Khem

English

Etymology 1

From Egyptian ḫm (“Letopolis”).

Proper noun

Khem

1. Letopolis
   • 1968, Joseph Kaster, Wings of the Falcon: Life and Thought of Ancient Egypt, page 75:

     The city of Khem, or Kherti. which the Greeks called Letopolis, was situated close to the fork of the Delta.

   • 1982, Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, volume 12, page 153:

     His titles are given, apart from vizier, as prophet of Amun, great seer of Heliopolis, wener-priest in Khem (Letopolis), and sem-priest of the temple of Ptah in Memphis.

   • 2003, Simson R. Najovits, Egypt, Trunk of the Tree, volume 1, page 23:

     At least from the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2566 BC), Horus, in Khem (Letopolis) in Lower Egypt, was the falcon Harmerti, or Horkhenti-Irti (“Horus of the two eyes”) with his right eye being the sun and his left eye the moon, Mekhenti-er-Irti (“he who has no eyes”) when the sun and moon were invisible and Khenti-Irti (“he who has eyes”), or Khenty-Khem, “the foremost of Khem,” when the sun and moon re-appeared.

Etymology 2

From a 19th-century misreading of Egyptian mnw (“Min”) as ḫm; the confusion arose because the hieroglyph can function as both a logogram for mnw (“Min”) and a phonogram for ḫm.

Proper noun

Khem

1. (dated) the Egyptian god Min
   • 1855, Reginald Stuart Poole, “Egypt”, in Encyclopedia Britannica, 8th edition, volume 8, page 436:

     Khem was a god by whom the productiveness of nature was emblematized.

   • 1878, John Gardner Wilkinson, The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, revised edition, volume 3, page 25:

     The assertion of Herodotus, that the Egyptians represented the god Pan, like the Greeks, with the head and legs of a goat, applies neither to the god Khem, nor to any other deity in the Egyptian Pantheon, and is as little worthy of credit as the statement he afterwards makes respecting an occurrence in the Mendesian nome

   • 1882, George Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt, volume 2, page 144:

     Another peculiarity of the period is the prominence given to Mentu and Khem, who have hitherto been very subordinate and insignificant deities.

Etymology 3

From Ancient Greek Χημία (Khēmía) or Bohairic Coptic ⲭⲏⲙⲓ (khēmi, “Egypt”), both ultimately from Egyptian kmt (“Egypt”). The final vowels were apparently dropped to form a closer match to the Biblical Ham. First attested in 1837.

Proper noun

Khem

1. (dated or poetic) Egypt
   • 1837, John Gardner Wilkinson, The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, first edition, volume 1, page 2:

     The name of Ham is, in fact, the same as that of Egypt, Khem, or Cham; and Moses may have pointed out the eastern origin of the Egyptians by introducing him as a son of Noah.

   • 1935, H. P. Lovecraft, The Haunter of the Dark:

     It crossed strange lands and stranger seas, and sank with Atlantis before a Minoan fisher meshed it in his net and sold it to swarthy merchants from nighted Khem. The Pharaoh Nephren-Ka built around it a temple with a windowless crypt, and did that which caused his name to be stricken from all monuments and records.

   • 1967, Roger Lancelyn Green, Tales of Ancient Egypt:

     There has been many a Pharaoh in the Land of Khem, in the Double Land of Egypt, and some of them have been great and have pleased me well.

Anagrams

• Kehm