglyphic texts and translations, Ägyptische Unterweltsbücher (Artemis, 1972, and subsequent editions), provide the comprehensive scholarly edition.

The Book of Gates, inscribed most completely in the tomb of Seti I (c. 1290 BCE), continues the depiction of Mehen around the divine cabin and is treated in Hornung, Books of the Afterlife, pp. 74–98. In these compositions the protective serpent is shown in both the travel scenes and the protective scenes as the coiled body enclosing the god's shrine. James P. Allen, Genesis in Egypt: The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts (Yale Egyptological Studies 2, 1988), pp. 20–22, discusses the theological significance of the solar journey and its defenders including the protective serpent.

The Mehen board game is documented from Predynastic and Early Dynastic contexts. The tomb of Hesy-Re at Saqqara (c. 2650 BCE, Egyptian Museum Cairo) yielded game pieces and boards; these are discussed in Peter Piccione, 'Mehen, Mysteries, and Resurrection from the Coiled Serpent,' Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 27 (1990), pp. 43–52, the key scholarly study of the game and its connection to the god, arguing that the game's spiralling course ritualized the solar journey. Piccione examines surviving boards from multiple early sites and gives the fullest treatment of the relationship between the game and the protective serpent theology.

Significance

Mehen is significant as the protective serpent-god who shielded the sun-god Ra in his perilous journey through the underworld each night, one of the guardian powers on whom the safe passage of the sun, and with it the renewal of creation, depended. As the coiled defender wound around the divine bark, Mehen played a part in the central drama of Egyptian cosmology, the nightly struggle of the sun to pass through the duat and be reborn at dawn, and his protective role makes him a notable figure of the solar theology of the underworld books.

Mehen is significant for his embodiment of the protective pole of the serpent in Egyptian thought, set against the chaos-serpent Apep. The contrast between Mehen, the protective serpent who shields the sun, and Apep, the chaos-serpent who threatens it, is a striking instance of the Egyptian use of the serpent for opposite purposes, and Mehen illustrates the doubleness of the serpent as both the great destroyer and the great defender, the coiled guardian against the coiled threat.

The god is significant for his presence in the funerary literature across a long span, from the embryonic 'Book of Mehen' in the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom to the fully developed protective serpent of the New Kingdom underworld books. This span attests the depth of the conception of Mehen in the Egyptian tradition and traces the development of the figure from its early appearances to its elaborated role in the great compositions of the royal tombs, the protective serpent a fixed element of the imagery of the solar journey.

Mehen is significant, in his aspect as the namesake of the board game, for his presence in the material culture of early Egypt. The Mehen game, attested from the Predynastic period and the Old Kingdom, is among the oldest board games known, and the serpent-shaped board, sharing the coiled form of the protective serpent-god, gives Mehen a place in the history of ancient play. The game is significant both in itself, as an early example of board games, and for its possible connection to the solar theology of the protective serpent.

Mehen is significant, finally, for the possible connection between the game and the god, a connection that raises the broad question of the religious meaning of ancient games. The suggestion that the spiralling course of the game ritualized the solar journey, the movement along the coiled serpent mirroring the passage of the sun through the night, gives the game a possible religious dimension and makes the relationship between the Mehen game and the Mehen serpent-god a significant instance of the intersection of play and ritual in the ancient world, the coiled serpent uniting the protection of the sun in the funerary theology and the spiralling course of the game in the early material culture.

Connections

Mehen is bound most closely to Ra, the sun-god whom he protects, and to the nocturnal journey of the sun through the underworld in the bark of Ra. The protective serpent's coils enclosed the god in his passage through the night, and Mehen's role is inseparable from the solar journey on which the renewal of the world depended.

Mehen connects by opposition to Apep, the chaos-serpent who attacks the solar bark, the coiled threat against which Mehen is the coiled defense. The two serpents, the protector and the destroyer, embody the opposite poles of the serpent in Egyptian thought and meet in the nightly struggle around the bark.

The protective serpent connects to the great books of the underworld, the Amduat and the Book of Gates, in which Mehen is shown coiled around the shrine of the god through the hours of the night. These compositions of the New Kingdom royal tombs are the principal sources for Mehen's protective role and for the imagery of the solar passage.

Mehen connects to Set, the defender who spears Apep in the prow of the bark, and to the other guardian powers that brought the sun safe through the dangers of the night. Set's defense and Mehen's protective coils together exemplify the array of guardians of the solar journey, the powers that made the safe passage and the rebirth of the sun possible.

Through the nocturnal journey, Mehen connects to Osiris, the ruler of the underworld through whose realm the sun passes, and to the union of Ra and Osiris at the depth of the night. The duat that Mehen helps the sun to traverse is the kingdom of Osiris, and the protective serpent's role is set within the cosmology of the meeting of the solar and the Osirian in the underworld.

Finally, Mehen connects, through his name, to the Mehen board game of the Predynastic and Old Kingdom periods, the serpent-shaped board that shared his coiled form. The game, played on a spiralling serpent-board with lion-pieces and balls, is linked to the protective serpent-god by their shared serpent-imagery and, in the view of many scholars, by a common connection to the solar journey, giving Mehen a presence in the material culture of early Egypt alongside his role in the funerary theology.

Mehen connects, finally, to the broader Egyptian ambivalence of the serpent, the same form serving as both the chaos that threatens the world and the protection that guards it, and to the encircling form as a means of protection in Egyptian thought, the loop or coil that encloses and defends what it surrounds. The protective coils of Mehen around the sun belong to this wider symbolism of the encircling serpent, and they tie the figure to the Egyptian use of the serpent and the encircling boundary as guardians against the forces of disorder.

Further Reading