Hapy

Summary

Hapy is the Nile flood in Egyptian thought. The Egyptian word ḥꜥpj names both the Nile and its inundation, and when it is written as a god's name it becomes Hapy, drawn as a man with a full belly and hanging breasts, a sign of abundance and fertility, with water plants on his head; his body is sometimes coloured blue or marked with water lines. He had no temple with a daily service, only festivals at which hymns were sung, and his chief places of worship were Aswan and Gebel Silsila near the First Cataract.

His story is that of a water that sleeps beneath the earth and rises every year. Egyptians held that the Nile came from Nun, the first water under the earth, and came up at Elephantine through a hole in the ground. In the Famine Stela, carved on a rock on the island of Sehel, King Djoser asks: "In which place is Hapy born?", and the answer comes from the sacred books: in the midst of the deep is a town called Yebu, Elephantine, "surrounded by Hapy"; "Twin Caverns" is the water's name, "they are the breasts that nourish all". There is "the house of sleep of Hapy"; he grows young in it in his time, and from it he brings the flood: "Bounding up he copulates, as man copulates with woman, renewing his manhood with joy." At Elephantine he rises twenty-eight cubits, and by the time he reaches the town of Sema-behdet in the northern Delta he has fallen to seven. At the gate stands Khnum, his sandals on the flood and the door bolt in his hand, opening as he wishes; Lichtheim notes that it is Khnum the creator who releases Hapy. In the king's dream Khnum calls himself "Exalted Nun, who first came forth, Hapy who hurries at will".

The longest text about him is the Hymn to Hapy, composed in the Middle Kingdom and copied by schoolboys in the New Kingdom. It opens: "Hail to you, Hapy, sprung from earth, come to nourish Egypt!", the one "who floods the fields that Re has made" and lets the waterless desert drink, "maker of barley, creator of emmer". It then describes his three conditions. When he is sluggish "noses clog, everyone is poor", and a million perish. When he plunders "the whole land rages, great and small roar". When he comes in due measure "earth rejoices, every belly jubilates, every jawbone takes on laughter, every tooth is bared". No one knows where he is, "his cavern is not found in books"; he has no shrines and no portions, yet the young greet him like a king, and when he comes "Sobk, Neith's child, bares his teeth". The hymn closes with a refrain: "Oh joy when you come, O Hapy, oh joy when you come! You who feed men and herds with your meadow gifts." From the line "when Khnum has fashioned him" Lichtheim infers that Khnum makes a new Hapy each year.

The idea Hapy's story turns on is that good comes in due measure. The same water kills if it is too little, kills if it is too much, and gives life if it comes on time and in measure. That is why Khnum stands at the gate opening and shutting it; and the king was held responsible for the flood's yearly return and led in person the procession of the rite meant to bring it back. Hapy gives and takes nothing: no stone statue is carved for him, no dues are levied for him, and one is "rich because another toils". So the lowest registers of temple walls show a long row of full-bodied men personifying the provinces, the plants of the South and of the North on their heads, carrying the whole land's produce to the god.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Egyptian writes it Ḥꜥpj: ḥ, then ʿayn, then p, then a final j. The project's Egyptian essay reads it from habba and makes Hapy "the one who surges", the Nile flood. In Lane habba is to wake from sleep and rise, the wind habbat when it blew up, a star habba when it rose, and a stallion habba when he was roused to cover. These are Hapy's acts in the Famine Stela itself: he sleeps in the caverns, rises, mounts up, and bounds to copulate as man with woman. Egyptian p answers Arabic b, as in the name of Khepri. Egyptian ḥ, however, usually answers Arabic ḥ, as in the name of Horus, so putting h in its place is the open point of this reading. We therefore set beside it, as a reading proposed on the method, ḥabā and ḥabā/ḥabī, which keep ḥ, b and y: in Lane ḥabāhu is he gave him something without any return, ḥibāʾ is a gift, and ḥabiyy is a mass of clouds overpeering from the horizon. On the two readings Hapy is a water that rouses itself from sleep and endows people with gifts while taking nothing from them.

Linguistic Root

Habba and ḥabā

The Egyptian word ḥꜥpj has ḥ, ʿayn, p and a final j. The Egyptian essay merges the Nile Hapy with Hapy the Son of Horus, guardian of the lungs in the canopic jars, and builds its reading on a single "Hapi". The Global Egyptian Museum keeps them apart: we pronounce the two names alike, but the Son of Horus is written Ḥpj, without ʿayn. The reading here is of the Nile Hapy.

The essay reads the name from habba and writes "habba al-wādī, the valley overflowed and ran". That phrase is not in Lane, but the root's senses there are closer to the story than the essay's gloss: habba from his sleep, he woke and rose; the wind habbat, rose and stirred; a star habba, rose; habba ilā al-ṣalāh, he rose to prayer; the stallion or he-goat habba, was roused by desire to cover; and qad jāʾanī habbatan, he came in to me once. In the Famine Stela Hapy sleeps in his "house of sleep", then rises and bounds up to copulate. The sounds: Egyptian p answers Arabic b, and Egyptian ʿayn drops in this reading, the project's laws putting ʿayn, ḥ, kh and gh into one "guttural collapse". But h is not in that group, Egyptian ḥ usually answers Arabic ḥ, and the final j has no counterpart in habba.

Ḥabā, proposed on the method, keeps ḥ as it is, answers p with b, and answers the Egyptian j with the y of ḥabā/ḥabī, which Lane gives as a variant of ḥabā; only the ʿayn is left without a counterpart. Among the root's senses in Lane: ḥabāhu, he gave him something without any return; ḥibāʾ, a gift; the waves ḥabā to a ship, rose up before it; and ḥabiyy or ḥubiyy, a mass of clouds overpeering from the horizon like a mountain before it covers the sky. The Hymn to Hapy calls the Nile "bounty maker" who "gives bounty to the poor", and the Great Hymn to the Aten says that foreign peoples are kept alive by "a heavenly Hapy" descending on them, that is, rain. Ḥibāʾ answers Hapy the giver, and ḥabiyy the Hapy of the sky.

Other readings in the essay

Before habba the essay offers ḥayiya, to live and grow. It keeps ḥ and y, and its sense suits a water by which the land lives, but it gives Egyptian p no counterpart. The essay also reads the name of the Nile itself from nāla, to reach and give, but that is the river's name of Greek origin, not the Egyptian god's.

Key Mythic Narratives

Hapy in the sky

In the Great Hymn to the Aten from the Amarna age the poet says to the sun: "You made Hapy in the netherworld, you bring him when you will, to nourish the people.. All distant lands, you make them live, you made a heavenly Hapy descend for them; he makes waves on the mountains like the sea, to drench their fields and their towns." Egypt has a Hapy that comes out of the netherworld, and other peoples a Hapy that comes down from the sky as rain, as Lichtheim explains.

Re, "the Hapy mighty in his rising"

In the Contendings of Horus and Seth, Thoth writes the council's letter to Neith and opens it with Re's titles: "the Aten who illumines the Two Lands with his lustre; the Hapy mighty in his rising: Re-Harakhti". The rising sun is likened to the rising Nile.

The Two Lands and the two plants

The Hymn to Hapy calls him "Conqueror of the Two Lands" who comes "filling Egypt, South and North". For Egyptians the Two Lands were the South, whose emblem is the lotus, and the North, whose emblem is papyrus, and the sign zmꜣ-tꜣ.wj, "union of the Two Lands", is a windpipe with the two plants twined around it. The word zmꜣ means lung, and also "to unite, join". Egyptians drew Hapy in the processions of the provinces with the plant of the South and the plant of the North on his head, and a Middle Kingdom scarab shows two full-bellied figures facing each other, which the Metropolitan Museum takes to be probably Hapy.

Hapy and Osiris

The Global Egyptian Museum notes that Hapy had a relatively minor place in religion although the flood was the life of all Egypt, because Osiris too was held to be lord of the inundation and of Nile water: the rising of the waters was linked with his resurrection, and Nile water with his bodily fluids, which held latent life. Sobek the crocodile, whose domain was the waters of the Nile, was also worshipped as bringer of the flood.

In Herodotus

In the fifth century BCE Herodotus asked the priests of Egypt why the Nile rises for a hundred days from the summer solstice and then falls until the next one, and found no answer. From the scribe of Athena's treasury at Sais, Athena being his name for Neith, he heard that the springs of the Nile lie between two hills between Syene and Elephantine, half flowing north and half south: the twin caverns of the Famine Stela.

Symbolic Reading

The project's Egyptian rereading essay makes the Nile the axis of all Egyptian myth: the flood is creation, its retreat the emergence of land, drought the death of Osiris, the new flood his return, the black soil Egypt and the red one Set's desert. Hapy is the name the Egyptians gave to that flood itself.

The texts measure the flood by people's lives. In the Hymn to Hapy the water falls short and people go hungry, there is no cloth for clothes, no eye-paint and no ointment, and "want is followed by deceit"; the stanza ends: no one can eat gold or get drunk on silver, "barley is foremost and strong". In the Famine Stela every man robs his twin, the temples are shut, and the old sit with their arms clasped about them. The Global Egyptian Museum notes that too high a flood drowned houses and let the corpses of drowned animals foul the water and spread disease, while too low a flood left fields unsown. The god whose cavern no one knows is the measure of the whole year: how much is sown, how much is stored, how much is levied for the temple.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Hapy comes from the primordial waters, Nun, through two caverns at Elephantine, and his yearly return is the base of Egypt's agricultural year: the water rises, then withdraws from the silt, then the grain is sown.

In Mesopotamia Enki fills the Tigris with his water in Enki and the World Order: he stands up "like a rampant bull" and ejaculates, the river fills with flowing water, the water brings barley, and the text says he thereby brought "a bridal gift". Hapy in the Famine Stela bounds up and copulates as man with woman. In both stories the river is a male that fertilises the land with its water; the difference is that Enki is a god who fills the river, while Hapy is the river itself.

In Persia Anahita runs down as a great river from Mount Hukairya to the sea and purifies the seed of men and the wombs of women: like Hapy she is a water whose fertility runs through bodies as through fields, but she is a woman, and Hapy a man with breasts. In India Ganga comes down from heaven to earth as a river, as the "heavenly Hapy" of the Aten hymn comes down on other peoples as rain.

Hapy's flood is not the deluge that destroys people in Mesopotamian and Biblical stories. It comes every year, it is prayed for, and it is feared only when it exceeds its measure. The Hymn to Hapy itself says "when he plunders, the whole land rages": the Egyptian water knows destruction, but as an excess of measure, not a punishment for sin.