Khnum

I just want to say with all that, that's been explained about like just figure one, basically, right? This primordial creator deity, from whom all creation emanates when he manifests himself.

Sometimes Amun, sometimes Khnum.

In some hypocephali, the central figure has four heads.

Sometimes it's two.

Are you with me? That's the point he's pointing out here, Sarna.

It is possible that this plague, like the first one, was regarded as a judgment on Egyptian polytheism, for a frog-headed goddess named Hekt was the consort of the god Khnum, who was credited with having fashioned man out of clay.

She was associated with fertility and was thought to assist women at childbirth.

Hence, the plague may have been taken as retribution, for the decree ordering the midwives to kill the newborn males at birth.

He is Ptah, who fashions form from clay, one scribe wrote.

He is Knum, who moulds men upon the potter's wheel.

He is Ra, whose light brings life to the two lands.

Okay, Ramses encouraged such devotion not from vanity but from conviction.

In some texts, the first humans spring from tears that Ra Atum, or his feminine aspect, the Eye of Ra, sheds in a moment of weakness and distress, foreshadowing humans' flawed nature and sorrowful lives.

Others say humans are molded from clay by the god Khnum.

But overall, the focus of the creation myth is the establishment of cosmic order rather than the

special place of humans within it.

Meaning like fixed up and it looks quite silly.

Yeah, I'm trying to think of the right word for it.

Mm-hmm.

Because take a look down here at the body.

And here again, I, I need to bring this to the discussion that, again, most of the ancient rulers of the ancient world and modern world, they came to greet the Sphinx.

All of them came and stood in front of the Sphinx, watching the Sphinx, maybe talking to the Sphinx, as if they were asking him, uh, uh, some questions and were waiting to know some secrets.

The ancient Egyptian word for the Sphinx, Seshep Ankh, and maybe that is the, the Greek way to pronounce, uh, Seshep Ankh.

They made it Sphinx.

Both of them honor Khnum, the ram-headed god who shapes human beings on a potter's wheel.

Nyanknum means something like joined to life.

Khnumhotep means something like joined to the blessed state of the dead.

Read them together,

the way they are carved, and you get...

a whole world,

the world the two men wanted to keep, drawn in red and gold and black, on the walls of a room no living person was meant to enter.

And through all of it, Neon Khnum and Khnumhotep appear together, again and again.

In fact, it is written vertically even if the block is horizontal.

Here you can read King Khufu's full name very clearly, Khnum-Khufu, which literally means may the god Khnum protect me.

Here, a scribe drew Khufu's name in cursive with a brush.

But in the official version in hieroglyphs, you can see that the sign of the ram representing the god Khnum is clearer.

Pharaoh's names were often linked with a deity because they themselves were considered to be like gods.

Pierre has found traces of Khufu almost everywhere on this site, which has been untouched by men for 45 centuries.

But the real game changer was a totally unexpected discovery that any archeologist who has ever excavated at the foot of the pyramids would have loved to find.

Now, that's actually a shortened version of Khufu's name.

His full name is Khunum Khufu.

Okay? Khunum was the ancient Egyptian god of the dead.

He was the protector of the dead.

That's what Khufu's role was.

But in Egyptian lore, we have the benu bird, the oldest known story of the stork itself.

When a child is conceived, Khnum gets to work shaping their earthly life force on his potter's wheel.

He needs to have this ka ready because the ba is on its way to imbue it with soul, flown in long distance.

The bird does this best at the changing of the seasons, out with the old, in with the new.