Ut-metu

Overview

The fourth sovereign chief of the fifth hour holds a tree.

Not a sceptre, not a staff, not a crook — the other three have those. A tree, in his left hand [budge-1905-amtuat].

In a register of gods whose function is to provide food, one of them is carrying vegetation. That is either the plainest statement of the group's purpose or a piece of iconography nobody has explained, and the sources here do not say which.

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]:

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].

The name is unstable. Budge gives this god as Ut-metu in the 1905 Book of Am-Tuat and as Hetch-met in the 1904 Gods of the Egyptians, describing the same figure in the same position of the same scene. The two transcriptions share almost nothing. This entry uses the 1905 form because that book gives the iconography, and records the 1904 form as a variant.

What the texts say

The tree is the only object in the group that is not an emblem of office. Staff, sceptre and crook are all instruments of authority. A tree is a source of food and shade.

Egyptian religion has a real tradition here: Hathor and Nut both appear leaning out of a sycamore at the desert edge, giving water and provisions to the dead as they pass. It is one of the gentlest images in the funerary repertoire.

A god of the fifth circle "who provides food," carrying a tree, plausibly belongs to that tradition. No archived source says so, and the connection is offered as a reading, not a finding.

Half of his identity is a transcription problem. Whatever Ut-metu or Hetch-met means, we cannot get at it while the reading is unsettled. The iconography is the only stable thing about him.

Iconography

A god holding a tree in his left hand [budge-1905-amtuat]. No head type recorded.

Cult and practice

None.

The name is used both ways

2026-07-30. Ut-metu is attested in the Am-Tuat in two incompatible roles.

In the Fifth Division it is a standalone god — one of four "great sovereign chiefs who provide food in this Circle," marching under Isis of Amentet and holding a tree [budge-1905]. See the Fifth Division.

In the First Division the same element is a formula spread across four figures — Ut-metu-Ra, Ut-metu-Tem, Ut-metu-Khepera, Ut-metu-Asar, which Budge calls the four Terms [budge-1905]. See the First Division.

So the element functions as both a name and a title within one composition. This is the ambiguous form of the epithet trap (C290, C300): where Metes- looks like a compound formula only, Ut-metu has a standalone attestation as well, and neither reading can be used to dismiss the other.