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Illustration from Pantheon Egyptien by Leon Jean Joseph Dubois, digitally enhanced by rawpixel-com 11

Kneph illustration from Pantheon Egyptien (1823-1825) by Leon Jean Joseph Dubois.

Kneph is a motif in ancient Egyptian religious art, variously a winged egg, a globe surrounded by one or more serpents, or Amun in the form of a serpent called Kematef. Some Theosophical sources tried to syncretize this motif with the deity Khnum, along with Serapis and Pluto.

Under the Greek theonym Chnuphis, this figure adopts a serpent-bodied, lion-headed ("leontoeidic") visage, being particularly common in magical artifacts in Late Antiquity. It is by proxy frequently associated with the Gnostic Demiurge.

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