Khenti-Amentiu

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: OsirisOsiris took his place at Abydos and his name with it: 'Foremost of the Westerners' is one of Osiris's standing epithets, and it used to be somebody.Reference treatment of Khenti-Amentiu, on the Fifth Dynasty absorption of his cult by Osiris and the adoption of his name as an Osirian epithet. (secondary)

Sources

• Khenti-Amentiu, 'Foremost of the Westerners', is the jackal-headed funerary god of Abydos whose cult was absorbed by Osiris from the Fifth Dynasty and whose name became an epithet of Osiris and Anubis.: Reference treatments of Khenti-Amentiu, of his absorption by Osiris and of Abydos. (secondary)