Khepri was the scarab-headed Egyptian god of the rising sun, creation and rebirth — the form of the sun-god at dawn, who rolled the sun up over the horizon each morning as a scarab beetle rolls its ball of dung, and who embodied the eternal renewal of life and the self-creating power of existence. He is the morning sun, the god of becoming, the dawn of every new day and every new life.
The Scarab of the Dawn
Khepri (Egyptian Khepri, from the verb kheper, “to come into being,” “to become,” “to develop”) was the god of the rising sun — the sun in its dawn aspect, as Ra was the noonday sun and Atum the setting sun. He was depicted as a scarab beetle, or as a man with a scarab for a head, and his name and his beetle-form encoded a profound idea. The Egyptians observed the dung beetle (scarab) rolling a great ball of dung across the ground, and saw in it an image of the sun being rolled across the sky; and they observed young beetles emerging seemingly spontaneously from the ball, and saw in it an image of self-creation and spontaneous new life. So Khepri the scarab became the god of the dawn sun rolled up over the horizon, and of creation, becoming, and rebirth.
The God of Becoming
Khepri's very name — from kheper, “to come into being” — made him the god of existence, creation and transformation itself. He was associated with the self-creating power by which things come into being, the force of becoming and development. In some accounts he was a form of the creator who, like Atum, brought himself into existence and then created the world — the self-generated god, fitting for a deity symbolised by the beetle that seemed to generate itself from nothing. Khepri thus embodied the deep mystery of how things come to be, the power of creation and self-creation at the heart of existence.
The Daily and Eternal Rebirth
As the god of the rising sun, Khepri embodied rebirth and renewal. Each morning, after the sun had “died” at sunset and passed through the underworld during the night, it was reborn at dawn as Khepri, rolled up fresh and new over the eastern horizon — the daily resurrection of the sun, the triumph of light over the darkness of night. This made Khepri a powerful symbol of rebirth after death: the scarab amulet became one of the most common and beloved of all Egyptian protective charms, placed on mummies (especially over the heart) to ensure the rebirth of the deceased, just as the sun was reborn each dawn. To become like Khepri was to be reborn into new life.
The Sun Reborn Each Morning
Khepri endures as one of the most evocative of the Egyptian gods — the scarab of the dawn, the god of the rising sun, of creation, becoming and rebirth. He embodies the Egyptian vision of existence as constant renewal, of the sun and life as things that die and are reborn in an eternal cycle, and of the deep power of becoming by which all things come into being; and his scarab, rolling the sun up over the horizon each dawn, remains one of the most beloved symbols of resurrection and new life in all of human culture.
Each dawn he rolls the new sun up over the horizon as a beetle rolls its ball — the god of becoming, of creation and rebirth, the sun made new every single morning.