Khem

The city of Khem, or Kherti. which the Greeks called Letopolis, was situated close to the fork of the Delta.

His titles are given, apart from vizier, as prophet of Amun, great seer of Heliopolis, wener-priest in Khem (Letopolis), and sem-priest of the temple of Ptah in Memphis.

At least from the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2566 BC), Horus, in Khem (Letopolis) in Lower Egypt, was the falcon Harmerti, or Horkhenti-Irti (“Horus of the two eyes”) with his right eye being the sun and his left eye the moon, Mekhenti-er-Irti (“he who has no eyes”) when the sun and moon were invisible and Khenti-Irti (“he who has eyes”), or Khenty-Khem, “the foremost of Khem,” when the sun and moon re-appeared.

Khem was a god by whom the productiveness of nature was emblematized.

The assertion of Herodotus, that the Egyptians represented the god Pan, like the Greeks, with the head and legs of a goat, applies neither to the god Khem, nor to any other deity in the Egyptian Pantheon, and is as little worthy of credit as the statement he afterwards makes respecting an occurrence in the Mendesian nome

Another peculiarity of the period is the prominence given to Mentu and Khem, who have hitherto been very subordinate and insignificant deities.

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.

It crossed strange lands and stranger seas, and sank with Atlantis before a Minoan fisher meshed it in his net and sold it to swarthy merchants from nighted Khem. The Pharaoh Nephren-Ka built around it a temple with a windowless crypt, and did that which caused his name to be stricken from all monuments and records.

There has been many a Pharaoh in the Land of Khem, in the Double Land of Egypt, and some of them have been great and have pleased me well.