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God of rebirth and the sunrise
Khepri is often represented as a scarab, or a scarab-headed man, holding aloft the morning sun.
Name in hieroglyphs
i C2
Major cult center Heliopolis
Symbol scarab beetle, blue lotus
Siblings Atum, Ra
i C2
in hieroglyphs

Khepri (also spelled Khepera, Kheper, Khepra, Chepri) is a god in ancient Egyptian religion.


Khepri was connected with the scarab beetle (kheprer), because the scarab rolls balls of dung across the ground, an act that the Egyptians saw as a symbol of the forces that move the sun across the sky. Khepri was thus a solar deity. Young dung beetles, having been laid as eggs within the dung ball, emerge from it fully formed. Therefore, Khepri also represented creation and rebirth, and he was specifically connected with the rising sun and the mythical creation of the world. The Egyptians connected his name with the Egyptian language verb kheper, meaning "develop" or "come into being".[1]

In religion[edit]

There was no cult devoted to Khepri, and he was largely subordinate to the greater sun god Ra. Often, Khepri and another solar deity, Atum, were seen as aspects of Ra: Khepri was the morning sun, Ra was the midday sun, and Atum was the sun in the evening.[1]


Khepri was principally depicted as a scarab beetle, though in some tomb paintings and funerary papyri he is represented as a human male with a scarab as a head. He is also depicted as a scarab in a solar barque held aloft by Nun. The scarab amulets that the Egyptians used as jewelry and as seals represent Khepri.[2]

In Fiction[edit]

The 'Khepri' are featured prominently as a race in China Miéville's Bas-Lag novels.


  1. ^ a b Wilkinson, Richard H. (2003). The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson. pp. 230–233
  2. ^ Hart, George (2005). The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. Routledge. pp. 84–85

External links[edit]

Media related to Khepri at Wikimedia Commons