Hapi (Hapy)
Father of the gods
Symbols: running water
Depiction: Though a male deity, Hapi is depicted as a man with breasts and a round belly, which indicated nourishment and fertility. Since Hapi represented both the upper and lower Nile, he was depicted wearing papyrus plants when he represented Lower Egypt and lotus plants when he represented Upper Egypt. Depictions of Hapi, combining his oversight of both Upper and Lower Egypt, showed him holding both the papyrus and lotus plants in his hands.
Mythology: A male deity, Hapi is the oldest of the Egyptian gods whose name is an evolution of the ancient Egyptian word for Nile, hep. Hapi’s domain was divided into two parts, Upper (northern) Egypt and Lower (southern) Egypt. Hapi of Upper Egypt was called Hap-Reset. Hapi of Lower Egypt was called Hap-Meht. Since Hapi had two domains he also had two wives. In the north, there was Buto who was depicted as a cobra. In the south, there was Nekhebet who was depicted as a vulture. Among the pantheon of Egyptian gods, Hapi was one of the greatest. Egyptian mythology says that Hapi was the creator of all things, including the universe. Hapi was believed to have risen out of the earth between the two mountains, Qer-Hapi and Mu-Hapi between the islands of Elephantine and Philae. Associated with the gods of water Osiris and Nun, Hapi represented the annual flooding of the Nile, sometimes referred to as the “arrival of Hapi.” The Egyptians believed that the gods Khnemu, Anqet, and Satet guarded the Nile’s source and measured the amount of silt released annually by the river’s flooding. But it was Hapi who controlled the flooding so the ancient Egyptians threw offerings into the Nile in hopes of appeasing him so that he would provide the right amount of water to nourish there crops
