Khenty-ierty / ‘Mekhenty-irty’ / ‘Khenty-n-irty’

Egyptian city of Khem (‘Sekhem’)

Letopolis, the modern Ausim
Khenty-Khem, ‘foremost one of Khem’
Haroeris, the ‘elder Horus’, with his two eyes the sun and
the moon.
Khenty ‘in front’ ‘with two eyes in front’
Dual nature sighted and blind
Dark of the moon / primordial darkness
Night ritual performed at Khem enacting the burial of Osiris.
Khenty-n-irty “punishes the enemies of the Lord of the
Universe”
“O flinty[or ‘fiery’]-eyed one who came forth from Letopolis,
I have not done crooked things.”
Children of Khenty-irty, who play a role akin to the four
‘sons of Horus‘.
“My eyes are opened for me by the Eyeless One, the great
star, joined to Khem, and I see with them. My ears are opened
for me by this Falcon to whom men do not speak, and I hear
with them.”
“the Golden Falcon who snatches things in the voids of the
sky,” and who eats from the slaughterhouse of Horus.
“I am one who travels by night and who hides by day.”
the four sons of Horus are referred to as “the children of
Horus of Khem,”
The children of Khenty-irty are charged with the protection
of Osiris, especially during the fifth through the eighth
hours of the vigil, over which they preside.
They are generally reckoned as four in number, named
Heqa, ‘Ruler’ (sometimes Haku, ‘Plunderer’),
Iremêwa, ‘Who acts violently’ (sometimes Ithemêwa, ‘Who takes
violently’),
Ma’itef, ‘Who sees his father’,
and Irrenefdjesef, ‘Who makes his own name’.
Iremêwa is sometimes replaced by Kheribaqef, ‘Who is under
his moringa-tree’.
Occasionally just two of these will appear alongside the four
sons of Horus, and sometimes Heqa/Haku and Ma’itef are fused
into a single deity named Heqa-Ma’itef.
The children of Khenty-irty are usually depicted
anthropomorphically, holding lizards or snakes.

Ausim: An Archaeological Void

The modern town of Ausim (pronounced Ashim) lies on the
western edge of the delta cultivation around 12km north-west
of Cairo, between the Rosetta and Damietta branches of the
Nile.
Nothing now remains of the ancient town of Khem, called
Letopolis by the Greeks, which was situated in this area.

The town of Khem is known from Old Kingdom texts and is also
mentioned in Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts as a centre of
worship of the god Horus Khenty-Irty, or Horus Khenty-Khem,
one of many local aspects of Horus.
The god is mentioned on a panel from the South Tomb of the
Step Pyramid at Saqqara as ‘Horus of Khem’ in an inscription
which uses the archetypal Lower Egyptian Shrine as the
determinative for the cult place of Horus at Letopolis.

It is interesting that this is the only panel in the South

Tomb where the King Djoser-Netjerikhet wears the red crown of
Lower Egypt.
During the Graeco-Roman Period Letopolis was the capital of
the 2nd Lower Egyptian Nome whose symbol included the Horus
falcon.
Only fragments of monuments have so far been recovered from
the site, including blocks bearing the names of Late Period
Kings Necho II Wehemibre, Psamtek II Neferibre, Hakor
Khnemmaatre and Nectanebo I Kheperkare.
Nothing has been found from the earlier periods when there
must have been an important cult centre here.
It would be interesting to understand why some people think
that the site overall was dedicated to Horus Khenty Khem
(‘the first of Khem’), the patron of the blind, as in the
nearby city of Letopolis, originally Khem.
When Horus had both his eyes (the sun and the moon) he was
called Hor-Khenty-Irty and when he was blind he was called
Hor-Khenty-en-Irty.
According to some experts the word khem refers to the
fertility of the land after the Nile flood and therefore to
the god Min.
They consider that ‘Khem’ and ‘Min’ became ‘Khnum’, the name
of the prime creator. Others point out that originally Min
with his erect phallus was another representation of Orion.
The town of Khem is known from the texts of the Old Kingdom
and the Horus of Khem is mentioned in a panel of a tomb south
of Saqqara.