Khem
name ·1 syllable ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Letopolis
"The city of Khem, or Kherti. which the Greeks called Letopolis, was situated close to the fork of the Delta."
- 2 the Egyptian god Min dated
"Khem was a god by whom the productiveness of nature was emblematized."
- 3 Egypt dated, poetic
"The name of Ham is, in fact, the same as that of Egypt, Khem, or Cham; and Moses may have pointed out the eastern origin of the Egyptians by introducing him as a son of Noah."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"The city of Khem, or Kherti. which the Greeks called Letopolis, was situated close to the fork of the Delta."
Etymology
From Egyptian ḫm (“Letopolis”).
From a 19th-century misreading of Egyptian mnw (“Min”) as ḫm; the confusion arose because the hieroglyph R22 can function as both a logogram for mnw (“Min”) and a phonogram for ḫm.
From Ancient Greek Χημίᾱ (Khēmíā) or Bohairic Coptic ⲭⲏⲙⲓ (khēmi, “Egypt”), both ultimately from Egyptian kmt (“Egypt”). The final vowels were apparently dropped to form a closer match to the Biblical Ham. First attested in 1837.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.