Chons
| Chons in hieroglyphics | ||||||||||||||
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| mostly |
Chons Ḫnsw "wander through, pull through" |
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| or with determinative |
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| or |
Ḫnsw |
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| in the pyramid texts |
Ḫnsw |
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| Chons of Thebes |
Chensu-pa-ir-secheru-em-Waset Ḫnsw-p3-jr-sḫrw-m-W3st "Chons of Thebes , creator of human fate" |
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Chons ( ancient Egyptian Ḫnsw , about "wanderer, wanderer [of heaven]"; also Chonsu , Khensu , Khons , Khonsu or Khonshu ) is an ancient Egyptian moon god and son of the sun god Amun and the sky goddess Mut .
Meaning and mythology
Chons was worshiped early in Karnak . In the Old Kingdom it is documented in the pyramid texts . However, there he is portrayed as an ominous god, the cause of diseases and an ogre. In the New Kingdom , Chons was given the nickname Nefer-hotep ( Nfr-Htp "the one who brings perfect peace, the one who is completely satisfied"). The Greeks equated Chons with their Heracles .
presentation
Chons, the "wanderer of the sky", appears as a mummy with a crook , scourge and the what-scepter , on which the characters Djed ("duration") and Ankh ("life") are inscribed, as well as the moon disc, crescent moon and youth curl the head represented. This curl, often braided, was a traditional hairstyle of children, whether of divine or human origin. He is also rarely depicted in crocodile form (in Medinet Habu ), with a falcon's head or a falcon with a moon. Like other moon gods, he is sometimes embodied by a baboon .
Cult places
Together with Amun and the courage, Chons forms a divine triad in Thebes . In Kom Ombo , however, he appears as the son of Sobek and Hathor . Other places of worship were u. a. Memphis , Hibis and Gebel-es-Silisile. Since the Middle Kingdom he had a temple in Thebes, its location is unknown, but the stele of a Nefer-hotep from Karnak (Middle Kingdom) mentions a temple scribe from Chons. In the New Kingdom, an almost completely preserved temple was built in Karnak for him . In addition, Chons was venerated together with his divine father Amun in the main temple of the trading city of Herakleion-Thonis ; The Greek name of the city comes from his cult.
Chons as a personal name
Since the Middle Kingdom , especially in the Second Intermediate Period , Chons was a personal name for men and women, in the New Kingdom only for men.
See also
literature
- Hans Bonnet : Lexicon of the Egyptian religious history. 3rd, unchanged edition, Nikol, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-937872-08-6 .
Web links
- http://www.kemet.org/taxonomy/term/92
- http://www.egyptiandreams.co.uk/chons.php
- http://www.meritneith.de/triadethaben.htm
Individual evidence
- ^ Lexicon of Egyptian Gods and Designations of Gods (LGG). Volume 8: Register (= Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta [OLA], Volume 129). Peeters, Leuven 2003, ISBN 90-429-1376-2 , p. 456.
- ^ Entry “Chons” on mein-altaeggypt.de, May 20, 2017.
- ↑ a b Entry "Chons" on aegyptologie.com, June 12, 2006.
- ^ Pfeiffer, Stefan: Rulers and dynasty cults in the Ptolemaic empire: systematics and classification of cult forms . 1st edition CH Beck, 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56933-3 , ISSN 0936-3718 , p. 57 : "In addition, it should be noted that the Heracles in question was most likely not a Greek deity at all, but rather the Interpretatio Graeca of the Egyptian god of war Chons or the child god Harpocrates, the temple was consequently not Greek at all."
- ↑ Schneider, Thomas: The 101 most important questions - ancient Egypt . Orig.-issued edition. Beck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-59983-5 , pp. 79 : "The baboon is also the manifestation of the royal ancestral god, the primordial gods of Hermopolis, the gods Thoth or Chons (as gods of the moon) and the patron god of the bowels, Hapi."
- ↑ Eberhard Otto: Topography of the Theban Gau. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1952, p. 31.