KHONSOU

Lunar god of Thebes

Khonsu is the lunar god of ancient Egypt, whose name, often linked to the verb to cross, evokes the traveller who journeys across the night sky. At Thebes, he forms the local divine triad as the son of Amun and the goddess Mut. He is most often represented as a young man or a child bearing the sidelock of youth, his body sometimes sheathed like a mummy, crowned with the lunar disc set upon the crescent. He also appears in a falcon-headed form surmounted by the moon. A deity of time and of the lunar phases, Khonsu is also invoked as a healer and protector against evil spirits and diseases. The stele known as the Bakhtan stele tells how his statue, sent under Ramesses II, is said to have delivered a foreign princess possessed by a demon. His great temple stands within the enclosure of Karnak, at the heart of the domain of Amun. Under the name of Khonsu the Counsellor or Khonsu who governs, he is venerated for his oracular and medical powers. Associated with the reckoning of time, he shares certain traits with Thoth, another lunar deity of the Egyptian pantheon.