Khem
Khem proper noun: letopolis.
Proper noun (1)
Khem
- Letopolis
- The city of Khem, or Kherti. which the Greeks called Letopolis, was situated close to the fork of the Delta.1968, Joseph Kaster, Wings of the Falcon: Life and Thought of Ancient Egypt, page 75
- His titles are given, apart from vizier, as prophet of Amun, great seer of Heliopolis, wener-priest in Khem (Letopolis), and sem-priest of the temple of Ptah in Memphis.1982, Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, volume 12, page 153
Proper noun (2)
Khem
- the Egyptian god Min
- Khem was a god by whom the productiveness of nature was emblematized.1855, Reginald Stuart Poole, “Egypt”, in Encyclopedia Britannica, 8th edition, volume 8, page 436
- The assertion of Herodotus, that the Egyptians represented the god Pan, like the Greeks, with the head and legs of a goat, applies neither to the god Khem, nor to any other deity in the Egyptian Pantheon, and is as little worthy of credit as the statement he afterwards makes respecting an...1878, John Gardner Wilkinson, The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, revised edition, volume 3, page 25
Proper noun (3)
Khem
- Egypt
- The name of Ham is, in fact, the same as that of Egypt, Khem, or Cham; and Moses may have pointed out the eastern origin of the Egyptians by introducing him as a son of Noah.1837, John Gardner Wilkinson, The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, first edition, volume 1, page 2
- It crossed strange lands and stranger seas, and sank with Atlantis before a Minoan fisher meshed it in his net and sold it to swarthy merchants from nighted Khem. The Pharaoh Nephren-Ka built around it a temple with a windowless crypt, and did that which caused his name to be stricken from all...1935, H. P. Lovecraft, The Haunter of the Dark
Examples of Khem in a sentence
- Another peculiarity of the period is the prominence given to Mentu and Khem, who have hitherto been very subordinate and insignificant deities.1882, George Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt, volume 2, page 144:
- It crossed strange lands and stranger seas, and sank with Atlantis before a Minoan fisher meshed it in his net and sold it to swarthy merchants from nighted Khem.1935, H. P. Lovecraft, The Haunter of the Dark:
- There has been many a Pharaoh in the Land of Khem, in the Double Land of Egypt, and some of them have been great and have pleased me well.1967, Roger Lancelyn Green, Tales of Ancient Egypt:
Origin of Khem
From Egyptian ḫm (“Letopolis”).
From a 19th-century misreading of Egyptian mnw (“Min”) as ḫm; the confusion arose because the hieroglyph R22 can function as both a logogram for mnw (“Min”) and a phonogram for ḫm.
From Ancient Greek Χημίᾱ (Khēmíā) or Bohairic Coptic ⲭⲏⲙⲓ (khēmi, “Egypt”), both ultimately from Egyptian kmt (“Egypt”). The final vowels were apparently dropped to form a closer match to the Biblical Ham. First attested in 1837.
Questions about Khem
- What does Khem mean?
- Khem means letopolis.
- How do you use Khem in a sentence?
- Another peculiarity of the period is the prominence given to Mentu and Khem, who have hitherto been very subordinate and insignificant deities.
- What part of speech is Khem?
- Khem is a proper noun.
Words near Khem in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Khem (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “Khem.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/khem. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.