NEF, NOUF
The hieroglyphic names of this God often vary in their spelling, and this on the same monuments. The various forms of this name will be found on the plate which accompanies this text, and these variations were all known by the Greeks, who transcribed them in a more or less exact manner.
Cneph was one of the forms under which ancient Egypt worshipped the god Amon, the creator of the universe; this is why the images of Cneph often bear, in their hieroglyphic legend, the name of Amon or Amonre (no . 7, on our plate). Eusebius, in his Preparation of the Gospel (book III , chapter 12), describes the features under which the inhabitants of Elephantine worshipped this great divinity, and the description is precisely in accordance with that which we are going to give of the representation of Cneph shown on our plate.
The god is seated on his throne; his head is that of a ram , and all his flesh is blue and often green , like that of Amon, of which he himself is only a simple modification; a large disk, carried on goat horns, symbols of the generative force , surmounts his head, above which also stands a large serpent Ureus , emblem of the supreme power of life and death that this divinity exercises over all beings; his right hand holds the ordinary sign of divine life , and the left, more often armed with the scepter of the beneficent gods, is here raised as a sign of protection.
The inhabitants of Thebaid venerated this great divinity in particular. "They even refused," Plutarch tells us, "to impose themselves for the worship or for the funerals of sacred animals, because they did not adore14no mortal god, but only the one they called Cneph, who is unbegotten and immortal."
If we study the bas-reliefs which decorate the temples of the Thebaid, we soon acquire the conviction that Cneph or Cnouphis was principally worshipped in this most anciently inhabited part of Egypt. It is to Cnouphis that is dedicated, for example, the great temple of Esne, built by the Egyptians, under the Roman emperors, from Claudius to Antoninus Pius; also the image of Amon-Cnouphis occupies the top of the door at the back of the portico; it is sculpted on all the columns, and a single lateral face of this same portico offers up to eighteen bas-reliefs representing Cnouphis worshipped by sovereigns of Egypt. The small temple of Elephantine, so remarkable for the pure taste of its architecture and its perfect execution, was also dedicated to the god Cneph or Cnouphis, by one of the most illustrious Pharaohs of the XVIIIth dynasty , Amenhotep II , son of Thutmose . This temple, mentioned by Strabo, still exists almost intact; its bas-reliefs show us the Pharaoh Amenhotep, successively welcomed by the principal god of the temple, and by all the divinities of his family. In the great hall, the king accompanied by his wife, Queen Taïa , presents rich offerings before the symbolic ark of the god who, further on, receives him in her arms.
This great divinity, one of the modifications of Amon, was considered by the Egyptians as the source of all moral and physical goods; he was especially called the good Genius (Αγαθοδαιμων), the good Spirit ; he was the principle of all things, the spirit which animated and perpetuated the world by penetrating it into all its parts.
Cnouphis bears, in several hieroglyphic inscriptions, a legend from which it results that this divinity presided over the flooding of the Nile. Thus, this phenomenon, without which Egypt would be only an arid desert, like the plains of Libya which border it, was considered as a special benefit of the good Genius , an act of the omnipotence of Cnouphis . In some bas-reliefs, this divinity bears the names of NEF-RÉ, NOUF-RÉ or NOUF-RI; and Amon is also called Amon-Ré or Amonri .
