We could not trace this name to a source we trust. The page is the investigation. Arrives with the Book of the Dead.
Astennu
a name of Thoth, standing next to Thoth
The myth, retold
The story as it is told
A retelling, not a translation. What follows is the story as it is commonly told, drawn together from the better popular and scholarly accounts. It is not keyed to any single ancient text, and the ancient sources rarely agree with each other as neatly as a retelling has to. The attested record — with its sources, its gaps, and its disagreements — is below.
In one Egyptian papyrus, four gods judge the dead. Their names are Thoth, Osiris, Anubis, and Astennu.
Elsewhere in the same book, by the same author, we are told that Astennu is a name of Thoth.
So either the tribunal seats Thoth twice, or one of those statements is wrong.
The evidence, such as it is
The Papyrus of Ani has a chapter that runs through the divine courts of the underworld. One section reads:
Vignette: The gods Thoth, Osiris, Anubis, and Astennu. Text: The great godlike rulers in the judgment of the dead are Thoth, Osiris, Anubis, and Astennu.
Note that word vignette. It means there is a picture, and the picture has four figures in it.
That matters more than the list does. A scribe writing a name twice is a slip you can imagine. A painter drawing four separate gods has committed to something.
And the Egyptian underneath, in Budge's own word-by-word rendering, is equally plain: Ausar pu, Anpu pu, Astennu pu — "Osiris is, and Anubis is, and Asten is."
Then, seventy pages away, in a glossary of divine names, Budge writes: "Astennu, a name given to the god Thoth."
He does not notice. Or he notices and does not say.
Three ways it could go
One: Astennu was once a separate god who later got absorbed into Thoth. The picture preserves the old arrangement; the glossary describes the new one. To believe this we would want to find Astennu somewhere Thoth is not.
Two: Astennu is an aspect of Thoth, and the list is a deliberate doubling — one god present in two capacities. Egyptian texts do this elsewhere without any apparent discomfort. To believe it we would want a parallel: another tribunal where one god sits twice under two names.
Three: Budge simply got the glossary wrong. He gives no source for the identification, so we cannot check it.
I cannot tell you which. That is the honest position and it is why the entry is marked as an audit rather than graded like a normal god.
Why leave it unresolved
Because most accounts of Astennu pick option two and say nothing about the picture.
That is not dishonest exactly — option two is probably right — but it hides the interesting part. The disagreement here is between an image and a gloss, and the image is the older witness by a couple of thousand years. When those two conflict, the useful thing to do is say so and let you see the join, rather than quietly choosing and presenting the choice as a fact.
There is even a way to settle it. Budge's own footnote on the adjacent passage cites Naville, who collated the Book of the Dead across many papyri rather than relying on one. If other copies of this chapter also list four judges, the fourfold reading is standard and option two gets much harder. If Ani is alone in it, option three looks better.
Nobody here has read Naville. It is on the list.
Overview
Budge says two things about Astennu, roughly seventy pages apart, and they cannot both be straightforwardly true.
In the glossary: "Astennu, a name given to the god Thoth" [budge-1895].
In the text: "The great godlike rulers in the judgment of the dead are Thoth, Osiris, Anubis, and Astennu" [budge-1895].
If Astennu is a name of Thoth, then the list of four judges contains Thoth twice, under two names, sitting in different seats.
The entry is graded ⚠ because the contradiction is the content. Resolving it would take a source this project does not have; stating it precisely is achievable now and is worth more than picking a side.
What the texts say
The judgment passage. Chapter xviii of the Book of the Dead, in the Papyrus of Ani, runs through a series of divine tribunals. One section reads:
Vignette: The gods Thoth, Osiris, Anubis, and Astennu. Text: (1) The great godlike rulers in the judgment of the dead are Thoth, Osiris, Anubis, and Astennu. [budge-1895]
Two things matter here. First, the list is fourfold and Thoth and Astennu occupy separate places in it. Second — and this is the stronger evidence — the vignette shows four figures. The scribe who illustrated Ani's papyrus drew four gods, not three with one named twice.
Budge's interlinear of the same passage gives the Egyptian: Ausar pu, Anpu pu, Astennu pu — "Osiris is, and Anubis is, and Asten is" [budge-1895].
The glossary statement. Elsewhere Budge lists Astennu flatly among names of other gods: "Astennu, a name given to the god Thoth," in the same run of glosses that identifies Un-nefer as a name of Osiris and Serq as a form of Isis [budge-1895].
He is also in the master list. Budge's catalogue of gods named in the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead includes Astennu as its own entry [budge-1904] — which tells us the name circulated independently enough to be catalogued, and nothing about whether it was a distinct being.
The audit
Three readings, and what each would require.
1. Astennu is a distinct god who was later absorbed into Thoth, with the glossary recording the late situation and the vignette preserving the early one. Would require: an attestation of Astennu apart from Thoth, ideally pre-New Kingdom.
2. Astennu is an aspect of Thoth, and the fourfold list is a doubling — the same god present in two capacities, which Egyptian texts do elsewhere without apparent discomfort. Would require: a parallel case where one god is listed twice under two names in a single tribunal.
3. Budge is simply wrong in the glossary. Would require: checking his source for the identification, which he does not give.
The corpus cannot currently choose. What it can do is refuse to smooth the problem over — most accounts of Astennu state reading 2 without mentioning that the primary vignette shows four separate figures.
Why this is worth an entry at all. A name that appears in exactly one tribunal, in one papyrus, is a marginal thing. But the disagreement is between a picture and a gloss, and the picture is the older witness. When those two conflict, the discipline is to say so and let the reader see the seam.
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-1895] | *Papyrus of Ani*, BD ch. xviii, §G, vignette and text | four judges named — Thoth, Osiris, Anubis, Astennu — **and four figures drawn** |
[budge-1895] | *Papyrus of Ani*, interlinear | *Ausar pu, Anpu pu, Astennu pu* — "Osiris is, and Anubis is, and Asten is" |
[budge-1895] | *Papyrus of Ani*, glossary of divine names | "Astennu, a name given to the god Thoth" — **the conflicting statement** |
[budge-1904] | *Gods of the Egyptians* II, gods of the Theban Recension | Astennu catalogued as an independent name |
Sources
[budge-1895]— Budge, The Book of the Dead: Papyrus of Ani (1895). Public domain, archived. Both sides of the contradiction are his.[budge-1904]— Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (1904), vol. II. Public domain, archived.[naville-todtenbuch]— Naville, Das aegyptische Todtenbuch, Bd. II Bl. 79 — cited by Budge on the adjacent passage. Not fetched. Naville collates multiple papyri, which is exactly what this question needs: do other witnesses of ch. xviii also list four?
Open questions
- Fetch Naville. A collation across papyri would settle whether the fourfold list is standard or peculiar to Ani. This is the decisive move and the source is named in Budge's own footnote.
- Find any attestation of Astennu not in a Thoth context.
- Establish the etymology of Astennu / Asten, and whether it is a divine name or a title.
- Check whether the Ani vignette's four figures are iconographically distinct — if the fourth has Thoth's ibis head, reading 2 gains considerably.
- Look for other tribunals where a single god is listed twice under two names.
Cite this entry
Research grade: ⚠audit — Attestation could not be verified. This entry is the audit.
This entry should not be cited as a description of a deity. It records an unverified name and the state of the investigation into it.
"Astennu", The Egyptian God Corpus,
graded audit, retrieved 2026-08-10.