Iconography

Representations of Hapy usually show the god as a swollen-bellied man wearing an abbreviated belt or loincloth and with long hair and pendulous, female breasts. Often, the god was depicted with a clump of papyrus upon his head, and he is frequently shown carrying papyrus and lotus stems and bearing a tray laden with offerings. Most often he was shown with blue skin, though other colours are occasionally found. All of these attributes represented the fertility Hapy supplied and as such were interchangeable with those of other so-called fecundity figures (see p. 131). Beginning in the 5th dynasty (in the mortuary temple of Sahure), the lower registers of temple walls were often decorated with depictions of Hapy and other fecundity figures bearing offerings into the temple as gifts and sustaining supplies for the temple’s divine owners. Statues showing Hapy bearing loaded offering trays were also made - sometimes with the features of the reigning king, thus linking the monarch with the fecundity deity.

Beginning in the 19th dynasty, reliefs portraying two figures of Hapy, one wearing the papyrus of Lower Egypt and the other the heraldic plant of Upper Egypt, and binding together the two halves of Egypt (symbolized by the respective plants being used as ropes around the sema or ‘union’ hieroglyph) were often carved on temple walls and on the bases of colossal seated statues of kings. An instance of Hapy depicted with the double head of a goose appears in the temple of Sethos I at Abydos.

Male Anthropomorphic Deities

The god Hapy, ‘father of the gods’, clasping symbols of life, receives the worship of Harnesses III in a scene of harvest and fertility. 20th dynasty. Mortuary temple of Harnesses III, Medinet Habu, western Thebes.