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Creator
Heka
ḥkꜣMagicThe force that makes creation work
How it changed
Not sorcery but the animating power that lets anyone, god or human, make a thing happen by conceiving and speaking it: the creator uses heka to create, and a physician reciting a spell draws on the same force. Egyptian has no word matching the modern split between religion, medicine and magic, and Heka personified is the clearest sign of that. He is the mechanism all three run on.
Cult centre
Esna, and wherever magic was practised
Best attested
Old Kingdom onward
Family
- ParentsVariously a son of Atum or of Khnum
Variously called a son of Atum or of Khnum.
Epithets
- “The ba of Ra”
How to recognise the figure
A man, often a child, sometimes shown grasping two entwined serpents.
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