The Elephantine triad: Satet, Anuket and Khnum
His cult was centered on the island of Abu (Elephantine 1st nome of Upper Egypt) where he had been worshiped since the Early Dynastic period . During the New Kingdom he was worshiped there as head of a triad with his wife Satet and his daughter Anuket. He was also worshipped at Esna (Iunyt) where he was thought to be married to both Menhet and Nebtu (a local goddess) and to be the father of Heka (god of magic known as “He Who Activates the Ka”).
He was also thought to be the husband of Neith at Esna. In Antinoe (Her-wer) he was married to Heqet, the frog goddess associated with childbirth and conception. He was associated with Her-shef at Herakleopolis Magna, and was often linked to Osiris. He was sometimes associated with Isis to represent the Upper Egypt, just as Ptah-Tanen was associated with Nepthys in representing Lower Egypt.
His name derives from the root khnem, “to join, to unite,” and with khnem, “to build”; astronomically the name refers to the “conjunction” of the sun and moon at stared seasons of the year, Khnum was the ‘Father of Fathers and the Mother of Mothers’ of the pharaoh. As a water god he was sometimes named “KebH”, meaning “purify”.
Khnum was depicted as either a ram, a man with the head of a ram, or a man with the horns of a ram. He was (very rarely) depicted with the head of a hawk, indicating his solar connections. He often wears the plumed white crown of Upper Egypt and was sometimes shown as holding a jar with water flowing out of it indicating his link with the source of the Nile. During the early period he was depicted as the early type of domesticated ram (with long corkscrew horns growing horizontally outwards from his head), but in later times was represented by the same type of ram as Amun (with horns curving inward towards him). Occasionally, he was depicted with four ram heads (representing sun god Ra, the air god Shu, the earth god Geb, and Osiris the god of the underworld ). In this form he was known as Sheft-hat.
Copyright J Hill 2010
https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/khnum/ |