Heh was one of the oldest Egyptian gods in the history of ancient Egypt, the deification of eternity in the Ogdoad. The name Heh is also spelled Heh, Hah, Hauh, Huah, or HaHeh, whose name means infinite. He was the god of infinity and time, the god of long life and eternity. Heh has no gender, but has the appearance that can represent either a man or a woman. Heh is the male aspect and Hauhet, also known as Heh or Hehet, is the female aspect.
There were four pairs of deities, Nun and Naunet, Amun and Amaunet, Heh and Hauhet, and Kuk with Kauket, representing water, emptiness, infinite time, and darkness. This group of eight gods formed the Ogdoad. Then, the first land rose from Nun in the form of a mound.
Like the other concepts in the Ogdoad, Heh also appears as a man with a frog’s head or as a frog itself. Hauhet is depicted as a woman with a snake’s head or as a snake itself.
Sometimes, he was also depicted as a crouching man holding a palm stalk in each hand with a shen ring at the base of each palm stalk, the Egyptian sign for long life. The shen ring symbolizes infinity. The image of Heh with his arms raised was the hieroglyph for the number one million, which was essentially considered equivalent to infinity in Egyptian mathematics. He was therefore also given the title “the god of millions of years.”
1. Content
Ḥeḥ (also Huh, Hah, Hauh, Huah, and Hehu) was the personification of infinity or eternity in the Ogdoad in Egyptian mythology. His name originally meant “flood,” referring to the watery chaos that the Egyptians believed existed before the creation of the world. The Egyptians imagined this chaos as infinite, in contrast to the finite created world, so Heh personified this aspect of the primordial waters. The female counterpart of Heh was known as Hauhet, which is simply the feminine form of his name.
Like the other concepts in the Ogdoad, his male form was often shown as a frog or a human with a frog’s head, and his female form as a snake or a human with a snake’s head. The frog’s head symbolized fertility, creation, and regeneration, and was also possessed by the other males of the Ogdoad, Kek, Amun, and Nun.
The other common representation shows him crouching, holding a palm stalk in each hand (or just one), sometimes with a palm stalk in his hair, as palm stalks represent long life for the Egyptians, with the years represented by notches in it. Representations of this form also had a shen ring at the base of each palm stalk, representing infinity. Representations of Heh were also used in hieroglyphs to represent a million, which was considered essentially equivalent to infinity in ancient Egyptian mathematics.
2. Origins and mythology
The primary meaning of the Egyptian word ḥeḥ was “million” or “millions”; a personification of this concept, Ḥeḥ, was adopted as the Egyptian god of infinity. With his female counterpart Ḥauḥet (or Ḥeḥut), Ḥeḥ represented one of the four god-goddess pairs comprising the Ogdoad, a pantheon of eight primitive deities whose worship was centered in Hermopolis Magna. The mythology of the Ogdoad describes its eight members, Heh and Hauhet, Nu and Naunet, Amun and Amaunet, and Kuk and Kauket, coming together in the cataclysmic event that gives rise to the sun (and its deified personification, Atum).
3. Forms and iconography
The god Ḥeḥ was generally represented anthropomorphically, as in the hieroglyphic character, as a male figure with a divine beard and lamb’s wig. Usually kneeling (one knee raised), sometimes in a basket: the sign for “all,” the god generally holds in each hand a notched palm branch (palm rib). (These were used in temples for ceremonial purposes, which explains the use of the palm branch as the hieroglyphic symbol for rnp.t, “year.”) Occasionally, an additional palm branch is carried on the god’s head.
In ancient Egyptian numerology, gods such as Heh were used to represent numbers in a decimal point system. In particular, the number 1,000,000 is represented by the hieroglyph for Heh, which is found in its normal seated position.
4. Worship of Heh
The personified god, somewhat abstract in his eternity, had no known center of worship or sanctuary; rather, his veneration revolved around symbolism and personal belief. The image of the god and his iconographic elements reflected the desire for millions of years of life or rule; as such, the figure of Ḥeḥ is frequently represented in amulets, prestige items, and royal iconography from the late Old Kingdom period onwards.
Heh was associated with the king and his quest for longevity. For example, he appears in the tomb of King Tutankhamun, in two cartouches, where he is crowned by a winged scarab, symbolizing existence, and a solar disk. Heh’s location in relation to the corpse of King Tutankhamun means that he will grant him these “millions of years” in the afterlife.
