Shesmetet was a leonine goddess and was probably merely a manifestation of Sakhmet. Shesmeter gives birth to the king according to the Pyramid Texts and with the democratization of Egyptian theology, 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 demons of slaughter. There is a clue to the exotic origins of the goddess in her epithet “Lady of Punt”, referring to the incense region on the horn of Africa.