Deity · Egyptian · c. 2000 BCE
Khonsu
Also called Chons · also recorded as Khensu (per Wikidata)
Moon god of the Theban triad, sent abroad in one famous text to drive a spirit out of a foreign princess.
Well sourced
The Theban moon god, third of the triad with Amun and Mut, and a figure the corpus can show being domesticated. The Pyramid Texts give him the worst part in the most startling passage in Egyptian literature — the Cannibal Hymn, where the dead king eats the gods to take their power, and Khonsu is the one who kills the lords for him. A thousand years later he is a healing god who travels to a foreign court to cure a princess, on a stela the priesthood produced itself. Same name, opposite temperament, and the distance between the two is the entry.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
Karnak, in the temple built for him inside Amun's enclosure — the third of the Theban triad.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- The Pyramid Texts · c. 2350–2100 BCE
- Rank
- The Traveller
- Pantheon
- Egyptian
- Order
- Egyptian pantheon
- Base of operations
- Karnak, in the temple built for him inside Amun's enclosure — the third of the Theban triad.
- Era
- c. 2000 BCE
- Traditions
- Egyptian
- Placed in
- The Great Gods of Egypt
Traits
- Domain
- The moon, time, healing, the driving out of possessing spirits
- Traditional form
- A mummiform youth with a side-lock and a lunar disc
Stats
Known connections
Identified with
1 site
Where was it worshipped?
Attested cult sites, located against the Pleiades gazetteer of the ancient world where it reaches and against Wikidata everywhere else. An absence here is not evidence that no cult existed: a good number of figures never had one, and the entry above says so where that is the case.
The Theban complex: Amun's precinct, Mut's walled enclosure to the south, and Khonsu's temple within.
Built for him inside Amun's enclosure.
25.718, 32.658 · Pleiades 786050
4 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 4 offices attributed to Khonsu, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- divination1
- martial1
- material2
2 texts
Which texts say so?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Khonsu, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 1,150 years
The Cannibal Hymn, which is the most startling passage in Egyptian religious literature and gives this god the worst of it: Khonsu is named as the one who kills the lords for the king to consume, in a text about a dead king eating the gods to take their power. The Theban moon god of the corpus's other attestation is the same figure a millennium later and completely domesticated.
Measures time by the moon. The Bentresh stela has his image sent to Bakhtan to drive a spirit out of a princess, which is an exorcism narrative in all but name.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Khonsu?
Is Khonsu the same as Thoth?
What rank is Khonsu?
How else is Khonsu spelled?
What is Khonsu said to do?
How old is Khonsu?
Nearest in the corpus
If Khonsu is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Khepri
The Morning Sun · Egyptian
The sun at dawn, in the form of a scarab beetle rolling it up over the horizon — one of the three daily aspects of the sun, and a pun on the word for coming into being.
Anubis
Guide of the Dead · Egyptian
Embalmer and psychopomp, who leads the dead to the scales — the office Western tradition eventually gives to Michael and to Azrael.
Horus
Falcon King · Egyptian
Son of Osiris, who contends eighty years with Set for the throne. Every living pharaoh was understood to be his incarnation.
Isis
Great of Magic · Egyptian
The great magician who reassembles Osiris and tricks Ra into surrendering his secret name. Her cult eventually reached as far as Roman Britain.
Nephthys
Lady of the House · Egyptian
Set's wife who sides with her sister Isis against him, and mourns Osiris at the head of the bier.
Osiris
Lord of the Dead · Egyptian
Murdered by Set, reassembled by Isis, and installed as judge of the dead. He is the earliest fully developed dying-and-rising sovereign we have.
The books behind Khonsu
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
The Pyramid Texts
Anonymous; carved for the kings and queens of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties · c. 2350–2100 BCE · Old Egyptian
Read The Pyramid Texts in full ↗Egyptian Hymns, Stelae & Temple Inscriptions
Various; tr. E. A. Wallis Budge and others · c. 2000 BCE - 300 BCE · Egyptian
Read Egyptian Hymns, Stelae & Temple Inscriptions in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.