Everything about Khepri totally explained
This article is about the Egyptian god. For the type of robot, see Khepera mobile robot.
In
Egyptian mythology,
Khepri (also spelt
Khepera,
Kheper,
Chepri,
Khepra) is the name of a major
god. Khepri is associated with the
dung beetle (
kheper), whose behavior of maintaining spherical balls of dung represents the forces which move the sun. Khepri gradually came to be considered as an embodiment of the sun itself, and therefore was a
solar deity. To explain where the sun goes at night, such pushing was extended to the
underworld, Khepri's pushing of the sun being ceaseless.
Since the scarab beetle lays its eggs in the bodies of various dead animals, including other scarabs, and in dung, from which they emerge having been born, the ancient Egyptians believed that scarab beetles were created from dead matter. Because of this, they also associated the Khepri with rebirth, renewal, and resurrection. Indeed, his name (
kheper in
Egyptian) means
to come into being. As a result of this, when the rival cult of the sun-god
Ra gained significance, Khepri was identified as the aspect of Ra which constitutes only the
dawning sun (i.e the sun when it
comes into being).
Subsequently, when Ra and
Atum became identified as one another, Khepri, which was Ra's young form, became conflated with
Nefertum, which was Atum's. This led to a
cosmogony where Ra, as Khepri, a beetle, resulted from the
Ogdoad's activities, and emerged from a (blue) lotus flower, only to immediately transform into Nefertum, a youth, who, after growing up,
masturbated the
Ennead into existence.
Khepri was principally depicted as a whole scarab beetle, though in some tomb paintings and funerary
papyri he's 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. When represented as a scarab beetle, he was typically depicted pushing the sun across the sky every day, as well as rolling it safely through the Egyptian underworld every night. As an aspect of Ra, he's particularly prevalent in the funerary literature of the
New Kingdom, when many
Ramesside tombs in the
Valley of the Kings were decorated with depictions Ra as a sun-disc, containing images of Khepri, the dawning sun, and Atum, the setting sun.
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