Khnum

Description of Khnum

God Khnum was depicted as a man with a ram’s head. He was considered the ruler of the territory of Upper Egypt, which was adjacent to the first threshold of the Nile. The island of Elephantine was located at the first threshold, and there, on the southern tip of the island, there was a temple dedicated to this god. Khnum was revered as the god of fertility, a demiurge, who blinded people, gods and their Ka (doubles) on a potter’s wheel from clay.
In the old version of the myth about the creation of the world from primordial chaos, the god Khnum with the head of a ram and his wife Heket with the head of a frog were proclaimed “the first gods who were at the beginning, who built people and made gods.” The primordial creative nature of Khnum and the creative principle inherent in it began to be explained on the basis of the etymology of the root “khonen” – “to create like a potter.” So the ram-headed Khnum became the “god-potter” who once created “all creatures, from gods to animals, on his potter’s wheel and who still defines the appearance of every newborn child, clearly creating them, or at least their “double” in heaven before the birth of the child. ”

Style Variations

Bold – Light – Solid – Duotone
Each variation is included in the file package.

Egyptian main description

Egyptian Symbols

Egyptian hieroglyphics are arguably one of the most famous examples of symbolism across history. Created by the ancient Egyptians, this served as their formal writing system. Hieroglyphics can be dated back to the 32nd century BC, and perhaps even earlier. Evidence demonstrates that this writing system continued into the Roman period of the 4th century AD. However, much of the knowledge of hieroglyphics and their meanings were lost after the end of pagan temples in the 5th century. There was no existing knowledge of what these symbols meant, how they were meant to be read and their significance. Hieroglyphics were decoded in the 1820s with the aid of the Rosetta Stone by Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion. These symbols are not just phonetic sounds or symbols. In fact, they are a combination of different elements. As Jean-François Champollion discovered, hieroglyphics are a “complex system” that encompasses “figurative, symbolic, and phonetic all at once.” For many Egyptians, this form of writing was seen as the “words of God” and thus used by priests. Generally, hieroglyphics in cursive form were used for religious texts and engraved into wood or written on papyrus. They are written in rows or columns and can be read either left to right or right to left. The direction can be established by seeing which way the human or animal figure faces at the beginning of the line.