Real, but the surviving record is thin or comes from one period only. Arrives with the Book of the Dead.
Sekhet-hra-asht-aru
doorkeeper of the first Arit
Part of the Gate Deities of the Underworld.
Overview
Sekhet-hra-asht-aru is one of three officers stationed at the first Arit — the first of seven halls the dead must pass to reach Osiris.
Every Arit has the same establishment: a doorkeeper, a watcher and a herald. Sekhet-hra-asht-aru holds the post of doorkeeper.
Attestation history
Book of the Dead, chapter CXLVII, in the Papyrus of Ani. The formula is identical at every gate: "The name of the doorkeeper is ——; the name of the watcher is ——; the name of the herald is ——" [budge-1895].
The vignette shows the three guardians seated at the entrance, animal-headed. At this gate this officer's position is given the head of a hare. The first of each trio holds an ear of corn; the other two hold knives.
What the name says. Budge’s footnote gives it as "Reversed of face: of many forms" — a translation, not a transliteration, and therefore the softer half of the evidence. The name itself is secure; the meaning is his reading of it.
What the texts say
The name is the mechanism. Nothing at these gates is fought. The dead person recites the officers' names and makes a short speech — and the speeches are credentials rather than pleas, statements of what the speaker has already done for Osiris. Knowing what Sekhet-hra-asht-aru is called is the whole of what is required to pass him.
What this entry cannot tell you. There is no cult, no epithet beyond the name, no speech of his own, and no appearance outside this chapter. He is an office-holder in a list, and the grade records exactly that. The comparative material — why the gates are staffed this way, what the corn and the knives are for, and why the names are so often repellent — is on the group page rather than repeated here.
Iconography
A god with the head of a hare, seated at the entrance of the first Arit [budge-1895].
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-1895] | Book of the Dead ch. CXLVII, Papyrus of Ani | Sekhet-hra-asht-aru as doorkeeper of the first Arit |
[budge-1895] | same chapter, vignette | the three guardians of the first Arit; this position hare-headed |
[budge-1895] | same chapter, footnote | the name glossed "Reversed of face: of many forms" |
Sources
[budge-1895]— Budge, The Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani (1895), ch. CXLVII. Public domain, archived insources-texts/. Budge caveat applies (04-BIBLIOGRAPHY.md): the transliterated name is reliable, any translated meaning is his interpretation.[naville]— Naville, Das aegyptische Todtenbuch der XVIII. bis XX. Dynastie (1886). Public domain. The Einleitung — the introduction volume, in German — is archived asnaville-1886-todtenbuch-einleitung-de.txt; the variant spellings are in the plate volumes, which are not. Checked 2026-07-30: the archived volume contains none of these names. Corrected 2026-07-30: the earlier wording declared the whole work absent, which was wrong about the book and right about the gap (C390).
Open questions
- Get Naville's variant spelling. Budge footnotes alternatives for many of these names in hieroglyphs the OCR destroys; they are not captured in
data/arits.json. - Establish whether Sekhet-hra-asht-aru appears in any recension other than Ani's, or in any composition other than chapter CXLVII. A second occurrence would raise this grade immediately.
- Confirm the head type against a published facsimile of plates XI–XII.
Cite this entry
Research grade: ◐partial — Genuinely attested, but the record is thin or single-period.
"Sekhet-hra-asht-aru", The Egyptian God Corpus,
graded partial, retrieved 2026-08-10.