Khepri

Khepri is a pun that held up for three thousand years. The dung beetle rolls a ball along the ground and young beetles come out of it, apparently from nothing; the sun is rolled across the sky and comes up again out of nothing every morning; and the beetle's name, kheper, is also the verb for coming into being. From that the Egyptians built the commonest amulet they ever made. Heart scarabs were laid on the chest of the dead inscribed with a spell asking the heart not to testify against its owner, which is the same idea turned to a different use: becoming, again, out of an apparent end.

Domains

• sun
• becoming

Relations

• counterpart of: RaThe morning form of the sun in the threefold scheme — Khepri at dawn, Ra at noon, Atum at dusk. Recorded separately because the scarab has an iconography, an amulet tradition and a name of its own that Ra's record does not carry.Reference treatment of Khepri as the morning aspect of the solar god, beside Ra at noon and Atum at evening. (secondary)

Sources

• Khepri is the Egyptian scarab god of the rising sun, whose name comes from the verb 'to come into being', and whose beetle form is the commonest amulet in Egyptian material culture.: Reference treatments of Khepri, of his scarab iconography and of the ḫpr root. (secondary)