Difference between revisions of "Hapi"

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(Created page with "400px|thumb|Canopic Jar topper depicting Hapy '''Hapy''' (in ancient Egyptian: ''ḥpy'') is one of the four sons of Horus, along with Imse...")
 
 
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[[File:Hapi Canopic Jar.jpg|400px|thumb|Canopic Jar topper depicting Hapy]]
::''Not to be confused with [[Hapy]], one of the Four Sons of [[Horus]]''
'''Hapy''' (in ancient Egyptian: ''ḥpy'') is one of the four sons of [[Horus]], along with [[Imsety]], [[Duamutef]], and [[Qebehsenuef]].
[[File:Hapi with Jars.jpg|400px|thumb|Depiction of Hapi from a funerary setting]]
'''Hapi''' (Ancient Egyptian: ''ḥꜥpj'') was the god of the annual flooding of the Nile in ancient [[Egyptian religion]]. The flood deposited rich silt (fertile soil) on the river's banks, allowing the Egyptians to grow crops. Hapi was greatly celebrated among the Egyptians. Some of the titles of Hapi were "Lord of the Fish and Birds of the Marshes" and "Lord of the River Bringing Vegetation."


Hapy has the head of a baboon. In a funerary context, he was responsible for protecting the lungs of mummified people. As ruler of one of the four cardinal directions, Hapy was associated with the north.
Hapi is typically depicted as an androgynous figure with a prominent belly and large drooping breasts, wearing a loincloth and ceremonial false beard, depicted in hieroglyphics as an intersex person.


He is ruled over by the [[Egyptian religion|Egyptian goddess]] [[Nephthys]].
==Mythology==
The annual flooding of the Nile occasionally was said to be the ''Arrival of Hapi''. Since this flooding provided fertile soil in an area that was otherwise desert, Hapi symbolised fertility. He had large female breasts because he was said to bring a rich and nourishing harvest. Due to his fertile nature he was sometimes considered the "father of the gods," and was considered to be a caring father who helped to maintain the balance of the cosmos, the world or universe regarded as an orderly, harmonious system.


==Name==
He was thought to live within a cavern at the supposed source of the Nile near Aswan. The cult of Hapi was mainly located at the First Cataract on Elephantine Island. His priests were involved in rituals to ensure the steady levels of flow required from the annual flood. At Elephantine the official nilometer, a measuring device, was carefully monitored to predict the level of the flood, and his priests must have been intimately concerned with its monitoring.
Egyptologist James P. Allen translates Hapy's name as "He of Haste."


The name of Hapy may have originally incorporated the Egyptian grammatical dual ending (-ty or -wy), using an additional ''w'' that was later lost. For this reason, the Egyptologist John Taylor argues that Imsety and Hapy were originally two male and female pairs of deities.
Hapi was not regarded as the god of the Nile itself but of the inundation event. He was also considered a "friend of [[Geb]]," the Egyptian god of the [[earth]], and the "lord of Neper," the god of grain.


==Canopic jar==
==Iconography==
Canopic jars were containers used by the ancient Egyptians during the mummification process, to store and preserve the viscera of their soul for the afterlife. Each of [[Horus]]'s sons were responsible for protecting a particular organ, was himself protected by a companion goddess, and represented a cardinal direction.
Although male and wearing the false beard, Hapi was pictured with pendulous breasts and a large stomach, as representations of the fertility of the Nile. He was usually given blue or green skin, representing water. Other attributes varied, depending upon the region of Egypt in which the depictions exist. In Lower Egypt, he was adorned with papyrus plants and attended by frogs, present in the region, and symbols of it. In Upper Egypt, it was the lotus and crocodiles which were more present in the Nile, thus these were the symbols of the region, and those associated with Hapi there.


Hapy protected the lungs, which were extracted from the body, mummified separately, and placed inside his jar. In some later tombs, these jars were merely symbolic and did not contain the actual organs.
Hapi was often pictured carrying offerings of food or pouring water from an amphora, but also, very rarely, was depicted as a hippopotamus. During the Nineteenth Dynasty Hapi is often depicted as a pair of figures, each holding and tying together the long stem of two plants representing Upper and Lower Egypt, symbolically binding the two halves of the country around a hieroglyph meaning "union." This symbolic representation was often carved at the base of seated statues of the pharaoh.


==Role==
Egyptian historian Al Maqrizi (1364–1442) related in his ''El Khutat El Maqrizia'' (''The Maqrizian Plans'') that living virgins were sacrificed annually as "brides of the Nile" ("Arous El Nil") and this has been historically accepted as late as the 1970s, but this claim is disputed by some Egyptologists such as Bassam El Shammaa.
Although Hapy is most prominently found in funerary context as a canopic jar, he is possibly more closely associated with the [[Egyptian decans]]. Dutch Egyptologist Maarten Raven argues that the four sons originated as celestial deities, given that the [[Pyramid Texts]] frequently connect them with the sky and that [[Horus]] himself was a sky deity.
 
All four sons of Horus are connected with specific decans, ruling over them in some capacity, although the precise nature of their connection is not presently understood by scholars.
 
According to ''[[Cult of the Stars]]'' by [[occultist]] [[Travis McHenry]], Hapy rules over the following decans:
* [[Qed]]
* [[Khery Heped Seret]]
* [[Tepy-a Semed]]
* [[Semed]]
* [[Tepy-a Khentet]]
* [[Weshati Bekati]]
* [[Tepy-a Kenmet]]
 
Geographically, both Hapy and [[Duamutef]] were linked with the Lower Egyptian city of Buto.
 
In an exceptional portrayal, in the wall decoration in WV23, the tomb of Ay from the late Eighteenth Dynasty, the four sons are portrayed as fully human, with Imsety and Hapy wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt.


[[Category:Egyptian gods]]
[[Category:Egyptian gods]]

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