Egyptian tradition supposed that the bodies of the gods rested upon the earth.  The cow Mihi-uirit might, therefore, be bodily enclosed in a sarcophagus in the form of a heifer, just as the mummified gazelle of Deir el-Bahari is enclosed in a sarcophagus of gazelle form; it is even possible that the statue shown to Herodotus really contained what was thought to be a mummy of the goddess.

“He then communicated his reproaches to the god, complaining that his father and his uncle, after having closed the temples, forgotten the gods and oppressed mankind, had enjoyed a long life, while he, devout as he was, was so soon about to perish.  The oracle answered that it was for this very reason that his days were shortened, for he had not done that which he ought to have done.  Egypt had to suffer for a hundred and fifty years, and the two kings his predecessors had known this, while he had not.  On receiving this answer, Mykerinos, feeling himself condemned, manufactured a number of lamps, lit them every evening at dusk, began to drink and to lead a life of jollity, without ceasing for a moment night and day, wandering by the lakes and in the woods wherever he thought to find an occasion of pleasure.  He had planned this in order to convince the oracle of having spoken falsely, and to live twelve years, the nights counting as so many days.”  Legend places after him Asychis or Sasychis, a later builder of pyramids, but of a different kind.  The latter preferred brick as a building material, except in one place, where he introduced a stone bearing the following inscription:  “Do not despise me on account of the stone pyramids:  I surpass them as much as Zeus the other gods.  Because, a pole being plunged into a lake and the clay which stuck to it being collected, the brick out of which I was constructed was moulded from it.”  The virtues of Asychis and Mykerinos helped to counteract the bad impression which Kheops and Khephren had left behind them.  Among the five legislators of Egypt Asychis stood out as one of the best.  He regulated, to minute details, the ceremonies of worship.  He invented geometry and the art of observing the heavens.*

* Diodorus, i. 94.  It seems probable that Diodorus had received knowledge from some Alexandrian writer, now lost, of traditions concerning the legislative acts of Shashanqu I. of the XXIInd dynasty; but the name of the king, commonly written Sesonkhis, had been corrupted by the dragoman into Sasykhis.

He put forth a law on lending, in which he authorized the borrower to pledge in forfeit the mummy of his father, while the creditor had the right of treating as his own the tomb of the debtor:  so that if the debt was not met, the latter could not obtain a last resting-place for himself or his family either in his paternal or any other tomb.