Khepri (also
spelled Khepera, Kheper, Khepra, Chepri) is a god in the ancient Egyptian
religion.
Khepri was
connected with the scarab beetle (kheprer), because the scarab rolls balls of
dung across the ground, an act that the Egyptians saw as a symbol of the forces
that move the sun across the sky. Khepri was thus a solar deity. Young dung
beetles, having been laid as eggs within the dung ball, emerge from it fully
formed. Therefore, Khepri also represented creation and rebirth, and he was
specifically connected with the rising sun and the mythical creation of the
world. The Egyptians connected his name with the Egyptian language verb kheper,
meaning "develop" or "come into being". Kheper, (or Xeper)
is a transcription of an ancient Egyptian word meaning to come into being, to
change, to occur, to happen, to exist, to bring about, to create, etc.
Egyptologists typically transliterate the word as “rpr”. Both Kheper and Xeper
possess the same phonetic value and are pronounced as "kheffer".
ReligionThere
was no cult devoted to Khepri, and he was largely subordinate to the greater
sun god Ra. Often, Khepri and another solar deity, Atum, were seen as aspects of
Ra: Khepri was the morning sun, Ra was the midday sun, and Atum was the sun in
the evening.
AppearanceKhepri
was principally depicted as a scarab beetle, though in some tomb paintings and
funerary papyri he is represented as a human male with a scarab as a head. He
is also depicted as a scarab in a solar barque held aloft by Nun. The scarab
amulets that the Egyptians used as jewelry and as seals represent Khepri.
No comments:
Post a Comment