Nehebkau

Definition

Nehebkau (Egyptian Nḥb-kꜣw, "he who unites the kas" — the kas being the vital spirits that give a person life and double them in the afterlife) is a primeval Egyptian serpent-god. For sky-watching he matters most as a calendar marker: his festival fell on I Peret 1, the very first day of Peret, the Growing season that follows the Nile flood. That date closed the long round of Osiris festivals running through the preceding month of Khoiak, so the Festival of Nehebkau marked the turn of the season.

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat Nehebkau as a serpent-deity of the Coffin Texts whose festival became a fixed point in the civil calendar, the 365-day administrative year. Belmonte and Lull argue that this season-turning date was important enough that builders aimed major temples at the sunrise on that day, reading the alignment as a deliberate religious-political statement rather than a simple solstice marker.

In Practice

Nehebkau sits at the seam between Egypt's calendar and its temple architecture. His I Peret 1 festival is kept distinct from the Khoiak festival of Osiris: Khoiak falls in IV Akhet (the fourth month of the Inundation season), and the Nehebkau feast is the next season's opening day, the moment the Osirian cycle hands over to Peret. Belmonte and Lull connect that sunrise to two famous monuments — Hatshepsut's temple Djeser-Djeseru ("the most sacred of holy places") at Deir el-Bahari, and the main sanctuary of Ramesses II's temple at Abu Simbel — arguing both were aimed at the rising Sun on this feast. Behind the calendar lies the older serpent. The Coffin Texts, the Middle Kingdom funerary spells, give his identity directly: in Faulkner's translation the deceased declares, "I am the nau-serpent... exalted and fair as Nehebkau... who bestows the powers of the gods" (Spells 84-88).

Historical Origin

Nehebkau's serpent identity is set out in the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts, Spells 84-88, in Raymond O. Faulkner, *The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts*, Vol. I (1973), pp. 88-91. His I Peret 1 festival, closing the Khoiak Osirian cycle, and its proposed link to the New Kingdom alignments of Hatshepsut's Djeser-Djeseru (c. 1473-1458 BCE) and Ramesses II's Abu Simbel are discussed by Juan Antonio Belmonte and José Lull, *The Astronomy of Ancient Egypt* (2018), pp. 653-660, drawing on the four-feast offering list in the tomb of Senneferi (TT99).

Further Reading

• Raymond O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, Volume I
• Juan Antonio Belmonte & José Lull, The Astronomy of Ancient Egypt