Amenhotep son of Hapu

Also Known As: Egyptian Amenhotep sa Hapu; Greek Amenothes; “Amenophis, son of Papis” in Manetho as quoted by Josephus; son of Hapu and Itu, of Athribis in the Nile Delta
Region/Culture: North Africa
Mythos: Egyptian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: A mortal royal scribe who became a god of wisdom and healing, able to carry the words of ordinary people into the hearing of Amun and, in his Ptolemaic sanctuary, to heal the sick who slept there.
Role in Mythos: He is one of the very few non-royal Egyptians deified after death, worshipped for more than a thousand years as an intercessor and later as a healing god beside Imhotep.
Relation to Humans: Petitioners came to his statues at Karnak to have their requests reported to Amun, and centuries later the sick of Thebes slept in his shrine at Deir el-Bahari hoping to be cured. Greek-writing tradition also made him a seer, the wise man who told a king how to see the gods and foretold disaster for Egypt.

At Karnak there is a granite scribe whose papyrus has been rubbed smooth. The hieroglyphs on the unrolled sheet across his knees are worn down, not by weather but by hands, because for generations people reached out and touched the text while they spoke to him. What they said went, so he had promised, straight to Amun.

The man in the granite was real. Amenhotep son of Hapu was born in Athribis in the Nile Delta, the son of a man called Hapu and a woman called Itu, and he spent most of his life as an official of Amenhotep III, the eighteenth-dynasty king who ruled Egypt from around 1390 to 1353 BCE. He came late to greatness. The work that made his name began when he was already past the age at which most Egyptian officials were settling into comfortable titles.

His first great office was scribe of recruits, which meant counting and placing men. Inscriptions on his statues describe him stationing troops at the checkpoints of the Nile and keeping watch on the Bedouin at the frontier, and they later call him a general of the army. It was clerical work with soldiers attached. Then the king put him in charge of royal building, and the scale changed completely. He is credited with the organisation behind the king’s vast mortuary temple on the west bank at Thebes, of which the two seated giants now called the Colossi of Memnon are nearly all that remains, and very probably with the temple at Soleb in Nubia. He saw to the quarrying and transport of stone, and he helped to stage the king’s Sed festival, the jubilee of royal renewal held in the thirtieth year of the reign.

The rewards were extraordinary for a commoner. The king raised the standing of Athribis for his sake and, most remarkably, gave him a funerary temple of his own on the west bank beside the king’s, a unique honour for a man who was not royal. Excavated in 1934 and 1935, it measured about 45 by 110 metres, with three shrines, a pillared portico on a raised terrace and a basin of water fed from the groundwater of the Nile, ringed by twenty trees. It was a shaded, green, dripping place among the stone monuments of kings.

He also arranged, or had arranged for him, one of the most thorough curses to survive from Egypt. A decree dated to the king’s thirty-first year protected the people and property of his foundation. The copy in the British Museum, cut in hieratic and inlaid with blue pigment, was probably composed in the twenty-first dynasty from older documents, which shows that his temple was still being guarded centuries after his death. Its threats run through the loss of office, the royal furnace, and the king’s uraeus serpent turning its flame on whoever dared to interfere.

The statues are where the god begins. Several were set up at Karnak, inside the great temple of Amun, and they speak. One says that he has reached eighty years and will complete a hundred and ten, the ideal span of an Egyptian life. Others turn outwards to the crowd. “Come to me,” one of them says, “I will report what you say to Amun in Ipetsut,” Ipetsut being the Egyptian name for Karnak. Another calls him the reporter of the god, the one who carries petitions. People who could never walk into the sanctuary could come this far, stand in the heat and the noise of the forecourt, and speak to a man who had once spoken to a king. The worn stone shows that they did.

From there the step to divinity was short, though the sources disagree on exactly when it was taken. His cult as a sage and intercessor runs for centuries in Thebes. It flowers most fully under the Ptolemies. Between about 124 and 117 BCE, in the reign of Ptolemy VIII, the old bark shrine and rock-cut rooms on the upper terrace of Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahari were remade as a sanctuary for two deified wise men: Amenhotep, whom Greek speakers called Amenothes, and Imhotep, whom they called Asklepios. Hygieia, the Greek goddess of health, was worshipped with them. There was also a chapel in the temple of Hathor at Deir el-Medina.

The Deir el-Bahari sanctuary was a place for sleeping. The sick lay down in the cool, dim rock chambers under the cliff and waited for the gods to come to them in the night, with a cure or a prescription. A soldier named Athenodoros, stationed at Koptos, painted a prayer on the wall to the good Asklepios, to Amenothes and to Hygieia. Most of the visitors were local Thebans of modest means rather than long-distance pilgrims. The cult began to fade in the second half of the second century CE and seems to have vanished by about 200 CE, some fifteen centuries after the scribe was born.

Greek writers remembered him differently, as a prophet. The Egyptian priest Manetho, writing in Greek in the third century BCE, told a story preserved by the Jewish historian Josephus in Against Apion. A king named Amenophis wished to see the gods, and consulted his namesake Amenophis, son of Papis, a man who seemed to share in the divine nature through his wisdom and his knowledge of what was to come. The seer told him that the gods would show themselves if Egypt were cleansed of lepers and other impure people. The king gathered eighty thousand of them and sent them to labour in the quarries east of the Nile. Then the seer grew afraid. Some of those sent away were learned priests, and he foresaw that the gods would be angry, that allies would come to help the outcasts, and that they would rule Egypt for thirteen years. Not daring to say this to the king’s face, he wrote it all down and killed himself. Josephus, who told the story only to take it apart, found it absurd that a prophet who could see thirteen years ahead had neither foreseen his own end nor given his king better counsel.

What made him powerful was never magic in the ordinary sense. His strength lay in access, in being the man who had stood near the king and could therefore stand near the god. The statues promise to pass on a message, and the sanctuary promises a dream. Both depend on the listener who comes to him.

His limits are those of a go-between. He does not answer prayers himself in the Karnak inscriptions; he reports them to Amun. At Deir el-Bahari he shares the work with Imhotep and Hygieia. Even his foresight in Manetho’s story fails at the moment it matters most, since the only way the seer finds to deliver bad news to a king is on paper, after his own death.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Amenhotep son of Hapu?

Amenhotep son of Hapu was a high official of the Egyptian king Amenhotep III, born in Athribis in the Nile Delta. He served as scribe of recruits and later directed royal building projects, including the king’s mortuary temple at Thebes, whose surviving statues are the Colossi of Memnon. After his death he was worshipped as a god.

Why was Amenhotep son of Hapu deified?

Amenhotep son of Hapu was honoured in life as a wise and trusted royal servant, and his statues in the temple of Amun at Karnak presented him as a go-between who would carry people’s petitions to the god. People visited and touched those statues for generations, and his cult as a sage grew until he was worshipped as a god of wisdom and healing, above all in the Ptolemaic period.

What is the connection between Amenhotep son of Hapu and Imhotep?

Amenhotep son of Hapu and Imhotep were both mortal wise men who became gods. Between about 124 and 117 BCE, under Ptolemy VIII, a healing sanctuary for the two of them was set up on the upper terrace of Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahari, where Greek speakers called them Amenothes and Asklepios and worshipped them together with Hygieia.

How did people seek healing from Amenhotep son of Hapu?

At his sanctuary at Deir el-Bahari the sick slept in the temple chambers, hoping that the gods would appear to them in the night with a cure or a prescription. A soldier named Athenodoros left a painted prayer there to Asklepios, Amenothes and Hygieia. The cult faded in the later second century CE and had disappeared by about 200 CE.

What prophecy is Amenhotep son of Hapu known for?

In a story by the Egyptian priest Manetho, preserved by Josephus, a seer called Amenophis son of Papis told a king that he could see the gods if Egypt were cleansed of lepers. When eighty thousand people were sent to the quarries, the seer foresaw that allies would come to help them and hold Egypt for thirteen years, wrote down the prophecy and killed himself. Josephus rejected the whole account.