Eye of Ra the "Instruction of Ankhsheshonq", which says a man's wife is like a cat when he can keep her happy and like a lioness when he cannot. The characteristics of the Eye of Ra were an important part of the Egyptian conception of female divinity in general, and the Eye was equated with many goddesses, ranging from very prominent deities like Hathor to obscure ones like Mestjet, a lion goddess who appears in only one known inscription. The Egyptians associated many gods who took felid form with the sun, and many lioness deities, like Sekhmet, Menhit, and Tefnut, were equated with
Bastet dynasties, the deity remained, but was assigned a lesser role in the pantheon by bearing the name "Bastet". This happened after Thebes became the capital of ancient Egypt, during the Eighteenth Dynasty. As they rose to great power the priests of the temple of Amun, dedicated to the primary local deity, advanced the stature of their titular deity to national prominence (Amun-Ra) and shifted the relative stature of others in the Egyptian pantheon. Diminishing her status, they began referring to the deity with the added suffix, as "Bastet", and their use of the new name was well-documented (thereby becoming very