Mehen

**Mehen**


 * Meaning of Name:**

“Coiled One.” Also a verb, “To Coil.”


 * Titles:**

“The Enveloper”

“Warden of Criminals”

“He Who Hides the Hours”

An Egyptian serpent god who defended the solar barque of the sun-god Ra during his nightly passage through the Duat. Mehen was thought to exist as nine concentric rings with “roads of fire” encircling and protecting the sun god. Mehen was usually depicted as a large constricting snake coiled about the barque, or as a man with the head of a serpent, standing in the barque and holding a spear.

The Egyptian serpent board game, several examples of which still survive, was based on the image of Mehen. The board depicts a coiled snake, with the body divided into rectangular spaces. The number of segments varies considerably among known boards and therefore seems to have been of little importance to the game. Lion - or lioness -shaped game pieces, often made of bone or ivory, in sets of three or six, have been found with the boards, as well as six stone marbles. In some instances the game pieces are in the forms of hippopotamus or dogs instead. The marbles are sometimes carved with the names of Egypt's earliest pharaohs. It is the only multiplayer ancient Egyptian board game known – the others were contests between two players (or teams), while Mehen could accommodate as many as six contestants.

In the 1920’s, anthropologists, explorers, and adventurers found a curious, spiral-based game being played by Baggara Arabs of the Sudan - The Hyena Game. Tim Kendall writes: “In all essential details the Hyena Game seems to have been identical to Mehen. It was played on a spiraling track, employed stick dice of precisely the kind known from Archaic Egyptian contexts, and had two types of pieces, one representing a predatory animal. The only difference would seem to be that the ancient Egyptians allotted six counters to each player rather than only one.”

Egyptian Deities - M