Anuket

religious figure

Written by Molefi Kete Asante

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Greek:: Anukis

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Anuket, in Egyptian religion, the patron deity of the Nile River. Anuket is normally depicted as a beautiful woman wearing a crown of reeds and ostrich feathers and accompanied by a gazelle. She was originally a Nubian deity.

Anuket belonged to a triad of deities worshipped at the great temple at Elephantine, an island in the upper Nile. Alongside Khnum (Khenemu) and Sati, Anuket oversaw the fertility of the lands near the river. Indeed, she was worshipped as the great nourisher of the farms and fields because of the annual inundation of the Nile that deposited the heavy layer of black silt from Upper Egypt and Nubia.

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