The Souls of Pe and Nekhen

Egypt had two capitals before it was one country: Pe in the northern marshes and Nekhen in the south. Long after both had been superseded, their dead rulers were still being addressed as gods — and the Book of the Dead expects you to know their names before you are allowed into their cities.

The rosters are short, and they contain a surprise.

The two lists

Budge gives them plainly, with chapter references [budge-1904]:

The surprise is that these are not a separate set of deities at all. They are the Four Sons of Horus, split two and two, with Horus himself at the head of each pair.

The same four gods who hold the organs of every mummy in Egypt are also the deified predynastic rulers of the two original capitals. One group, two entirely different jobs, and the census lists them as two groups because the tradition did.

Why it works

Look at the split and it is not arbitrary.

Imsety and Hapy take Pe, in the north — and in the canopic scheme they hold the south and north points. Duamutef and Qebehsenuef take Nekhen, in the south — and hold east and west.

Horus appears in both lists, which is the point of the exercise. The god who unites Upper and Lower Egypt in the Osirian succession stands at the head of both predynastic benches, and his sons are divided between them. The arrangement makes the same argument the Two Ladies titulary makes with Nekhbet and Wadjet: the north and the south each have their own authority, and one figure holds both.

Knowing the names is the mechanism

Budge is unusually direct about what these lists were for: "To enjoy the power to enter into certain cities in heaven the deceased was obliged to know the various gods or 'Souls' who were worshipped in them" [budge-1904].

That is the operating principle of a great deal of Egyptian funerary literature. Admission is by correct naming. The chapters are not hymns of praise; they are credentials.

Budge is also sharp about the theology underneath, and the sentence is worth quoting because it is not flattering: "The texts of all periods exhibit an almost childish anxiety to prove that every god of Egypt is interested in the welfare of the beings in the Underworld… and it was a common belief also in all periods that the mere asserting in writing that the gods would minister to the deceased would produce the assistance desired" [budge-1904].

The condescension is his. The observation is sound: writing a thing down was understood to make it operative.

The other Souls

Pe and Nekhen are two of six such lists Budge records [budge-1904], and the set is worth having whole:

Every list is a triad. Every list is tied to a real place. And the two oldest capitals are the only ones whose souls are described as rulers rather than as gods of the locality — which is what makes Pe and Nekhen a group in the census and the others merely chapter contents.

Sources

• [budge-1904] — Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (1904), vol. I, on the deification of the dead. Public domain, archived in sources-texts/. Budge caveat applies (04-BIBLIOGRAPHY.md). The chapter references are transcription; the editorial asides are his period.
• [wilkinson-2003] — Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses. In copyright; cited only.

Open threads

• Get the chapters themselves. Budge names the members and the chapter numbers but does not quote chs. cxii–cxiii. The actual text would show whether the Souls are addressed as rulers or as gods, which is the question the census framing turns on.
• Establish the archaeology: Pe (Buto) is largely gone — Delta sites are wet, low and farmed — while Nekhen (El Kab) still has its enclosure walls. Same asymmetry recorded on Nekhbet and Wadjet.
• Identify "Sa" in the Hermopolis triad; probably the god of Perception paired with Hu, but not verified here.
• Identify "the Calf of the goddess Khera" in the Souls of the East. Not traced.
• Confirm whether the Souls of Pe and Nekhen are ever depicted, and in what form. No iconography is recorded in the archived sources.