Khonsu

KHON-soo

egyptian: Ḫnsw

Definition

Khonsu (Egyptian Ḫnsw, also Khons) is the Egyptian Moon god. He is the third member of the Theban Triad — the family of gods worshipped at Thebes — as the son of Amun and Mut. Egyptians tied him to the Moon's monthly cycle, to timekeeping, to healing, and to protecting travellers. His main cult site is the Khonsu temple inside the Karnak complex at Thebes, which stayed in use from the New Kingdom through the Ptolemaic-Roman period.

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat Khonsu as one of several Moon gods — alongside Thoth and Iah — and his lunar links turn up independently in temple inscriptions, in passages of the pyramid and coffin texts, and in the liturgies of lunar festivals. Wilkinson places him with the Theban Triad in the standard handbook of Egyptian deities, and the carved program of the Karnak temple confirms the lunar identity.

In Practice

The priests of Khonsu at Thebes ran his lunar-calendar cult, including the monthly psḏntyw (new-crescent) and pgdntyw festivals timed to the Moon's phases. Khonsu also appears in Greco-Egyptian astronomy: his lunar identity is invoked on late-period and Greco-Roman astronomical ceilings (Dendera, Edfu), where the Moon gods are listed beside the solar Ra, the planets-as-gods, and the decans. Egyptologists today read Khonsu's iconography — a crown of lunar disc and crescent, the child-Moon-god, the epithet "the Traveller" — as a sign that an inscription or temple wall belongs to a lunar-calendar context.

Historical Origin

Khonsu is attested from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts onward, with a major New Kingdom temple program at Karnak (the Khonsu temple). The Brugsch-1862 inscription quoted in Clagett (Doc III.6 Introduction, p. 280) — "He (Khons, the God of the Moon) is conceived on the Feast of pgdntyw" — gives a primary-source attestation of his lunar identity. He is treated in detail in Wilkinson, *The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt* (2003).

Further Reading

  • Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
  • Marshall Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science Vol II
  • Juan Antonio Belmonte & José Lull, In Search of Cosmic Order