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Khnemu:Egyptian God
For the first beings Every god's characterisfic features could be inherited as
the son of a god might look like his father Generaly speaking it fe11 to
Khnum, the potter god, to concave the forms of the gods as well as those
of people or animals He was believed to mold them all on his potters
wheel, relying only on the force of his breath; the nature of the day he
used was not known The spedial powers he possessed enabled him to
desroy the body of the cosmic enemy Apophis as well as those of his
progeny A divine form created by Khnum constituted a totality that
could not be apprehended in and of self for such a form coincided with
the very being of the god it belonged to. It hy beyond what could be
known or described and could only be grasped--imper~ctly at that~
through its projections. These projections constitued the kheperu which
corresponded to the series of ephemeral individul forms indefinite in
number that a divinity was capable of assuming None of them could
encompass the totality of what a god was. Yet the passage from one to the
other althhough it showed that a god was caught up in a process of con-
stant evoution did not constitute a metamorphosis of his fundamental
being. Each of these forms was a facet of the god in which he was fully
implied.
By adopting a kheperu, a god created for himself the possibility
of signifying a state of his being or distinguishing one of his actions by
individualizing it. To enter such a state or perform such an act was to
inscribe the kheperu in visual reality. This projection, called the iru, was a
perceptible, intelligable manifestation of the god, accentuated, as a rule
by various material attributes.
"Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods:Dimitri Meeks and Christine Favard Meeks"Translated by G.M.Goshgarian Reprint 1996,orig 1993 Cornell University Press.
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