The statue of god Khonso

with the facial features of Tutankhamen

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Khonso was a member of the Theban triad consisting of Amen as the main god, Mut his consort and khonso their child. The name of Khonso most probably meant the travel to move about to run. Amen had sometimes been referred to as the traveler but it was his son who was assigned duties as the messenger of the gods. He was associated with Thot, who as also served as divine messenger at times and because of this connection Khonso was thought of as a god of the moon. In one of his forms he caused the crescent moon to shine upon the earth. In this capacity he helped women conceive children; cattle become fertile and filled the nostrils and throats of living creatures with the air of life.

The typical representation of god Khonso showed him as a man ith the head of a hawk, and often on his head he wore a lunar disk sitting in the crescent moon. One of the more interesting representations of him was as a man with double hawks’ heads; one for the sun and the other for the moon. He had four vulture wings and stood on the heads of a pair of crocodiles.

A stela erected in Tutankhamen’s name at Karnak tells of the sorry state in which the king found the temple of Amen and his great effort to make it more glorious than ever. One telling indicator of extensive restoration at Karnak during Tutankhamen’s reign is the large number of divine statues that bear his features. One of the most beautiful of these is an almost complete figure over life size which represents Khonso. This lunar deity was a child the son of Amen and his consort Mut as mentioned above. He had his own temple within the Karnak enclosure and it was under the pavement of its sanctuary that the pieces of this statue were found.

This statue is made out of grey granite and it represents god Khonso in his other form which is the mummy form. He is represented holding by both hands divine insignia the crook and the HkA accepters and the flail or nHH which are royal insignias. The flail is composed of a handle and three loose strands serving as part of the royal insignia. In the middle we can see representation of the composite scepter which is composed of the following:

<!--anx: sign of life

<!--wAs: sign of prosperity, power and it is representing a                                                                                                jackal symbol of Thebes

<!--Dd: a sign of stability and endurance, it represent the four vertebral columns of god Osiris

He is also represented with the ureas on his forehead with the side lock of hair and a turned up beard. Over the usual collar necklace Khonso wears a thick mnat necklace (of goddess Hathor and Mut) probably to rattle in honor of his mother. Khonso appears tw wear a skullcap or perhaps it is just a schematic demarcation of the hairline on a shaven or cropped skull. Around this there is a narrow ribbon like diadem supports an ureaus on the forehead and a side lock of hair to the side.

The Amarna influence is obvious her in the slight elongated skull, the fleshy parts in the front of the neck, the pierced earlobes, the slight dropping of the eyelids. We realized that this statue is a version of the face of Tutankhamen as it appears in numbers of temple statues representing the king in almost all the images of gods made in his name.