Mafdet
She who runs swiftly
Also known as Lady of the Castle of Life and Slayer of Serpents, Mafdet is an Egyptian feline goddess. As the protector of Re, she was noted during the Old Kingdom for decapitating the sun god's enemies with her razor sharp teeth and killing snakes and scorpions. Depicted as either a cheetah or panther, Mafdet appears as early as the Thinite period on an artifact from the king Den. In Egyptian mythology, she wears a panther skin and her hair is braided, symbolising the jointed bodies of scorpions she has killed.
Mafdet represents divine punishment, and as the personification of the executioner’s tool of judicial authority, her symbols are a rope, a blade of execution and a pole, which she climbs in her feline form. Her long and deadly claws represent the barbs on the pharaoh's harpoon used to protect the king against his enemies in the underworld of Wesir, and her ferocity prevails over scorpions and snakes. Anohter of Mafdet's numerous epithets is The Great Cat, which lends strength to her symbolic action as the destroyer of the enemy of the dead.
On the British Museum papyrus 10059, Mafdet is linked to healing:
It is this discharge (of Set) in its climax which has been siezed by Mafdet in this room, and which provoked the cries of Isis (when) the testicles of Seth had been cut (in this room). Do not be chained up, go out, discharge of Horus […] O Mafdet, open your jaws against this enemy, a dead man, a dead woman!
Mafdet's mythological presence is in the "house of life" and in her capacity as healer, she removes and destroys the "discharge" from the person who is ill. A cake is then fashioned in the form of the affected body part, placed inside the fat part of a portion of meat and fed to a female cat. By consuming the meat containing the enemy's fat, she symbolically kills it.
References
Chambrun, Ruspoli M. "L'Epervier divin." (1969)
Thibaud, Robert-Jacques. "Dictionnaire de Mythologie et de Symbolique Egyptienne." (1996)
Guilhou, N. "un texte de gurrision," in Chronique d’Egypte.
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