Mythology

Min was one of Egypt’s most ancient and enduring deities, functioning as the supreme god of male sexual procreativity and as a deity of the eastern desert regions throughout dynastic history. The origin of his name, iMenu, is unknown and gives us no clue to his nature, though the Greek writer Plutarch claimed that it meant ‘that which is seen’, doubtless based on a similarity with a form of the verb to see. That he was already worshipped in predynastic rimes is seen in the early presence of his emblem and in the three apparently predynastic colossal statues of the god discovered by Petrie at Coptos in 1893 and now in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. .Although not mentioned by name in the Pyramid Texts, Min may be the god referred to as the deity 'who raises his arm in the east’, and a reference to the ‘procession of Min’ occurs in a 5th-dynasty

Tomb at Giza, showing that his cult was already established. He is also found in the Coffin Texts where the deceased associates himself with the ‘woman-hunting’ Min in order to possess the god’s sexual powers. During the Middle Kingdom Min became associated with the god Horus as Min-Hor and as a result he was sometimes described as the son of Isis, though the association also led to Min being worshipped as the consort of Isis and father of Horus. As god of the eastern regions and because of his associations with sexuality and fertility, it was natural that Min gained as consort the Syrian goddess Qadesh whom he shared with the Syrian storm god Reshep. Of greatest importance to the mythological history of Min is the fact that during the 18th dynasty the god became increasingly associated with Amun of T'hebes and became in essence the manifestation of Amun as primeval creator god, somewhat analogous to Atum’s relationship with Re at Heliopolis. The Amun-Min association had direct political overtones, however, and from Middle Kingdom times the coronations and jubilee festivals of the pharaoh seem to have incorporated rituals of Min aimed at promoting the potency of the king. This form of Min revered in the Theban area was known as Min-Amun-ka-mutefor simply Amun ka-mutef‘Amun, bull of his mother’. The Greeks associated Min with their god Pan.