Ptah was associated with the god Khnemu in carrying out at the Creation the mandates of Thoth the divine intelligence; his name means the "opener," and he was identified by the Greeks with {Greek H!'faistos}, and by the Latins with Vulcan.
He was worshipped at a very early date in Memphis, which is called in Egyptian texts "The House of the Ka of Ptah,", and according to Herodotus his temple there was founded by Mena or Menes. He is called the "exceedingly great god, the beginning of being," "the father of fathers and power of powers," and "he created his form, and gave birth to his body, and established unending and unvarying right and truth upon the earth." As a solar god he is called "Ptah, the Disk of heaven, who illumineth the world by the fire of his eyes,"; and in the Book of the Dead he is said to have "opened" the mouth of the deceased with the tool with which he opened the mouths of the gods. He is depicted in the form of a mummy standing upon maat and in his hands he holds a sceptre on the top of which are the emblems of power, life, and stability; from the back of his neck hangs the menat (see p. 1, note 2). Ptah formed at Memphis the chief member of the triad Ptah-Sekhet and Nefer-Tmu.
In many texts the god Ptah is often joined to the god Seker whose individual attributes it is not easy to describe; Seker is the Egyptian name of the incarnation of the Apis bull at Memphis. That Seker was a solar god is quite clear, but whether he "closed" the day or the night is not certain. Originally his festival was celebrated in the evening, wherefrom it appears that he represented some form of the night sun; but in later times the ceremony of drawing the image of the god Seker in the hennu boat round the sanctuary was performed in the morning at dawn, and thus, united with Ptah, he became the closer of the night and the opener of the day. He is depicted as a mummied body with the head of a hawk, and he sometimes holds in his hands emblems of power, sovereignty, and rule.
Another form of Ptah was Ptah-Seker-Ausar wherein the creator of the world, the sun, and Osiris as the god of the dead, were represented. A large number of faïence figures of this triune god are found in graves, and specimens exist in all museums. He is represented as a dwarf standing upon a crocodile, and having a scarabæus upon his head; the scarab is the emblem of the new life into which the deceased is about to break, the crocodile is the emblem of the darkness of death which has been overcome. According to some the element of Ptah in the triad is the personification of the period of incubation which follows death and precedes the entry into eternal life, and the symbols with which he is accompanied explain the character attributed to this god.
The god Ptah is also united with the gods Hapi, Nu and Tanen when he represents various phases of primeval matter.
Khnemu worked with Ptah in carrying out the work of creation ordered by Thoth, and is therefore one of the oldest divinities of Egypt; his name means, "to mould," "to model." His connexion with the primeval water caused him to be regarded as the chief god of the inundation and lord of the cataract at Elephantine. He dwelt in Annu, but he was lord of Elephantine, and "the builder of men, the maker of the gods, and the father from the beginning."
Elsewhere he is said to be ari enti-s qemam unenet sa xeperu tef Maker of things which are, creator of what shall be, the beginning of beings, father tefu ma ma of fathers, and mother of mothers.
He supported the heaven upon its four pillars in the beginning, and earth, air, sea, and sky are his handiwork. He is depicted in the form of a man having a ram's head and horns surmounted by plumes, uræi with disks, etc.; in one hand be holds the sceptre and in the other the emblem of life. Occasionally he is hawk-headed, and in one representation he holds the emblem of water, in each hand. On a late bas-relief at Philæ we find him seated at a potter's table upon which stands a human being whom he has just fashioned.
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