Real, but the surviving record is thin or comes from one period only. Arrives with the Book of the Dead.
Heru-hequi
the hawk with the crook
Part of the Her-Hequi.
Overview
Heru-hequi is the third of the four sovereign chiefs of the fifth hour, and he is the only one whose name and appearance both say something.
Heru is Horus — the hawk. And he is drawn hawk-headed, so the name is descriptive. Hequi relates to heqa, "to rule," and heqa is also the name of the crook — the shepherd's staff that is one of the two emblems every Egyptian king and Osiris himself carries.
He is hawk-headed, and he holds the crook. Name, head and object all agree.
The census names the whole group after him. Its entry reads "The Her-Hequi — four deities in the fifth division of Duat," using this god's name for all four. That is not wrong, exactly — the group has no other collective name in the sources — but it means three gods are indexed under the third one's name and none of them appear on the census individually.
Attestation history
The scene. In the fifth hour Ra travels in his serpent boat, towed by seven gods and seven goddesses "who represent the gods of fourteen days of the month," and "before these are the divine sovereign chiefs" [budge-1904]. The Am-Tuat text calls the four "the great sovereign chiefs who provide food in this Circle," and places them "under the guidance of Isis of Amentet" [budge-1905-amtuat]:
| God | Holds | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Her-khu | a staff |
| 2 | An-hetep | a sceptre |
| 3 | Heru-hequi | a crook — hawk-headed |
| 4 | Ut-metu | a tree, in his left hand |
Their address from Ra is lost: "The text containing the address of the Sun-god to the seven gods is broken away" [budge-1905-amtuat].
What the texts say
Rule, in the catering department. The combination is the interesting part. The crook is the emblem of authority — it is what Osiris holds, what the pharaoh holds at coronation. Here it is carried by a god whose stated function is to provide food.
Which is less incongruous than it sounds. The crook is a shepherd's implement, and a shepherd's authority is exercised by feeding. Egyptian kingship used pastoral imagery for exactly that reason. A god who rules by provisioning is holding the right object.
Not Horus. The Heru element does not make him the great god Horus. Egyptian is full of compound names built on Heru, and the underworld books in particular are full of minor gods with hawk heads. No source here connects the two, and this entry does not.
Budge spells him two ways. Heru-hequi in the 1905 Am-Tuat, Her-hequi in the 1904 Gods and its index. Same god, same page reference, two books by the same author. Recorded because it is the fourth such inconsistency this corpus has found in him.
Iconography
Hawk-headed, holding the crook [budge-1905-amtuat]. The only one of the four whose head type is recorded.
Cult and practice
None.
The record
Every claim above traces to a row here. Source, exact place in that source, and what it actually supports.
| Source | Locus | Attests |
|---|---|---|
[budge-1904] | *Gods of the Egyptians* I, Fifth Hour, p. 222 | Her-hequi third of the four divine sovereign chiefs |
[budge-1905-amtuat] | *Book of Am-Tuat* I, fifth circle | Heru-hequi, hawk-headed, holding the crook; one of the chiefs "who provide food in this Circle" |
[budge-1904] | *Gods of the Egyptians* I, index | Her-hequi, i. 222 |
Sources
[budge-1904]— Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (1904), vol. I, on the Fifth Hour of the Book of the Underworld, p. 222. Public domain, archived insources-texts/. Budge caveat applies (04-BIBLIOGRAPHY.md).[budge-1905-amtuat]— Budge, The Book of Am-Tuat (1905), vol. I, fifth circle. Public domain, archived insources-texts/.[wilkinson-2003]— Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses. In copyright; cited only.
Open questions
- Verify the hequi / heqa connection. The crook-and-rule reading is the whole content of this entry and rests on the standard value of the root, not on any gloss in the sources.
- Settle the spelling between Budge's two books.
- Establish whether the Heru element indicates any relationship to Horus, or is simply the common compound.
- Find the broken Ra address in another Amduat witness.
- Check whether the group has a collective name in the Egyptian text. If it does not, the census's use of this god's name for all four should be stated plainly on the group page.
Cite this entry
Research grade: ◐partial — Genuinely attested, but the record is thin or single-period.
"Heru-hequi", The Egyptian God Corpus,
graded partial, retrieved 2026-08-10.