Meskhetiu occupies the stars of the Great Bear and is drawn as the severed foreleg of a bull, or sometimes as an adze of the same shape. It is associated with Set, and it is chained or tethered in some depictions, held in place by a hippopotamus goddess so that it cannot do harm.
The name is shared with a ritual instrument and that is the point. In the opening of the mouth ceremony, an adze called the meskhetiu is touched to the face of the mummy or the statue so that the dead may breathe, eat and speak. The instrument and the constellation are the same word, and the northern sky and the funerary rite are being deliberately tied together.
The foreleg itself is the offering. A bull's foreleg, cut while the animal was still alive in some accounts, is presented in offering scenes and is among the most valued cuts, so the sky holds up the best part of the sacrifice permanently.
Its stars never set at the latitude of Egypt. The circumpolar stars are the ikhemu-sek, the imperishable ones, and the dead king's destination in the Pyramid Texts is among them, precisely because they do not die. A constellation that never sets is not a decorative choice for a funerary figure; it is the whole argument.