Khenti-Amentiu
Egyptian · deity · old kingdom · deity
Khenti-Amentiu is the god Osiris replaced. Before Abydos was the great Osirian centre it was his: a jackal-headed god of the dead with his own temple, guarding the necropolis, and his name meant 'Foremost of the Westerners'. From the Fifth Dynasty the Osiris cult absorbs him, takes the site, takes the First Dynasty royal tombs and reinterprets one of them as the tomb of Osiris, and takes the name as an epithet. Anubis takes the epithet too. By the Late Period there is no Khenti-Amentiu left, only two other gods using his title — which is the closest thing Egyptian religion has to a hostile takeover, and it is worth a record.
Domains
- underworld
Relations
- counterpart of: Osiris
Sources
- Reference treatments of Khenti-Amentiu, of his absorption by Osiris and of Abydos.