Real, but the surviving record is thin or comes from one period only. Arrives with the Book of the Dead.
Her-khu
first of the four who provide food
Part of the Her-Hequi.
Overview
Her-khu is the first of four gods who stand in front of the sun boat in the fifth hour of the night, and their collective job is catering.
Budge's Am-Tuat translation calls them "the great sovereign chiefs who provide food in this Circle" [budge-1905-amtuat]. In Gods of the Egyptians he calls them simply "the divine sovereign chiefs" [budge-1904].
Sovereign chiefs who provide food. In the underworld, at the hour of the sun's deepest passage, four high-ranking gods are running the supply.
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
Food is a recurring underworld anxiety, and it is administrative. Budge notes of the fifth division that "Ra addresses the beings who are in it, and makes arrangements for their supply of food, and reminds them of their duties to him their creator" [budge-1904].
That is not a metaphor about spiritual sustenance. The Egyptian dead needed feeding, the funerary cult existed to feed them, and the underworld books describe the same logistics on a divine scale. Her-khu and his colleagues are the department that handles it.
Isis is their supervisor. The four march "under the guidance of Isis of Amentet" [budge-1905-amtuat] — Isis in her western, funerary aspect. Four sovereign chiefs reporting to a goddess is worth noting; the Tuat registers rarely specify a chain of command.
We do not know what Ra said to them. The address is "broken away" [budge-1905-amtuat]. The gap is in the manuscript, not the reporting.
Iconography
A god holding a staff [budge-1905-amtuat]. No head type is recorded — only Heru-hequi is described as hawk-headed, which implies the other three are human-headed but does not state it.
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-khu first of the four divine sovereign chiefs |
[budge-1905-amtuat] | *Book of Am-Tuat* I, fifth circle | "the great sovereign chiefs who provide food in this Circle"; Her-khu holds a staff; under the guidance of Isis of Amentet |
[budge-1904] | *Gods of the Egyptians* I, index | Her-khu, 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/. Budge transcribes the fourth chief differently in the two books — see open threads.[wilkinson-2003]— Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses. In copyright; cited only.
Open questions
- Establish the meaning of the name. Her is "upon" or "face"; khu relates to the akh, the transfigured spirit. A reading like "over the spirits" is available and not asserted here.
- Find the broken address of Ra in another witness — the Amduat survives in many tombs, and what is lost in one copy often survives in another.
- Confirm whether the four are human-headed; only the third has a head type recorded.
- Establish what "sovereign chiefs" translates, and whether it is the same term used of the assessors at the Balance.
Cite this entry
Research grade: ◐partial — Genuinely attested, but the record is thin or single-period.
"Her-khu", The Egyptian God Corpus,
graded partial, retrieved 2026-08-10.