Anti

Also Known As: the older Egyptological reading, also written Anty; now usually read Nemty or Nemti, generally taken to mean “the one who travels” or “the wanderer”, though the older reading, glossed “the clawed one”, still has defenders; worshipped at Tjebu in the dual form Nemtywy, whom the Greeks called Antaios
Region/Culture: North Africa
Mythos: Egyptian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: A falcon god of Middle Egypt pictured standing on a boat, he is the divine ferryman who carries the gods across the water.
Role in Mythos: In the Contendings of Horus and Seth he keeps the crossing to the Island in the Middle, and the one fare he should have refused lets Isis reach the gods’ tribunal and turn the case against Seth.
Relation to Humans: Two kings of the Sixth Dynasty carried his name as Merenre Nemtyemsaf, “Nemty is his protection”, and priests and boatmen served him from the earliest dynasties into the New Kingdom. In his own city gold was an abomination, a taboo the Contendings traces to the oath he swore after the gods punished him for accepting a golden ring.

The gods had gone over to the island to eat, and they had left one instruction with the ferryman. Nobody who looked like Isis was to be carried across. Then an old woman came down to the bank, hobbling, a bowl of porridge in her hands and a small gold signet ring on one finger, and asked for passage.

The ferryman was Anti, or Nemty as most Egyptologists now read his name, and his whole existence was the crossing. He was a falcon, and the image the Egyptians gave him is one of the simplest in their religion: a hawk standing upright on a boat, the hull often drawn as a crescent. Where other gods carry crowns and sceptres, he carries a vessel under his feet. The reading of the name is still argued over. The older form, Anti, was once taken to mean “the clawed one”, and a few specialists still defend it; the newer reading, Nemty, is usually glossed as “the one who travels”. A god who spends his life going back and forth over water can live with either.

He is old. His worship reaches back at least to the Second Dynasty, and a copper vessel of the Early Dynastic period names a priest of Nemty called Hetep. By the Sixth Dynasty he was important enough that two kings took his name, both called Merenre Nemtyemsaf, “Nemty is his protection”. His home ground lay in Middle Egypt. The capital of the twelfth nome of Upper Egypt, northeast of Asyut on the eastern bank, was called Per-Nemty, the House of Nemty, and the Greeks later called it Hieracon, the hawk town. Further south, at Tjebu near modern Qau el-Kebir, the principal god was Nemtywy, a dual form of the same name, and the Greeks named the town Antaeopolis after him, calling him Antaios. An Eighteenth Dynasty stela from Tjebu belongs to a man named Wersu who called himself the sailor of Nemty, lord of Tjebu. It is a fitting job title in the service of a boatman god.

On an ordinary day the work is quiet. The gods come down to the landing, the planks creak as they step aboard, the pole bites into the mud and the hull slides out over brown water that smells of silt and reeds. On the far side they climb out and the falcon turns the boat around. Nobody writes hymns about a crossing that goes well.

The crossing that went badly is the one that made him famous. It survives in the Contendings of Horus and Seth, a long and frequently undignified account of the eighty-year lawsuit over who should inherit the throne of the murdered Osiris, copied onto a papyrus in the reign of Ramesses V and now in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. With Isis pressing the claim of her son Horus, the sun god Pre-Harakhti moved the tribunal to the Island in the Middle and told Nemty the ferryman not to take across any woman who resembled her. The Ennead crossed over, sat down and ate bread.

Isis did not argue. She turned herself into a bent old woman and came to the water with her porridge, saying it was for a young lad on the island. Nemty told her he had been ordered to carry no women. She offered him a cake. He was scornful: what good was her cake to him, when he had been told not to ferry any woman across? She offered him the gold ring from her hand. He told her to hand it over. She gave it to him, and he ferried her to the island.

He took the ring. That was the whole of his crime.

On the island Isis became a lovely young woman, drew Seth into conversation, and led him into condemning his own case out of his own mouth. Seth went weeping to the sun god, and when the gods worked out how she had reached them, he asked for the ferryman to be brought and punished severely. So Nemty was brought before the Ennead, and they cut away the front part of his feet. For a falcon whose entire image is a bird gripping the deck of a boat, it is a precise and ugly sentence. Standing in front of the assembled gods, he then renounced the metal that had cost him so much: gold, he declared, would be an abomination to his city because of him. The story ends there as far as he is concerned, and the taboo is what he carries out of it.

That taboo is the most distinctive thing about him, and later Egyptian writers kept returning to it. A Ptolemaic papyrus now in the Louvre, the Papyrus Jumilhac, gives a harsher account of the god’s punishment. There he commits a violent crime against the goddess Hathor and is stripped of his skin and flesh down to the bones, which were later restored with milk from the cow goddess Hesat. The same text accounts for the gold ban and for his cult image being made of silver rather than gold. It is a very different sin from a bribed fare, and the two tellings do not try to agree.

He turns up again, still at the oar, in the Tebtunis Mythological Manual, a priestly handbook copied in the second century AD that walks through the nomes of Egypt and their sacred lore. In its section on the twelfth nome, Nemty is ferrying another god on the river when he reports damage to a god’s limbs, having seen a crocodile seated on the sacred relics. Even here, near the end of Egyptian religion, his role has not changed. He moves across the water and he sees what is on the other side.

His power is the crossing itself. He decides who gets from one bank to the other, and in a religion where the gods argue on an island, that is not a small thing. His weakness is the one the Contendings puts on display: he can be bought, or at least he could be once, and the price was gold. The injury he took for it is a strange one for a god to carry, a falcon who can no longer grip properly. His city answered it the only way a city can. It refused gold.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Anti (Nemty) in Egyptian mythology?

Anti, now more often read Nemty, is an Egyptian falcon god who serves as the ferryman of the gods. He is shown as a falcon standing on a boat and was worshipped in Middle Egypt, especially in the twelfth nome of Upper Egypt and at Tjebu, which the Greeks called Antaeopolis.

What did Nemty do in the Contendings of Horus and Seth?

In the Contendings of Horus and Seth, Nemty was ordered not to ferry any woman resembling Isis to the Island in the Middle, where the gods were judging the dispute between Horus and Seth. Isis disguised herself as an old woman and, after he refused a cake, paid him with her gold signet ring. He took her across, and she used the visit to trick Seth into condemning his own case.

How was Nemty punished?

When Seth demanded it, the Ennead had Nemty brought before them and cut off the front part of his feet. Nemty then declared that gold would be an abomination to his city, which explains the gold taboo in his cult. A later Ptolemaic papyrus, the Papyrus Jumilhac, tells a different and harsher story in which he is stripped of skin and flesh for a crime against Hathor.

Why is the god’s name written both Anti and Nemty?

Anti, or Anty, is the older Egyptological reading of the god’s name, and Nemty is the reading most scholars now prefer. Nemty is usually explained as “the one who travels” or “the wanderer”, while the older reading was explained as “the clawed one”. A dual form, Nemtywy, was worshipped at Tjebu, where the Greeks called the god Antaios.

Were any pharaohs named after Nemty?

Yes. Two kings of the Sixth Dynasty were called Merenre Nemtyemsaf, a name meaning “Nemty is his protection”. Nemty’s worship is attested at least as far back as the Second Dynasty.