Not to be confused with Hu (mythology)

Hu (mythology)

In Egyptian mythology, Hu is the deification of the first word, the word of creation, that Atum was said to have exclaimed upon ejaculating or, alternatively, his self-castration, in his masturbatory act of creating the Ennead....

.

In Egyptian mythology

Egyptian mythology

Ancient Egyptian religion was a complex system of polytheistic beliefs and rituals which were an integral part of ancient Egyptian society. It centered on the Egyptians' interaction with a multitude of deities who were believed to be present in, and in control of, the forces and elements of nature...

, Huh (also Heh, Hah, Hauh, Huah, Hahuh) was the deification of eternity

Eternity

While in the popular mind, eternity often simply means existence for a limitless amount of time, many have used it to refer to a timeless existence altogether outside time. By contrast, infinite temporal existence is then called sempiternity. Something eternal exists outside time; by contrast,...

 in the Ogdoad

Ogdoad

In Egyptian mythology, the Ogdoad were eight deities worshipped in Hermopolis during what is called the Old Kingdom, the third through sixth dynasties, dated between 2686 to 2134 BC...

, his name itself meaning endlessness. As a concept, he was androgynous, his female form being known as Hauhet, which is simply the feminine form

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

 of his name. In other words, Ḥeḥ was the ancient Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

ian divine personification of "infinity", in the temporal aspect of 'eternity'.

Like the other concepts in the Ogdoad, his male form was often depicted as a frog

Frog

Frogs are amphibians in the order Anura , formerly referred to as Salientia . Most frogs are characterized by a short body, webbed digits , protruding eyes and the absence of a tail...

, or a frog-headed human, and his female form as a snake

Snake

Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...

 or snake-headed human. The other common representation depicts him crouching, holding a palm stem in each hand (or just one), sometimes with a palm stem in his hair, as palm stems represented long life to the Egyptians, the years being represented by notches on it. Depictions of this form also had a shen ring

Shen ring

A shen ring is a circle with a line at a tangent to it, which was represented in hieroglyphs as a stylised loop of a rope. The word shen itself means, in ancient Egyptian, encircle, while the shen ring represented eternal protection...

 at the base of each palm stem, which represented infinity

Infinity

Infinity is a concept in many fields, most predominantly mathematics and physics, that refers to a quantity without bound or end. People have developed various ideas throughout history about the nature of infinity...

. Depictions of Huh were also used in hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...

 to represent one million

Million

One million or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian millione , from mille, "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix -one.In scientific notation, it is written as or just 106...

, which was essentially considered equivalent to infinity in Egyptian mathematics

Egyptian mathematics

Egyptian mathematics is the mathematics that was developed and used in Ancient Egypt from ca. 3000 BC to ca. 300 BC.-Overview:Written evidence of the use of mathematics dates back to at least 3000 BC with the ivory labels found at Tomb Uj at Abydos. These labels appear to have been used as tags for...

. Thus this deity is also known as the 'god of millions of years'.

Origins and Mythology

The primary meaning of the term Ḥeḥ was 'millions'; subsequently, a personification of Ḥeḥ was adopted as the Egyptian god of infinity. Together with his female counterpart Ḥauḥet, Ḥeḥ represented a member of the Ogdoad

Ogdoad

In Egyptian mythology, the Ogdoad were eight deities worshipped in Hermopolis during what is called the Old Kingdom, the third through sixth dynasties, dated between 2686 to 2134 BC...

 of eight primeval deities whose worship was centred at Hermopolis Magna.

Forms and Iconography

The god Ḥeḥ was usually depicted anthropomorphically, as in the hieroglyphic character, as a male figure with divine beard and lappet wig. Normally kneeling (one knee raised), the god typically holds in each hand a notched palm branch. (These were employed in the temples for ceremonial time-keeping, which use explains the use of the palm branch as the hieroglyphic symbol for rnp.t, "year"). Occasionally, an additional palm branch is worn on the god's head.

Cult and Worship

The personified, somewhat abstract god of eternity Ḥeḥ possessed no known cult centre or sanctuary; rather, his veneration revolved around symbolism and personal belief. The god's image and its iconographical elements reflected the wish for 'millions of years' of life or rule; as such, the figure of Ḥeḥ finds frequent representation in amulets, prestige items and royal iconography from the late Old Kingdom

Old Kingdom

Old Kingdom is the name given to the period in the 3rd millennium BC when Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization in complexity and achievement – the first of three so-called "Kingdom" periods, which mark the high points of civilization in the lower Nile Valley .The term itself was...

 period onwards.

See also

• Renpet
  Renpet
  In the Egyptian language, Renpet was the word for year. Its hieroglyph was figuratively depicted in art as a woman wearing a palm shoot over her head. This figurative woman was often referred to as the mistress of eternity. She is the goddess of springtime and youth in ancient Egyptian history....