Real, but the surviving record is thin or comes from one period only.
Heq
fifth hour, and the seventeenth finger
Part of the Hours of the Day and Night.
Overview
Heq is the god of the fifth hour — of the day and, identically, of the night.
He is also the god of the seventeenth finger-breadth of the royal cubit [budge-1904]. The same deity measures a stretch of time and a stretch of length, which is the most interesting thing about this group and is set out on the group page.
His name is heqa, "to rule" — the root behind the shepherd's crook that Osiris and every pharaoh carries, and behind Heru-hequi in the fifth hour of the Tuat.
Attestation history
The twelve. Budge's list of the gods and goddesses of the hours of the day [budge-1904]:
| Hour | God | Hour | God | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Imsety (Amseth) | 7 | Maa-tef-f | |
| 2 | Hapy (Hap) | 8 | Ar-ren-f-tchesef | |
| 3 | Duamutef (Tua-mat-f) | 9 | Hentch-hentch | |
| 4 | Qebehsenuef | 10 | Qet | |
| 5 | Heq | 11 | An-erta-nef-nebat | |
| 6 | Armai | 12 | Matchet |
And the night is the same twelve. Budge: "The deities of the hours of the night are the same as those of the hours of the day, and their names follow each other in the order in which they occur as gods of the hours of the day" [budge-1904].
The rota. Budge also prints a table of the gods who watch "before and behind Osiris-Serapis" through the twelve hours, and it is a shift rotation: each god stands behind Osiris for one hour, then before him for the next [budge-1904].
This god is behind Osiris in hour 5 and before Osiris in hour 6.
The cubit. Budge's list of "the Gods of the Twenty-eight finger-breadths of the Royal Cubit" gives 17. Heq [budge-1904]. Four of the twelve hour-gods appear on that list — Heq at 17, Armai (as Armaua) at 18, Maa-tef-f (as Maa-en-tef) at 19, and Ar-ren-f-tchesef at 20 — in the same order, consecutively.
What the texts say
A unit of time and a unit of length, staffed by one god. The Egyptians divided the day into twelve and the royal cubit into twenty-eight, and assigned a deity to each division of each. Heq holds hour 5 and finger 17, and three of his colleagues hold fingers 18, 19 and 20 in the same sequence.
Measurement itself is populated. There is no neutral scale in this system; every graduation has somebody in it.
Rule, again, in a functional role. As with Heru-hequi, the heqa root turns up attached to a god whose actual job is administrative rather than sovereign. Recorded as a pattern, not explained.
Iconography
None recorded. Budge gives the names in list form without descriptions.
Cult and practice
None. These are gods of divisions, not of places.
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* II, §V, p. 294 | Heq as god of the fifth hour of the day |
[budge-1904] | *Gods of the Egyptians* II, §VI, p. 294 | the same twelve serve the hours of the night |
[budge-1904] | *Gods of the Egyptians* II, §VII, p. 295 | Heq behind Osiris in hour 5, before Osiris in hour 6 |
[budge-1904] | *Gods of the Egyptians* II, §I, p. 291 | Heq as the seventeenth finger-breadth of the royal cubit |
Sources
[budge-1904]— Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (1904), vol. II, ch. XIX "Miscellaneous Gods", §V (hours of the day, p. 294), §VI (hours of the night, p. 294) and §VII (the watch before and behind Osiris-Serapis, p. 295). Public domain, archived insources-texts/. Budge caveat applies (04-BIBLIOGRAPHY.md); these are name-lists and tables, which is transcription rather than interpretation.[wilkinson-2003]— Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses. In copyright; cited only.
Open questions
- Establish the source of Budge's hour-lists. He prints them as bare tables with no manuscript cited. They are almost certainly Late Period or Graeco-Roman temple material; without a witness the whole group is undated.
- Confirm the heq / heqa identification; Budge does not gloss the name.
- Work out why four hour-gods sit consecutively at cubit-fingers 17–20. That is either a shared source list or a real theological link between the divisions of time and length, and it is the best question this group raises.
- Check whether Heq appears anywhere outside the list literature.
Cite this entry
Research grade: ◐partial — Genuinely attested, but the record is thin or single-period.
"Heq", The Egyptian God Corpus,
graded partial, retrieved 2026-08-10.