Khnum was the Egyptian god who presided over the Nile-river and a fertility god who aided with the creation of children.
Description[]
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 ).
Overview[]
Khnum was originally a water god who was thought to rule over all water, including the rivers and lakes of the underworld. He was associated with the source of the Nile, and ensured that the inundation deposited enough precious black silt onto the river banks to make them fertile. The silt also formed the clay, the raw material required to make pottery. As a result he was closely associated with the art of pottery. According to one creation myth, Khnum moulded everything on his potters wheel, including both the people and the other gods.
In Iunyt, it was proposed that Khnum also created the “First Egg” from which the sun was born (as Nefertum, Atum or Ra). As well as creating the body and the “ka” (spirit) of each newborn child using the clay of the Nile, he could bless the child.
Khnum was one of the gods who was thought to have helped Ra on his perilous nocturnal journey through the underworld. It is also believed that he created the boat which carried Ra and helped defend the sun god against the serpent Apep. Yet, he was sometimes considered to be the “ba” of Ra, because the word for “ram” in Egyptian was also “ba”. When Khnum was merged with Ra to form the composite deity Khnum-Ra this deity was associated with Nu, and given the epithet Hap-ur (“great Nile” or ” Nile of heaven”).