Anhur- Egyptian GodDeity"Slayer of Enemies"

The Hunt in the South

A lion goddess fled Egypt for the deserts of Nubia, and her absence broke the world. The Nile did not rise. The fields did not green. At Thinis, the ancient capital of Upper Egypt near Abydos, the goddess was named Mehit, and she was Anhur's own consort.

Anhur went south after her. He carried his lance and wore his four-feathered headdress, and he tracked Mehit through wilderness where no temple stood and no priest sang. The Heliopolitan tradition gave this role to Shu, who retrieved Tefnut; the Thinite tradition gave it to Anhur, who retrieved Mehit. The shape of the story was the same: a goddess gone wrathful, and the world dying until someone brought her home.

Anhur found her and led her back. The Nile rose. The fields flooded and the crops returned. At Thinis, their reunion was celebrated in festival, the hunter and the lioness restored to one another.

Soldiers and pharaohs invoked Anhur before campaigns. His image showed a bearded man holding a lance or leading bound captives. The god who could retrieve a raging goddess from the desert could bring a man through battle.

The Warrior Who Holds the Sky

From the New Kingdom onward, Anhur merged with Shu to form Anhur-Shu. Both gods had retrieved the Distant Goddess; both held up the sky. Anhur's lance and Shu's pillar became one. The hunter who had tracked a goddess through the desert was also the force keeping heaven from collapsing onto the earth.

Anhur fought among the divine warriors who defended Ra's solar barque. Each night, as the sun passed through the Duat, serpents and chaos-creatures rose to swallow it. Anhur turned his lance against them. The same weapon that had guarded a goddess in the southern wilderness now guarded the sun in the underworld.