Mythology

The god Khonsu was a moon god whose earliest attested character is considerably different from his later manifestation in New Kingdom 'I'hebes where he appears as the benign son of Amun and Mut. In the Pyramid Texts he appears in the famous ‘Cannibal Hymn’ as a bloodthirsty deity who assists the deceased king in catching and slaying those gods that the king ‘feeds upon’ in order to absorb their strength (PT 402). Later the god appears to have been associated with childbirth, but it is in his role as an integral member of the all-powerful Theban triad (Amun, Mut, Khonsu) that Khonsu is best known. There Khonsu was primarily viewed as a lunar god, but he exhibited several different aspects, appearing among other forms as Khonsu pa-khered (‘Khonsu the Child’); Khonsu pa-ir-sekher ‘Khonsu the provider’ (the Chespisichis of the Greeks); Khonsu heseb-ahau ‘Khonsu, decider of the life span’; and Khonsu em-waset nefer-hetep ‘Khonsu in Thebes’ - apparently the most important Theban manifestation of the god. The various forms of the god interacted with one another as can be seen from the inscription known as the Bentresh Stela - inscribed in Thebes in the 4th century BC but purporting to record a pronouncement of Harnesses II some 800 years earlier. The stela tells how the Egyptian king loaned a statue of Khonsu pa-ir-sekher to the king of Bakhtan to aid in the healing of his daughter, Bentresh, and includes discourse between this form of Khonsu and the more senior Khonsu in Thebes. Although firmly associated with Amun and Mut at Thebes, at Kom Ombo Khonsu was regarded as the son of Sobek and Hathor, and at Edfu Temple Khonsu was linked to Osiris as ‘the son of the leg’, referring to the relic of the netherworld god said to be preserved at that site. As a moon god Khonsu was also sometimes associated with Shu, god of the air, and with Horus. Like Thoth, he participated in the reckoning of time and was believed to influence the gestation of both humans and animals. In the past the name of Khonsu was thought to be derived from the elements kh ‘placenta’ and nesu ‘king’ as a personification of the royal placenta, but it is now generally believed to be based on the verb khenes ‘to cross over’ or ‘to traverse’, meaning ‘he who traverses [the skyj’.