G8 
headed the stele, and which was, in almost all instances, followed 
by an act of adoration to Osiris Ra, Anubis, or the funereal gods.* * * § 
In this his attribute of Harhut the spiritual deity of Horus 
was insensibly merged into the form of the god Khnum, or 
Ivhnef Ra, the former of the universe, and the source of all its 
vitality ; there was, however, this differentiation between the 
two spiritual beings, viz., that Harhut was considered as the 
son of Harkhuti, or Osiris, both being in themselves hypostases 
of the sun-god Ra, while Khnum, or Kneph, was, properly 
speaking, a form of Amen Ra peculiar to Nubia and Upper 
Egypt, where he formed one of the triad with the goddesses 
Sati and Anuke. Like Horus, he was regarded as the deity of 
the vivific heat of the sun, and he was therefore called the 
“ soul of the gods,” and was represented as a ram-headed deity 
crowned with the sacred Atef crown. His more usual title 
was, however, the maker of gods and men, and the hieroglyphic 
pictures often represeut him as sitting at the potter’s wheel, 
fashioning the mysterious cosmic egg in which was the germ 
of hnman life, and indeed of all nature. f Nothing could more 
aptly figure the expression of the prophet, “ We are the clay, 
and thou art the potter; we are all the work of thine hands.”:]; 
I am myself inclined to think that while the spirit Harhut was 
always assimilated with Horus, the deity Kneph was asso- 
ciated with him at another and a later period in history, since 
as is well known that the great Theban and Nubian deity 
Amen Ra, of whom Khnum, or Kneph, was the symbolic spirit, 
occupies a very subordinate position in the Ritual of the Dead, 
and, indeed, is hardly mentioned in its earlier chapters; 1 
suggest, therefore, that this identification took place after the 
rise of the XIXth Dynasty, and assumed importance chiefly 
in that of the XXIInd, when, under the Ethiopian Pharaoh, 
Piankhi-Mer-amen, Upper Egypt held out against the Icosar- 
sarchy, which had been established by the Assyrians under 
Esarhaddon in the Delta. § This is, however, simply a personal 
speculation, and I place it before you only as such, and as a 
suggestion for future studies. 
The last of the secondary attributes of Horus with which I 
have to deal, is that in which he became considered as the author 
of physical life, one and the same with the deity Khem, or 
Amen Khem [the ithyphallic deity], and in which he was called 
* Sharpe, Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity , p. 82, fig. 86. 
f Hence his identification by the Gnostics with their serpent deity 
Chnnphis, whose name was a corruption of that of Kneph. 
X Isaiah lxiv. 8. 
§ See Lenonnant, Manual of Ancient History, i. p. 278. 
