KHEPRI

Gold cherry

By Ed Crane

Mon, 30 Sep 2024
  • 581 reads
12 comments
 

When the cloak of night blackens the world

sucking light from river and land hoarding

Ra’s gift of survival, threatening death and decay

 

Kepri begins his everlasting task burrowing deep

into the void of darkness; scavenging collecting

lost light before it succumbs to the claws of night.

 

Tirelessly he moulds his scraps into an orb. Adding

to it grain by grain, shred by shred it grows until

it is reborn. His daily task completed he pushes

 

the fiery orb with all his strength to the surface where

Ra can display the gift to life upon his heavenly barque.

We bathe in light while Kephri sleeps until night returns.

 

Khephri the Dung beetle God: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khepri

 

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Comments

Submitted by marandina on

Nicely done, Ed. You capture the mythology of Egypt adeptly and vividly. Enjoyed this.

 

Submitted by Ed Crane on

The story of Khephri is pretty complex, I just tried to summarise my view of the tradition. Amazing how observing the little beetle collecting dung for it's young to feed on can give rise to a culture's important god for their interpretation of the circle of life.

Thanks again

 

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

I had no idea of the legend of the Khepri, so it was interesting to be introduced through your imaginative poem.

Jenny.

 

Submitted by Ed Crane on

I remembered about how the Egyptians worshipped Scarab beetles, but I didn't know the story until I did some research. It is a fascinating subject like many things about the ancients.

thabnks again x

 

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

Glad to see you got your cherry back Ed!

 

Submitted by Ed Crane on

Its a bit embarrassing to say I lost my cherry at my age laugh

 

Submitted by Di_Hard on

I didn't know about this, either, Thankyou. You set out the story very well, the idea of scavenging scraps of light in the darkness is beautiful

 

Submitted by Ed Crane on

I knew the ancient Egyptians worshipped scarabs but I didn't know the background. When I did a little research I found Khefri's story. I have to say just scratching the surface revealed alot of information.

There seem to be a few versions of what Khefri did. I wrote my own take basing it on the life circle of the dung beetle which is  the type of scarab beetle the Egyptians were enamored of.

Egyptian mythology is fascinating and some people dedicate their lives to it -- not me though :) 

Thank you x

 

Submitted by Jane Hyphen on

I too was unaware of this fascinating story. Your poem reminds me of the way I felt as a child learning about ancient Egypt at school and not sure how deeply I wanted to delve because the stories felt so powerful.

 

Submitted by Ed Crane on

To be honest I was not aware of Khefri until I started to research the reasons why the egyptians found scarab beetles so important.

Quite a long time ago we went on a Nile cruise which took in many of the amazing structures along the river. We had an Egyptoligist guide and amongst many other things he explained, he did mentioned scarabs --- images of them are everywhere on the ancient temples and found in the coffins of mummies.

 I don't know if he mentioned Khefri spacifically, he probably did but he concentrated mostly on the history of the Kings. It was a lot to take in and the fact he spoke mainly french didn't help. 

Thank you x 

 

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

This is our Facebook and Twitter Pick of the Day!

Please share/retweet if you enjoyed it too

 

Submitted by Ed Crane on

This was a surprise I only found this today. Certainly wasn't expecting that!