The Myth of Khonsu and the Princess of Bekhten
At a Glance
- Central figures: Khonsu, the Egyptian god of the moon and healing; Ramesses II, pharaoh of Egypt; and the princess of Bekhten, sister-in-law to the pharaoh, whose body is seized by an evil spirit.
- Setting: The court of Ramesses II in Egypt and the foreign land of Bekhten, located somewhere in Syria or Mesopotamia; the story was inscribed on a stela in the temple of Khonsu at Karnak and set in the Ramesside period.
- The turn: An Egyptian physician sent to heal the princess of Bekhten declares her condition beyond medicine - she is possessed by an evil spirit - and advises the prince to seek divine intervention.
- The outcome: A statue of Khonsu is sent to Bekhten; the god confronts the spirit, which departs peacefully, and the princess is healed. The statue remains in Bekhten for three years and nine months before being returned to Karnak.
- The legacy: The statue of Khonsu, welcomed back to Thebes with offerings and prayers, was restored to its temple at Karnak - its journey to a foreign land and return standing as evidence of the god’s power over evil spirits beyond Egypt’s borders.
A diplomatic visit, an arranged marriage, and then, years later, a messenger arriving with bad news from a distant country: the princess’s sister had fallen gravely ill, and the physicians of Bekhten could do nothing for her. The Prince of Bekhten wrote to Ramesses II - his son-in-law now, in the way of royal alliances - and asked for help. What was sent first was a man. What was needed was a god.
The stela that preserves this story was inscribed in the temple of Khonsu at Karnak. It places the events in the reign of Ramesses II, and it reads less like a tale than a record of transactions: what was asked, what was granted, what occurred, what was returned. That register gives the story its weight.
The Physician’s Finding
The physician Ramesses dispatched to Bekhten was among the most skilled Egypt could send. He traveled the long road east and north to Bekhten and examined the princess carefully. What he found stopped him. This was not fever, not a wasting of the body, not any affliction that he could name or treat with the tools of his craft. Something else had taken up residence inside her. An evil spirit - a hostile, possessing force - was the cause of her suffering, and no physician in Egypt or anywhere else could dislodge it.
He returned with this assessment to the Prince of Bekhten. Only the gods could do what needed to be done.
The prince sent word back to Ramesses. The pharaoh went to the temple.
The Sending of the Statue
Khonsu was young among the gods in his aspect - depicted with the sidelock of youth at his temple, the lunar disk and crescent resting on his head, his figure wrapped in the tight linen of the mummiform pose. He was the moon’s light in darkness, the measurer of time, and the one who drove away the forces that preyed on the living in their sleep and sickness. His title at Karnak was Khonsu the Expeller of Demons.
Ramesses prayed to him and asked that his power be sent to Bekhten to free the princess.
The god gave his assent through the oracle, the statue nodding in its barque. A sacred barque was prepared. The statue of Khonsu the Expeller of Demons was installed with ceremony and set in procession toward Bekhten - a long journey, a foreign road, the god traveling in his carved image across the borders of Egypt and into a land that was not his.
He arrived. His presence was felt at once.
The Confrontation
The evil spirit, speaking through the body of the princess, acknowledged what had come. It named the god. It said that Khonsu was great and that it would depart - but it asked something in return: a feast, a proper sending-off, a moment of recognition before it left for its own home.
Khonsu agreed.
The feast was prepared. The spirit was honored according to what it had asked. Then it departed from the princess, and she was free.
What she had been before her possession - present in her body, herself - that returned. Her health came back. The Prince of Bekhten looked at his daughter and she was healed.
Three Years in Bekhten
The prince had witnessed what the statue could do. He was reluctant to give it back.
For three years and nine months, the statue of Khonsu the Expeller of Demons remained in Bekhten. The foreign land kept it, made offerings to it, received its protection. The prince asked no permission for this arrangement. He simply held onto what had healed his daughter, hoping its presence would continue to hold malevolent forces away from his people.
Then one night the prince dreamed. The god emerged from his shrine in the form of a golden falcon and rose into the sky above Bekhten, turning westward - toward Egypt, toward Thebes, toward home.
The prince woke knowing that the god had made his intention clear.
The Return to Karnak
There was no use in keeping a god who wished to leave. The prince loaded the statue onto its barque with all the tribute he could manage - gold, rich cloth, lapis lazuli among the offerings - and sent it back to Egypt with an escort. He did not try to stop it. He understood what the dream had meant.
The procession crossed back into Egypt. It came up the river to Thebes. The statue of Khonsu was returned to its place in the temple at Karnak and received there with prayers and offerings, the priests of the god greeting what had gone out and come home again.
The princess of Bekhten, cured and alive in her father’s land, remained where she was. The statue that had expelled her demon stood again in its shrine at Karnak. The god was back behind his own walls, in the city the Egyptians called Waset, in the temple that bore his name, restored to the order of things - that principle of harmony and rightness, ma’at, which runs beneath all Egyptian stories like the current of the river beneath its surface: constant, necessary, the thing everything else depends on.