We could not trace this name to a source we trust. The page is the investigation.
Hebit
audit verdict: a place, named in a bandaging instruction
What was found
Both hits are in the embalmment ritual — the instructions recited by the priest superintending the wrapping, whose effect was "to make divine each member of the body, and to secure for it the protecting influence of the god or goddess who presided over it" [budge-1914].
Then anoint the head of the deceased and all his mouth with oil… and wrap it in the bandages of Harmakhis in Hebit. The bandage of the goddess Nekhebet shall be put on the forehead, the bandage of Hathor in Heliopolis on the face, the bandage of Thoth on the ears, and the bandage of Nebt-hetepet on the back of the neck… On the head of the deceased shall be the bandage of Sekhmet, beloved of Ptah, in two pieces. [budge-1914]
"Harmakhis in Hebit" has the same shape as "Hathor in Heliopolis" two clauses later. Heliopolis is a city. So is Hebit — it is the Iseum of the Delta, Behbeit el-Hagar. The census took the place and filed it as a god.
Verdict — a toponym, form 5 of the trap
Trap form 5 is a place-name mistaken for a deity — usually a town plus a feminine ending (anit). This is the plainer version: the bare place, lifted out of "God X in place Y."
The construction is what makes it catchable. Bandages of A in B recurs four times in one paragraph, and in every other instance B is unmistakably a location. Reading one clause settles it; reading only the string does not. See the Epithet Trap.
The passage is worth more than the verdict
A dead body being wrapped part by part, each strip of linen assigned to a different deity: Nekhbet the forehead, Hathor the face, Thoth the ears, Nebt-hetepet the back of the neck, Sekhmet the head in two pieces, Harmakhis the whole head and mouth.
And the linen is inspected: "all the strips of linen used in fastening them shall be taken from sheets of linen that have been examined as to quality and texture in the presence of the inspector of the mysteries" [budge-1914].
A quality-control officer for grave-cloth. The corpus has been assembling this kind of detail — the sealed papyrus round the bull's horns, the unsold funerary papyrus with the name left blank — and it belongs with them.
This also matches the Ninth Division of the Am-Tuat, where twelve gods sit on looms and Ra addresses them as "ye who are swathed in your holy swathings, whom Horus covered up when he hid his father" (C408). Here is the ritual those weavers correspond to, performed on an actual corpse, with an inspector present.
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-1914] | *Literature of the Ancient Egyptians*, the embalmment ritual, p. 248 | "wrap it in the bandages of **Harmakhis in Hebit**," beside "the bandage of **Hathor in Heliopolis**" — **the same construction, and Heliopolis is a city** |
[budge-1914] | *ibid.* | the member-by-member assignment: **Nekhbet** forehead, **Hathor** face, **Thoth** ears, **Nebt-hetepet** back of neck, **Sekhmet** head in two pieces; the linen **inspected for quality and texture before the inspector of the mysteries** |
Sources
[budge-1914]— Budge, Literature of the Ancient Egyptians. Public domain, archived.
Open questions
- Read the rest of the embalmment ritual. Budge gives one extract, for the head. The full member-by-member list would be a page — and it is the ritual counterpart of the Am-Tuat's weaving registers (C408).
- Nebt-hetepet is in the Osiris name-lists and not in the census. She presides over the back of the neck.
- Harmakhis — Heru-em-akhet, Horus of the Horizon. Check whether the census has him, and whether akhty, audited as a fragment of Ra-Harakhti, points at the same god.
- Where is Hebit? The Delta Iseum is the standard identification and nothing in this archive says so — Budge names it and moves on.
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.
"Hebit", The Egyptian God Corpus,
graded audit, retrieved 2026-08-10.