| In Egyptian
mythology, Khepri (also spelt
Khepera, Kheper, Chepri, Khepra) is
the name of a minor god. The origin
of belief in Khepri lies in the observation
that Scarab beetles have a habit of
pushing large balls of dung around,
and so some Egyptians came up with
the idea that the sun moved across
the sky because it was being pushed
by such a beetle. Since Khepri was
considered to push the sun, he gradually
came to embody aspects of the sun
itself, and therefore was a solar
deity. To explain where the sun goes
at night, such pushing was extended
to the underworld, Khepri's pushing
of the sun being ceaseless. |
|
|
Since the scarab beetle lays its eggs in the bodies of various
dead animals, including other scarabs, and in dung, from which
they emerge having been born, the ancient Egyptians believed
that scarab beetles were created from dead matter. Because
of this, they also associated the Khepri with rebirth, renewal,
and resurrection. Indeed, his name (kheper in Egyptian) means
to come into being. As a result of this, when the rival cult
of the sun-god Ra gained significance,
Khepri was identified as the aspect of Ra which constitutes
only the dawning sun (i.e the sun when it comes into being).
Subsequently, when Ra and Atum
became identified as one another, Khepri, which was Ra's
young form, became conflated with Nefertum,
which was Atum's. This lead to a cosmogony
where Ra, as Khepri, a beetle, resulted
from the Ogdoad's activities, and
emerged from a (blue) lotus flower, only to immediately transform
into Nefertum, a youth, who, after growing up, masturbated
the Ennead into existance.
|
Khepri was principally depicted
as a whole scarab beetle, though
in some tomb paintings and funerary
papyri he is represented as a human
male with a scarab as a head. He
is also depicted as a scarab in
a solar barque held aloft by Nun.
When represented as a scarab beetle,
he was typically depicted pushing
the sun across the sky every day,
as well as rolling it safely through
the Egyptian underworld every night.
As an aspect of Ra,
he is particularly prevalent in
the funerary literature of the New
Kingdom, when many Ramesside tombs
in the Valley of the Kings were
decorated with depictions Ra
as a sun-disc, containing images
of Khepri, the dawning sun, and
Atum (the
setting sun aspect of Ra).
|
|
|
Gods
and Goddesses Menu
This article
is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org
- the free encyclopedia created and edited
by online user community. Although the
vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia
articles provide accurate and timely information
please do not assume the accuracy of any
particular article. This article is distributed
under the terms of GNU
Free Documentation License.
|
