Ancient Egyptian gods: Anedjti

also Andjeti, Andjety, Anezti, Anzeti etc

    Anedjti, Egyptian ,[1] was an ancient herder god, the main god of the 9th nome of Lower Egypt. According to the Pyramid Texts, he was at the head of the eastern nomes just as Anubis was foremost of the Westerners.

Your lotusbud sceptre is at the head of the living, your staff is at the head of the glorified spirits, like Anubis who is at the head of the Westerners, like Anedjti who is at the head of the eastern nomes.

Pyramid Texts spell 220 ^[2]

    Anedjti wore a chieftain's feathers on his head and is thought by some to have been a deified king, who had ruled at Busiris, the capital of the Anedjti nome in the eastern Delta.[3] His name is derived from the name of his capital and means literally "Anedjtian" (He of Anedjt.) According to the legend he drained the swamps of the Delta, made them arable, and, after his death, caused the vegetation to renew every year.[13] The fertility aspects of Anedjti's nature are also reflected by his epithet of Bull of Vultures, him apparently having been the consort of several goddesses [3] Later, when Osiris merged with Anedjti, Busiris came to be called Djedu. Osiris of Djedu was a god of birth and rebirth, of fertility like Anedjti whom he assimilated [12] and he took on the ancient god's insignia, the flail and the shepherd's crook,[4] which, early on, was well established as a symbol of worldly rule:

May you give the shepherd's crook into the hand of this Unas, that the head of Lower und Upper Egypt may be bowed.

Unas Pyramid, PT 222 ^[5]

Iconography

    Anedjti was depicted as a man, wielding a crook and a flail. Since the 4th dynasty he wore a two-feathered crown. All these attributes were, with slight alterations, taken over by Osiris.[3] The crown consisted of a small sun disk in front of two ostrich feathers, flanked by two uraei wearing sun disks. The whole was mounted on a pair of ram horns and sat on a tight fitting cap.[6]

Divine relationships and syncretisms

    Much of the time Anedjti was identified with Osiris, who inherited his attributes from him. Osiris also appears to have adopted his role as king of the earth from the myth of Anedjti's origin as an earthly ruler,[7] At first Anedjti retained at least some independence from the more popular god, but from the New Kingdom onwards little was left of that. As Osiris-Anedjti he receives offerings of incense in a relief in the funerary temple of Seti I.[3] and in the Isis temple at Behbeit el Hagara the chapels were devoted to the rebirth of Osiris-Andjety and the transformation of the young child into a falcon.[8] Osiris is occasionally shown wearing the Anedjti crown, as are pharaohs; other gods wear it more rarely, e.g. Horus on an ancient Syrian seal,[9] and Hor-pa-khered just once in a little bronze from Athribis.[6] The Leyden Papyrus mentions Re-Anedjti:[10]

Your body is purified in Re-Anedjti, your flesh is purified in the vessel of Heket.

Cult

    As the merging of Anedjti and Osiris took place in earliest historical times little is known about his cult, apart from the cult centre which was at Busiris. The Pyramid Texts suggest that his worship were widespread in the Delta,[3] and celebrated the god's agricultural fertility aspects.[11]

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