What is the foreleg of the bull in Egyptian myth?

Meskhetiu, the Egyptian name for the seven stars we call the Plough or the Big Dipper.

What the sign shows: The foreleg of an ox.
How Gerald Massey read it in 1907: He calls it the Haunch or Thigh and treats it, with the hippopotamus beside it, as a marker of the northern pole and the birthplace of the waters of heaven.
Where you see it today: Look north on a clear night: the same seven stars, still circling the pole.
Where it stands in Massey’s book: Massey names it 108 times across the book. Book V, p. 260: “The lake of the thigh”; Book V, p. 311: “The leg in the northern sky”; Book VI, p. 385b: “Eden, the Hyperboreans and the Cyclops”.
Signs that look like it: Cow, Star and Lion. The app’s Symbol Trainer sets them side by side, so the eye learns to tell them apart.
In Massey’s words: “It also shows that the pole was once imaged either in or by the constellation of the “haunch,” the seat, or milch-cow in that region.” (Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (1907), Book V, p. 310)
In the app: Trainer › Symbol Trainer › Foreleg of the Bull. The app’s Symbol Trainer reads 42 signs this way, each with Massey’s own words and the page they stand on.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

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