Khnum

The Potter of Souls

Domain: Creation & the Nile's Source
Alignment: Lawful Good
Element: Earth
Relics of Power: Divine Potter's Wheel

Speak with Khnum

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4 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Ancient Egyptians

Region

Nile Valley, Egypt

Period

c. 3100 BC – 400 AD

The Egyptian gods were worshipped for over three millennia along the banks of the Nile, with monumental temples at Karnak, Luxor, and Heliopolis. The pharaohs were held to be divine, and life revolved around cosmic order (Maat) and preparation for the afterlife. The cult endured until the rise of Christianity in Roman Egypt.

At the Opet festival, Amun's sacred barque sailed from Karnak to Luxor amid celebrating crowds. In the temples, priests woke, dressed, and fed the god's statue every day, and the Beautiful Festival of the Valley carried the deities to visit the shore of the dead.

At a glance

Khnum is the Egyptian god tied to the cataract at Elephantine and to the act of shaping bodies on a potter's wheel. Four open texts show him in different roles: in the reliefs of Deir el-Bahari he makes the royal child and her ka; in the Westcar Papyrus he accompanies the birth goddesses as porter and gives health to the newborns; in a hymn to the flood he appears as the one who fashions the Nile; in the Famine Stela, inscribed in the Ptolemaic period, he speaks to King Djoser in a dream and promises to release the waters. None of these documents tells a single biography of the god, and none gives a genealogy.

10 min read · Reviewed on October 14, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

Ram with horizontal horns, the potter's wheel, the water jar and the clay

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Anonymous, Famine Stela, island of Sehel (translation by Lichtheim and Roeder). read
Anonymous, Reliefs of the divine birth of Hatshepsut, Deir el-Bahari (Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. II). read
Anonymous, Westcar Papyrus and hymn to the inundation (Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. I). read

Studies

Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. III: The Late Period. open
James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt: commentary and notes on the birth of Hatshepsut. open

Name and epithets

The form Khnum transcribes the god's Egyptian name; ancient and modern translations also spell it Khnemu and Chnum. The texts used here do not explain the name: they show what the god does.

In the ancient sources

Reliefs of the divine birth of Hatshepsut, Reign of Hatshepsut, New Kingdom. Amon summons Khnum, who shapes the child and her ka on the wheel, repeats the god's orders and leads Queen Ahmose to the birth.

The myths

Amon summons Khnum: the forming of Hatshepsut. In the reliefs of Deir el-Bahari, the birth of Hatshepsut is told in successive scenes.

Worship and archaeology

The centre of Khnum's cult in the texts used here is Elephantine, in Egyptian Yebu. The Famine Stela describes the city as an island in the midst of the current, first of the first nome of Upper Egypt towards the region…

How the god was depicted

The best documented image is that of the potter. Breasted describes the Hatshepsut relief: Khnum sits before a potter's wheel on which he fashions two children.

What scholars debate

The date of the Famine Stela. The inscription presents itself as a decree of year 18 of Djoser, of the Third Dynasty, but the text carved at Sehel belongs to the Ptolemaic period.

After antiquity

Khnum's fame as a universal potter comes from a reading that joins royal scenes, tales and a late inscription into one doctrine.

Did you know?

In the Westcar Papyrus, Khnum is disguised as the dancers' porter. When the father pays the goddesses with a sack of barley, it is Khnum who loads it on his back; inside it the goddesses hide the three crowns of the fut…

Codex relic

Divine Potter's Wheel. A potter's wheel on which he shapes from clay the body and spirit of every child that is born.

The rest of this scroll is sealed

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