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Khepri

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Khepri

Khepri (Egyptian: ḫprj, also transliterated Khepera, Kheper, Khepra, Chepri) is a scarab-faced god in ancient Egyptian religion who represents the rising or morning sun. By extension, he can also represent creation and the renewal of life.

The name "Khepri" appeared in the Pyramid texts and usually included the scarab hieroglyph as a determinative or ideogram as a potential means to make any allusions to the god clear. Khepri is also mentioned in the Amduat, as the god is intrinsically linked to cycle of the sun and Ra's nightly journey through the Duat, the Egyptian underworld.

Khepri (ḫprj) is derived from the Egyptian language verb ḫpr, meaning to "develop" or "create". Khepri (ḫprj) can also be spelled "Kheper", which is the Egyptian term used to denote the sun god, the scarab beetle, and the verbs "to come into existence" or "to be born".

The god was connected to and often depicted as a scarab beetle (ḫprr in Egyptian). Scarab beetles lay their eggs within dung balls, and as a result, young beetles emerge from the balls fully formed, having eaten their way out of the mounds. This caused ancient Egyptians to believe that these insects were created from nothingness. They also believed that each day the sun was reborn or created from nothing, thus explaining the connection made between the Sun and the scarab.

In hour twelve of the Amduat, a newly reborn Khepri helms the solar barque that pushes the sun, moving the morning sun across the early day sky. This mirrors the manner in which a scarab beetle pushes large balls of dung along the ground, highlighting the relationship made between Khepri and the insects.

Scarab shaped accessories were common in ancient Egypt, as rings or amulets meant to be attached to necklaces were often fashioned in the shape of these insects. Such objects that depicted scarabs were often handed out to the Egyptian people during public festivials, with them wearing the amulets to bring good fortune, to express their devotion to the king or the gods, or to have the scarabs act as protective charms. These scarab idols, whether they were made of faience, an amalgamated material composed of common minerals like quartz and alkaline salts that was cheap to produce, or turquoise, a rare and highly sought after stone, were often colored blue, which signifies that the color might have been significant in its relation to the gods.

The color had a variety of meanings to the ancient Egyptians. Blue could have represented the sky or the heavens, the primordial flood, which also suggests that the color symbolized a cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Fertility was another characteristic potentially represented by the color blue, as the Nile river was often highlighted by the color. While it is impossible to assume that the blue scarabs depicted in Egyptian art were meant to represent both Khepri and the traits of the color, the correlation between the divine symbolism of the beetle and meaning of the color blue is unlikely to be a mere coincidence.

Khepri was a solar deity and thus connected to the rising sun and the mythical creation of the world. The god and the scarab beetle represented creation and rebirth. There was no cult devoted to Khepri, as he was seen as a manifestation of the more prominent solar deity Ra. The scarab god was however included in the creationist theory of Heliopolis and later Thebes. Often, Khepri and another solar deity, Atum, were seen as aspects of Ra: Khepri represented the morning sun, Ra was the midday sun, and Atum represented the evening sun. As a deity, Khepri's four main functions were creator, protector, sun-god, and the god of resurrection. The central belief surrounding Khepri was the god's ability to renew life, in the same way he restored the sun's existence every morning. Mummified scarab beetles and scarab amulets have been found in pre-dynastic graves, suggesting that Khepri was respected early on in the history of Ancient Egypt.

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