Goddess Shesmetet was a leonine goddess, probably a expression of Sakhmet. Shesmetet gives birth to the king matching to the Pyramid Texts and with the democratisation of Egyptian feeling becomes the mother of the deceased in funerary papyri. In a spell to be recited on the last day of the year the name of Shesmetet is invoked as a magical force against monsters of slaughter. There is a clue to the exotic origins of this goddess in her epithet Lady of Punt, i.e. the cense region near the coast of modern Eritrea.
