Khonsu

Summary

Khonsu is the moon god of Thebes. In the "Theban triad" he is the son of Amun and Mut, and his chief place of worship was his temple inside the Amun complex at Karnak. He is shown as a man with both the crescent and the full moon on his head, sometimes with a falcon's head, and sometimes as a child with the sidelock of youth standing on crocodiles, as the child Horus stands on the magical stelae. The Global Egyptian Museum says his name comes from an Egyptian verb meaning "to wander", so he is the wanderer who crosses the sky as the moon does; and since the moon was the Egyptians' chief measure of time, Khonsu became the lord of time, who decides how long a man will live and how many years a king will reign.

His oldest story is in the Pyramid Texts, in the hymn known as the "Cannibal Hymn", carved in the pyramid of King Unas of the Fifth Dynasty and again in Teti's. It opens with the sky raining, the stars darkening and the earth trembling as the king rises as a power "who lives on his fathers, who feeds on his mothers"; then it lists his helpers who hunt the gods for him: one lassoes them, one guards and holds them, one binds them, and then "it is Khons, slayer of lords, who cuts their throats for Unas, who tears their entrails out for him, he the envoy who is sent to punish"; Shesmu carves them up and cooks them in his pots, and the king eats their magic and swallows their spirits. The Egyptian text writes his name here with z, and the Egyptian dictionary translates it "the Wanderer".

At Thebes he became a healer who drives out evil, and the Global Egyptian Museum suggests this came to him because illness was attributed to the influence of the moon. His fullest story is that of the "Bentresh Stela". Ramesses II was in Naharin receiving the gifts of the princes when the prince of Bakhtan presented his eldest daughter with his gifts; she pleased the king, who made her his Great Royal Wife. Years later a messenger came from the prince to say that her younger sister Bentresh had been seized by a malady, and asked for a learned man. The king sent the scribe Thothemheb, who found her possessed by a spirit, an enemy that could be fought, but could not drive it out himself. So the prince asked for a god to fight the spirit. The king laid the matter before "Khonsu-in-Thebes-Neferhotep", who turned to "Khonsu the Provider, the great god who expels disease demons", gave him his magical protection four times, and Khonsu the Provider set out in his great barque with five boats, a chariot and horses, reaching Bakhtan after a year and five months. He placed his protection on Bentresh and she was well at once. The spirit said to the god: welcome in peace, great god who expels disease demons; Bakhtan is your home, its people your servants, and I am your servant; I will go back to the place I came from; and it asked for a feast day for itself and the prince. The prince made a great offering to the god and to the spirit, and the spirit went in peace. Then the prince decided to keep the god, who stayed three years and nine months, until the prince dreamt that the god came out of his shrine as a golden falcon and flew towards Egypt; he woke in terror and sent the god home with many gifts, soldiers and horses. Back in Thebes, Khonsu the Provider laid all the gifts before Khonsu-Neferhotep and kept nothing for his own house. The stela is made to look like a monument of Ramesses II, but Lichtheim says it was written in the Persian or the Ptolemaic period.

The idea Khonsu's stories turn on is that he is the one who goes and comes back. In the oldest text he roams to slaughter the lords for the king; at Thebes he is the moon that crosses the sky, disappears and returns, so that the month is counted by his course and a man's life measured by it; in the Bentresh stela he travels to a distant land, drives out the illness and flies home as a falcon. The Egyptian calendar has a month named after him, "the month of Khonsu", the first month of the harvest season.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The project's Egyptian essay reads it from khanasa, which it glosses as going and departing, and grades the reading "high". Every letter is in place: kh is kh, n is n, s is s, and the final w is an Egyptian ending. The sense is another matter: the Arabic dictionary gives khanasa as going back, lagging behind and hiding. Khanasa al-kawkab, the star went back or vanished; al-khunnas in the Sura of the Folding Up are the stars that turn back in their course and hide in the light of the sun; and al-layālī al-khunnas are the three nights of the month in which the moon is hidden. So the Egyptian verb gives the name its going, the Arabic its turning back and hiding, and the moon does both: it crosses the sky, turns back, vanishes for three nights and returns.

Linguistic Root

Khanasa

The Egyptian essay calls Khonsu the god of the moon, of time and of journeys, says that the root khanasa in the sense of going and departing suits the moon's movement across the night sky, and sets beside it khanasha, "to run", for the moon's speed.

The name has three letters, kh, n and s; the w after them is an ending, which the Egyptian dictionary marks off with a dot. Egyptian ḫ is the sound of Arabic kh, and n is n. One point needs explaining in the s. The Pyramid Texts write the name with the sign for z; Old Egyptian kept two sibilant signs apart, s and z, which from the Middle Kingdom on became two spellings of one sound, and Coptic writes both as s. Peust reports that Hommel matched the z sign with Hebrew samekh, which is Arabic s. So the name's letters are kh-n-s.

The sense in Lane: khanasa, he went back or backwards, receded, lagged behind, drew himself together, hid himself, became hidden; khanasa al-kawkab, the star went back in its course, or became hidden "like a gazelle in its covert". Al-khunnas in the verse "I swear by the stars that turn back, that run and hide" are all the stars, because they hide at setting or are concealed by day, or the five planets, because they turn back in their course, some say until they vanish in the light of the sun. Al-layālī al-khunnas are the three nights of the lunar month during which the moon retires from view. And the tradition tells that the Prophet said "the month is thus and thus", and the third time he khanasa a finger, bent it in, to show that the month has twenty-nine days. The Arabic word itself counts the month by the moon's disappearance.

Egyptian has the verb ḫnz, to traverse a region, to travel through, from which comes the title "he who traverses the sky every day", and the Egyptian dictionary places it in the same root as "the Wanderer". In the Pyramid Texts a canal in the sky called Ḫns is one the dead are warned against, because it leads to the dead, and Allen translates it "the To-and-Fro". So Egyptian keeps the going, and the going and coming together, and Arabic keeps the turning back and the hiding.

The reading we settle on: Khonsu is Arabic khanasa, letter for letter, and the essay's root is right. The sense of going and departing it gives belongs to the Egyptian verb; the dictionaries give khanasa as turning back and hiding, and the moon does both.

As for khanasha, the dictionaries know no sense of running in it, only khunshūsh, a remnant of property, and its sh has nothing to answer it in the Egyptian name.

Shifts used: ḫ = kh; n = n; old z read as s after the merger; final w an ending.

Key Mythic Narratives

Khonsu's forms at Thebes

Khonsu had many forms at Thebes; Montemhet's inscription in the temple of Mut at Karnak names as many as seven. Montemhet's statue names "Khonsu the Child" and "Khonsu, reckoner of lifetime", and "the three Khonsus", whom Lichtheim takes to be Khonsu-in-Thebes-Neferhotep, Khonsu the Provider and a third with them, the three appearing together on many monuments. The Egyptians joined him with other gods: he is "Khonsu-Shu" because his father Amun was joined to Ra, whose son is Shu, and in funerary texts Khonsu-Shu helps the dead person's spirit on its way to the sky; he is "Khonsu-Ra" because for them the moon was the sun of the night; and he is "Khonsu-Thoth", with Thoth the moon god closest to him.

The swelling of Khonsu

In the "book of swellings" of the medical Papyrus Ebers there is a swelling called "the swelling of Khonsu", which the physician describes as large and uneven, as if there were air in it, weighing down every limb it is in. The god who drives out disease demons in the Bentresh stela has, in the physicians' books, an illness known by his name.

The moon who loses at a game

Plutarch tells that Hermes, the Greeks' Thoth, played draughts with the Moon and won from her a seventieth part of each of her periods of light; from his winnings he made five days, which he added to the year, and on them Osiris and his brothers and sisters were born. Plutarch does not call the moon Khonsu, but his story makes the moon the one whose light is reduced so that time can be made from it.

Symbolic Reading

The Egyptian rereading essay makes Khonsu the moon, "the night traveller", and Thoth "the mind of the moon", that is, reckoning and the calendar. So for the essay the moon has two images: movement in Khonsu, counting in Thoth.

In Arabic Khonsu's name holds both images. What goes, turns back and hides for three nights is what the month is counted by, as the finger was bent in the tradition to count it. The Global Egyptian Museum, explaining the triad, says that for the Egyptians Amun and Khonsu were one god in two aspects: Amun is reborn as Khonsu, Khonsu is the young Amun, Amun the old Khonsu, in an unending cycle of death and rebirth. The moon that wanes and waxes every month is the image of that cycle.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

At Ugarit the moon's name Yarikh is the word for month, which we read from warrakha and arrakha, to fix a date. At Thebes a month is named after Khonsu, and he is called "reckoner of lifetime". In both lands the moon is what time is counted by, and the counting is in both names.

In Sumer Nanna, the moon of Ur, builds a barge and sails to Nippur, where his father Enlil gives him the riches of river, field and orchard, and "in the palace he gave him long life", and he sets off home for Ur. Khonsu in the Bentresh stela sails in his barque to Bakhtan and comes back to Thebes with many gifts. In both stories the moon is a traveller who returns home laden, and in both long life is in the moon's hands.

In the North the moon, Máni, is a man who drives the moon and rules its waxing and waning, "for men to reckon years", and whom the elves call "year-counter". Khonsu is "reckoner of lifetime". In both the moon is male and his work is counting.

The Global Egyptian Museum says the Greeks identified Khonsu with Heracles, son of Zeus, Zeus being their Amun, because of Khonsu's link with Shu, who holds up the sky.

In the Cannibal Hymn Khonsu slaughters the lords so that the king may eat their magic, and the magic the king eats in that hymn is Heka.

The month that bears his name is the first month of the harvest, and at its new moon the festival of Min was held, at which the king cut the first sheaf; this belongs to the agricultural calendar. Mironova, "Min Festival".

Among the Greeks the moon is Selene, whose orbit is full at mid-month so that she is "a sure token and a sign to mortal men" by which they know the time, as the month is counted by Khonsu's course, in Selene.