general meaning of the picture of the Cow is quite clear. The Cow represents the sky in which the Boats of Rā sail, and her four legs are the four cardinal points which cannot be changed. The region above her back is the heaven in which Rā reigns over the beings who pass thereto from this earth when they die, and here was situated the home of the gods and the celestial spirits who govern this world. When Rā had made a heaven for himself, and had arranged for a continuance of life on the earth, and the welfare of human beings, he remembered that at one time when reigning on earth he had been bitten by a serpent, and had nearly lost his life through the bite. Fearing that the same calamity might befall his successor, he determined to take steps to destroy the power of all noxious reptiles that dwelt on the earth. With this object in view he told Thoth to summon Ḳeb, the Earth-god, to his presence, and this god having arrived, Rā told him that war must be made against the serpents that dwelt in his dominions. He further commanded him to go to the god Nu, and to tell him to set a watch over all the reptiles that were in the earth and in water, and to draw up a writing for every place in which serpents are known to be, containing strict, orders that they are to bite no one. Though these serpents knew that Rā was retiring from the earth, they were never to forget that his rays would fall upon them. In his place their father Ḳeb was to keep watch over them, and he was their father for ever.
