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Heka & Akhu – The Power of Magic

The power of magic was standard for the Ancient Egyptians. From the simple farmer to the Pharaoh, everyone integrated this creative energy into his everyday life. They even had their special terms for this unique force: Heka and Akhu.

Heka and Akhu are often used synonymously in Egyptology. They describe energies, which are considered as magic power or spell power. They stand for something supernatural, which gives access to higher knowledge and solves concrete challenges of the real world.

Heka is the greatest, all-pervading creative power. It was so important for the Ancient Egyptians that priests of the Roman times called Heka, the first work of Chnum. Chnum was the Creator God in Egyptian mythology who created people, plants and animals from clay on his potter’s wheel. With the help of Heka, the Egyptians connected their imagination with the ability to create.

First, they visualized – so they created.

Heka could also show itself as light and was both a desired and feared energy. Often, the Egyptian was downright afraid of being cast an evil spell that could prevent his carefree existence in the afterlife.

The Amduat, the so-called Underworld Book, is a series of texts that divides the life cycle and transformation from this world to the afterlife into so-called 12 hours. In the 7^th hour, it even describes that the Sun God Ra has magical help from Isis and Heka in crossing the water when Apophis, the Great Serpent, threatens him.

Heka is so powerful that it can even create and cure diseases. To achieve this, Ancient Egyptian doctors also used magic. Some also called themselves Priests of Heka, which was supposed to express their extraordinary power.

Besides, Heka also stands for the child-God of the same name, Heka, the God of Magic. This God forms the connection between the almighty world of Gods, which the Ancient Egyptian feared, and his endeavor to take things into his own hands utilizing magic.

What would be unthinkable in many modern religions was typical for the Egyptians: From literary sources such as the Teachings of Merikare, for example, we know that Heka, the power of magic, was given to man as a defensive weapon. So, religion and magic did not contradict each other.

The child-God Heka was depicted in the typical child-God pose with his hand or finger at his mouth and the characteristic child curl on the side of his head. He is thus iconographically comparable to the Horus Child Hor-pa-chered. Hor-pa-chered means Horus-the-Child and was called Harpocrates in Ancient Greek. Another exciting aspect of the representation of the God Heka is that he sometimes shows up with two snakes in his hand. So, it is not surprising that the nowadays well-known Aesculapian staff with the coiling snake is still an often-used symbol for medicine.

Fig. 3: Heka, the child-God.

Fig. 4: Scene from the underworld book Amduat on a Papyrus.

Fig. 5: The Rod of Asclepios, the Greek God of Healing and Medical Arts.