Khonshu is a real ancient Egyptian god, usually spelled Khonsu by Egyptologists. He was the moon god of Thebes, the son of Amun and Mut, and a god of time, travel by night and healing. His oldest appearance is violent: in the Pyramid Texts he butchers other gods for the king. By the New Kingdom he had become a youthful, protective healer with a large temple at Karnak. Marvel's Moon Knight borrowed his name and moon; most of the rest is Marvel's.
Khonsu (Khonshu)
Egyptian pantheon
Domain: Moon, time, night travel, protection, healing
Khonsu quick facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Khonsu; also written Khons, Khensu, Chons, Khonshu |
| Meaning | "Traveller", likely for the moon's journey across the night sky |
| Parents | Amun and Mut (in the Theban triad) |
| Titles | Embracer, Pathfinder, Defender, Healer |
| Appearance | A mummy-wrapped youth with the sidelock of childhood, or a falcon-headed man, crowned with a full moon on a crescent |
| Held objects | Crook and flail, a menat necklace |
| Main temple | Temple of Khonsu, Karnak (Thebes, modern Luxor) |
| Earliest mention | The Cannibal Hymn, Pyramid Texts (Pyramid of Unas, late Fifth Dynasty, c. 24th century BCE) |
Is Khonshu a real Egyptian god?
Yes. "Khonshu" is one of several English spellings of Khonsu. Egyptian writing left out vowels, so modern scholars fill them in differently: Khonsu, Khons, Khensu and Chons all refer to the same god. Marvel chose "Khonshu", which is why search results split between the two spellings.
His name means "traveller". The moon crosses the sky every night, and Khonsu was the god who made that crossing.
Who are Khonsu's parents?
At Thebes, Khonsu was the child in a divine family of three, the Theban triad:
- Amun, the hidden god, king of the gods in the New Kingdom
- Mut, his consort, a mother goddess
- Khonsu, their son
This is why Khonsu is so often shown as a child or youth, with the sidelock of hair Egyptian children wore. A divine family like this mirrored a human one, and each partner in the family had a temple in the great religious complex of Karnak.
Was Khonsu originally violent?
Yes, and this is the most striking thing about him. The earliest known mention of Khonsu comes from the Cannibal Hymn, Utterances 273–274 of the Pyramid Texts, carved in the pyramid of King Unas at Saqqara at the end of the Fifth Dynasty and repeated in the pyramid of Teti.
The hymn pictures the dead king as a cosmic hunter who catches the gods and eats them to take their power. Khonsu is one of his helpers: he slaughters "the lords", cuts their throats and pulls out their entrails for the king.
That is a long way from the gentle child of the Theban triad a thousand years later. The shift is a good example of how much an Egyptian god could change over the 3,000-year span of Egyptian religion. The same hymn was later reused in the Coffin Texts as Spell 573.
When was the Temple of Khonsu at Karnak built?
The Temple of Khonsu stands in the southwest corner of the Precinct of Amun-Ra at Karnak. The standing temple was begun by Ramesses III (Twentieth Dynasty, reigned c. 1186–1155 BCE) on the site of an earlier temple.
Work and decoration continued for generations. Inscriptions record the high priest of Amun Herihor, who held power in Thebes at the end of the Twentieth Dynasty (around 1080 BCE). Much later, Ptolemy III Euergetes (3rd century BCE) added a monumental gateway and enclosure wall. The wall is gone; the gateway still stands.
So "the Temple of Khonsu" is a building of roughly 900 years of work, not one king's project. It is one of the best-preserved New Kingdom temples in Egypt.
Why was Khonsu a healing god?
By the later periods, Khonsu was known for driving out illness and evil spirits. The best-known story is the Bentresh Stela, now in the Louvre (C 284). It was found in 1829 in a small Ptolemaic shrine beside the Khonsu temple.
The stela tells how a foreign princess named Bentresh, sister of Ramesses II's wife, was possessed by a spirit. Egyptian doctors failed. Ramesses sent a statue of Khonsu, which drove the spirit out.
The catch: the story is set in the reign of Ramesses II (13th century BCE), but scholars date the stela itself to the Persian period (27th Dynasty) or early Ptolemaic period, many centuries later. It is religious propaganda for the Khonsu temple dressed as an old royal record, not a historical report.
Royal devotion was real, though: the Ptolemaic king Ptolemy IV, after recovering from an illness, called himself "beloved of Khonsu who protects His Majesty and drives away evil spirits".
Is Khonsu the same as Thoth?
No, but they overlap. Both were moon gods, both marked the passage of time, and both were linked with baboons. Thoth was the god of writing and wisdom and scribe of the gods; Khonsu was the Theban moon-child and healer.
A popular story says Khonsu lost a game of senet to Thoth and gave up part of his light, creating the five extra days of the Egyptian year. The oldest version of that story, in Plutarch's On Isis and Osiris (a Greek writer, 1st–2nd century CE), says Hermes (the Greek name for Thoth) played draughts with the Moon and won a seventieth of her light. Plutarch never names Khonsu. Versions that do are modern retellings.
Moon Knight vs the real Khonsu
Moon Knight is a Marvel Comics character created by Doug Moench and Don Perlin, first appearing in Werewolf by Night #32 (1975). He was adapted into the 2022 Disney+ series starring Oscar Isaac, with F. Murray Abraham voicing Khonshu.
| Marvel's Khonshu | The real Khonsu | |
|---|---|---|
| Appearance | A towering figure with a bird's skull for a head | A youth in mummy wrappings with a sidelock, or a falcon-headed man, with a moon disk and crescent |
| Personality | Vengeful, manipulative, demanding | In the Pyramid Texts, a butcher of gods; in later periods a protector and healer |
| Family | Not central to the story | Son of Amun and Mut in the Theban triad |
| Human "avatar" | Chooses Marc Spector as his fist of vengeance | No Egyptian source has Khonsu choosing a human champion |
| Rival | Ammit, whose avatar Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke) is the show's villain | Ammit was a demon of the judgment hall, not a goddess with worshippers, and no source sets her against Khonsu |
| Imprisonment | Trapped in a stone figure by the other gods | No such myth exists |
The real Ammit belonged to a different part of Egyptian belief: she waited beside the scales to eat the hearts of the unworthy. Read how that worked in The Weighing of the Heart.
In the sources
Khonsu first appears in the Pyramid Texts (the Cannibal Hymn, late Fifth Dynasty), and the same hymn returns in the Coffin Texts. His New Kingdom and later identity comes mostly from Theban temple inscriptions, above all his own temple at Karnak, and from monuments such as the Bentresh Stela. Plutarch's On Isis and Osiris, a Greek-era source, contains the moon-and-draughts story but does not name Khonsu.
Contradictions and changes to keep straight:
- Butcher or healer? The Old Kingdom Khonsu kills gods for the king. The New Kingdom and later Khonsu protects and heals. Neither is the "real" one; they belong to different eras.
- Child or falcon? He appears both as a mummiform youth and as a falcon-headed god.
- The senet story. Plutarch's loser is simply the Moon; the Khonsu version is modern.
- The Bentresh Stela. Its setting (Ramesses II) and its date of creation (centuries later) do not match.
In popular culture
- Moon Knight (Marvel Comics, 1975 onward). Marc Spector, a mercenary left for dead in Egypt, is revived as the avatar of Khonshu. The avatar idea is Marvel's.
- Moon Knight (Disney+, 2022). Oscar Isaac plays Marc Spector and Steven Grant, F. Murray Abraham voices Khonshu, Ethan Hawke plays Arthur Harrow, and Saba Mubarak plays Ammit. The show also uses real Egyptian names such as the Ennead and Taweret, the hippo goddess, though its versions of them are invented.
Frequently asked questions
Is Khonshu a real Egyptian god?
Yes. Khonshu is a spelling of Khonsu, the ancient Egyptian moon god of Thebes. He was the son of Amun and Mut.
What is Khonsu the god of?
Khonsu was the god of the moon, the passage of time and travel at night. In later periods he was also worshipped as a healer who drove away evil spirits.
Who are Khonsu's parents?
In the Theban triad, Khonsu is the son of Amun and his consort Mut. Together the three were the divine family of Thebes.
Is Khonshu evil?
Not in the usual sense. His earliest text, the Cannibal Hymn, shows him killing gods for the king, but in later Egypt he was a protective and healing god.
Where is the Temple of Khonsu?
It stands inside the Precinct of Amun-Ra at Karnak in Luxor. Ramesses III began it in the 12th century BCE, and later rulers kept adding to it.
Is Moon Knight's Khonshu accurate?
Only loosely. The name and the moon are real, but the bird-skull look, the human avatar and the rivalry with Ammit are Marvel inventions.
Keep exploring
Khonsu is one corner of a huge pantheon. Meet the god who guards the dead in Anubis: Why the Jackal Guards the Dead, see where Khonsu sits among Amun, Mut and the rest in the Egyptian gods family tree, then take the Egyptian mythology quiz or find out which Egyptian god you are. For the whole pantheon on one page, read Egyptian Gods and Goddesses: The Major Deities Explained.