Khnum was the ram-headed Egyptian god of the Nile's source, creation and the potter's wheel — the divine craftsman who fashioned each human being and their ka (life-force) from clay upon his potter's wheel, and who controlled the life-giving flood of the Nile. One of the oldest Egyptian gods, he is the molder of mankind, the god who shapes every person at their making.
The Ram-God of the Source
Khnum (Egyptian Khnum) was depicted as a man with the head of a ram (the ram being a symbol of fertility and procreative power), often crowned with horns and plumes. He was one of the most ancient of the Egyptian gods, and he was especially associated with the source of the Nile — the cataracts at Elephantine in the south, where the river was believed to begin its course into Egypt. As the god who controlled the waters at the river's source, Khnum governed the annual flooding of the Nile, the inundation that deposited the fertile silt on which all Egyptian agriculture depended. He held the life of Egypt in his hands, for it was he who released the flood that brought fertility to the land.
The Divine Potter
Khnum's most famous and beautiful role was as the divine potter who created humankind. He was believed to fashion each human child upon his potter's wheel, molding the body of every person — and, crucially, their ka, their vital life-force or spirit — out of the clay of the Nile, then placing the formed child in the mother's womb. Every human being, in this beautiful conception, was a work of Khnum's craft, shaped on his wheel from the fertile river-clay. He was depicted at his potter's wheel forming a child (and its ka), the divine craftsman of human life. In some temple scenes he is shown molding even the pharaoh and the gods upon his wheel — the maker of all living beings.
The Creator and Molder
Khnum was thus, in his own cult, a great creator-god — not the creator of the cosmos like Atum or Ptah, but the molder of living bodies and souls, the craftsman who shapes each individual life. In the myths and temple-texts of his great cult-center at Esna, he was elevated to a supreme creator who fashioned all living things, gods, humans and animals alike, upon his wheel. His control of the Nile flood and his molding of human bodies made him doubly a god of life: he gave Egypt the water that brought fertility, and he shaped from that fertile clay the very bodies of its people. He guarded the source of the river and the source of human life alike.
The Molder of Mankind
Khnum endures as one of the most ancient and tender of the Egyptian gods — the ram-headed lord of the Nile's source, the controller of the life-giving flood, and above all the divine potter who molds every human being and their soul from clay upon his wheel. He embodies the Egyptian vision of creation as a continuing, intimate craft — not only the making of the world long ago, but the shaping of each new life today; and he gives a beautiful answer to the mystery of how each person comes to be: every human being is a vessel formed by a god's hands upon his potter's wheel, from the fertile clay of the eternal river.
At his potter's wheel he molds every human being and their very soul from the clay of the Nile — the ram-headed craftsman who shapes each new life and releases the flood that feeds the land.