for blood, and in her inebriated state returns to Ra without noticing her intended victims. Through her drunkenness she has been returned to a harmless form. Nadine Guilhou suggests that the eye's rampage alludes to the heat and widespread disease of the Egyptian summer, and in particular to the epagomenal days before the new year, which were regarded as unlucky. The red beer might then refer to the red silt that accompanied the subsequent Nile flood, which was believed to end the period of misfortune. The solar eye's volatile nature can make her difficult even for her master to control. In the myth of the "Distant Goddess", a motif with several variants that may be descended from the story in the Book of the Heavenly Cow, the eye goddess becomes upset with Ra and runs away from him. In some versions the provocation for her anger seems to be her replacement with a new eye after the search for Shu and Tefnut, but in others her rebellion seems to take place after the world is fully formed. With the solar eye gone, Ra is vulnerable to his enemies and bereft of a large part of his power. The eye's absence and Ra's weakened state may be a mythological reference to solar eclipses. Meanwhile, the eye wanders in a distant land—Nubia, Libya, or Punt. She takes the form of a wild feline, as dangerous and uncontrolled as the forces of chaos that she is meant to subdue. To restore order, one of the gods goes out to retrieve her. In one version, known from scattered allusions, the warrior god Anhur searches for the eye, which takes the form of the goddess Mehit, using his skills as a hunter. In other accounts, it is Shu who searches for Tefnut, who in this case represents the eye rather than an independent deity. Thoth, who often serves as a messenger and conciliator in the Egyptian pantheon, can also seek the wandering goddess. His role in retrieving the Eye of Ra parallels his role in the Osiris myth, in which he heals or returns Horus's lost eye. In a Late Period papyrus dubbed "The Myth of the Eye of the Sun", Thoth persuades the Eye of Ra to return through a combination of lectures, enticement, and entertaining stories. His efforts are not uniformly successful; at one point, the goddess is so enraged by Thoth's words