Egyptian mythology
Iah
The Ancient Moon
Iah was one of Egypt's oldest lunar deities, his name simply meaning 'Moon', the elemental divine presence in the night sky before Khonsu and Thoth's lunar aspects rose to eclipse him. He measured time by the waxing and waning of his light, witnessed the dead in their passage through the night, and governed the rhythms of the cosmos that the moon alone could mark. His mythology survives in fragments, a ghost of an older religious order.
- Mythology
- Egyptian mythology
- Appears in
- Thoth and the Five Stolen Days
Iah is the ancient moon god, crowned with the crescent cradling the full lunar disk, worshipped long before the classical myths took shape. As the moon he measured the months; the Egyptian word for month, iah, bears his name, and he was called to witness oaths, the light that reveals truth in the dark. In time Khonsu and Thoth, lord of the moon and of knowledge, absorbed his role, and he merged with both, lending them his ancient authority. In the funerary texts his pale light guides the dead through the night passages of the Duat.
Listen to the stories of Iah
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