Nehebkau
| Nehebkau in hieroglyphics | ||||||||
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Nehebkau (Neheb-kau) Nḥb-k3w Who makes the spirits usable |
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Nehebkau , also Nebeb-kau , is a deity of the mythology of Ancient Egypt , who is assigned a variety of meanings and roles. He is considered the guardian of the entrance to the afterlife ( Duat ) and is also one of the 42 judges of the dead .
The meaning of his name is not exactly certain; the word component nḥb probably corresponds to the verb “give”. Nehebkau gives people their ka . He is represented as a (mostly two-headed) snake , possibly because a central hieroglyph in his name (far right) resembles the shape of this animal. Accordingly, he also appears in the literary records as a cave dweller with a sinuous shape and is said to have been revered as a healer of snake and scorpion bites.
Geb was considered his father, Selket and Renenutet could be considered as mother . He himself was the husband of the Nehemetawai , who was worshiped in her main cult place Hermopolis Magna together with her Sheepsi and Thoth . One of these is to be regarded as her son, the other is possibly her husband and would therefore be equated with Nehebkau. This was worshiped cultically in Herakleopolis and a city called Zššt , behind which Diospolis Parva might be hidden. On the first day of the first winter month, the Nehebkau festival was celebrated from the Middle Kingdom , which has the character of a New Year's celebration and was associated with the first sowing, but was also a date for coronation and royal celebrations several times.
As the one who gives people life, Nehebkau was addressed especially before death as a protective deity who was supposed to lead the dying into the realm of the dead. According to other traditions, they wanted to be identified with Nehebkau themselves, since as the judge of the dead he was to decide on the entry of an individual into the afterlife and then to give him his ka again. In addition, he was also considered to be responsible for the neck, throat and heart of people and prepared a meal for them after death, so that numerous spells were directed at him. But according to the idea, he also gave life to the other gods and was the ka of every god.
In places Nehebkau was even regarded as the producer of the sun god Re and in some depictions he bears his attributes, which makes him an extremely important "primordial god". Apparently in the religious history of Egypt he was a competitor of the Atum , traditionally regarded as the "primordial god", but in contrast to this he does not appear as a heaven but as an earth deity . This clearly shows the conflict between two mythological ideas, which regard the sun either as part of the sky or as earth-born (sunrise).
Yet another aspect of Nehebkau is the negative trait of a serpentine demon, from which one had to protect oneself.
literature
- Winfried Barta: Nehebkau. In: Wolfgang Helck , Wolfhart Westendorf (ed.): Lexicon of Egyptology . Vol. IV, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1982, Sp. 388-390.
- Hans Bonnet : Lexicon of the Egyptian religious history. Nikol, Hamburg 2000, unchanged 3rd edition, ISBN 3-937872-08-6 , p. 510 f.
- Christian Herrmann: Egyptian amulets from Palestine / Israel. With a view of their reception by the Old Testament (= Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, Vol. 138). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1994, p. 511 f.
- Alan W. Shorter: The God Neḥebkau. In: The Journal of Egyptian Archeology , Vol. 21, No. 1, 1935, pp. 41-48.
- Richard H. Wilkinson : The world of the gods in ancient Egypt: Faith - Power - Mythology. Theiss, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-8062-1819-6 , p. 224 f.