God of the Nile, Fertility, the North and South
God of the desert, particularly the regions of the west including the oasis. Ha is anthropomorphic and wears the symbol for desert hills on his head. As lord of the desert he wards off enemies from the west, probably referring to invading tribes from Libya.
God of the Nile, Fertility, the North and South
Hapi (Hep, Hap, Hapy) was a bearded man often seen in the color blue or green, with female breasts, indicating his powers of nourishment.
As god of the Northern Nile he wears papyrus plants on his head, and as god of the southern Nile he wears lotus plants.
He is often seen carrying offerings of food or giving libations of water from a vase. Sometimes he is pictured offering two plants and two vases, which represented the upper and lower Nile.
Hapi was probably a predynastic name for the Nile - later on, the Egyptians just called the Nile iterw, meaning 'the river' - and so it became the name of the god of the Nile. ('Nile' comes from the Greek corruption - Neilos - of the Egyptian 'nwy' which means 'water'.) He was mentioned in the Pyramid Texts ("who comest forth from Hep") where he was to send the river into the underworld from certain caverns, where he was thought to have lived at the 1st Cataract. The Nile was thought to have flown through the land of the dead, the heavens and finally flowing into Egypt where it rose out of the ground between two mountains which lay between the Islands of Abu (Elephantine) and the Island of Iat-Rek (Philae). Hapi was also mentioned in the Pyramid Texts as a destructive power, but one that worked for the pharaoh.
Hapi was the god of both Upper and Lower Egypt. This duality was shown by having twin Hapi deities, one wearing the papyrus of the north (Upper Egypt) as a headdress, the other wearing the south's (Lower Egypt) lotus as a headdress. The Upper Egyptian Hapi was called 'Hap-Meht' while the Lower Egyptian Hapi was known as 'Hap-Reset'. They were depicted together, pouring water from a carried vase or together, tying the two plants of the northern or southern region into a knot with the sema hieroglyph, symbolizing the union of Upper and Lower Egypt. He was thought to be the husband of the vulture goddess Nekhebet in Lower Egypt, and of the cobra goddess Uatchet (Uatch-Ura, Wadjet) in Upper Egypt. When he took on the attributes of Nun (Nu), Hapi became husband to Nun's wife, the primeval goddess Naunet of the Ogdoad. He was also linked with Osiris - another water-related fertility god - and thus Nekhebet and Uatchet were also seen as a form of Isis, Osiris' wife.
The Egyptians had no clue how or why the Nile flooded each year. They believed that the gods Khnemu, Anqet, and Satet were the guardians of the source of the Nile. Their duty was to make sure that the right amount of silt was released during the yearly inundation. Hapi was in charge of the waters that flowed during the floods.
During the inundation flood, the Egyptians would throw offerings, amulets and other sacrifices into the Nile at certain places, sacred to Hapi. Hapi was thought to come with the inundation (the 'Arrival of Hapi') with a retinue of crocodile gods and frog goddesses, and the sacrifices were given in the hopes that the flood would not be too high, nor too low. If the inundation was too high, many homes would be destroyed (the Egyptians built their homes and even palaces out of mud brick, which was easily washed away in a large flood). On the other hand, if the flood was too low, there would not be enough water for the fields and cattle - Egypt would be in drought. During inundation, statues of Hapi were carried about through the towns and villages so that the people could honor and pray to him - it was a solemn occasion.
Even Akhenaten, the 'heretic king', could not banish Hapi completely as he did with the other gods. Instead, he tried to suggest that Hapi was an incarnation of the Aten (Akhenaten's god, the sun disk.
Reference: Caroline Seawright
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