Crossword-Solution: ANKH 4 letters, 135 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 11

The well-known T-shaped cross was in use in pagan lands long before Christianity, as a representation of the male member, and also at the same time of the 'tree' on which the god (Attis or Adonis or Krishna or whoever it might be) was crucified; and the same symbol combined with the oval (or yoni) formed THE Crux Ansata {Ankh} of the old Egyptian ritual--a figure which is to-day sold in Cairo as a potent charm, and confessedly indicates the conjunction of the two sexes in one design.

Thoth mentions to Amen the name of queen Aahmes as the future mother of Hatshepsut, and we later see Amen himself, in the form of her husband, Aa-kheperka-Ra (Thothmes I), sitting with Aahmes and giving her the Ankh, or sign of Life, which she receives in her hand and inhales through her nostrils.(3) God and queen are seated on thrones above a couch, and are supported by two goddesses.

But the resemblance is of a very general character, and includes no etymological equivalence such as we find when we compare the Hebrew account with the principal Semitic-Babylonian Creation narrative.(1) The application of the Ankh, the Egyptian sign for Life, to the nostrils of a newly-created being is no true parallel to the breathing into man's nostrils of the breath of life in the earlier Hebrew Version,(2) except in the sense that each process was suggested by our common human anatomy.

The _ankh_, the lotus blossom in the hand, the winged disk, are purely Egyptian forms; the Isis Athor with Horus in her lap speaks for itself; and the worshipper in front of Isis has an unmistakably Egyptian head dress.

Brugsch points out that the god, Tum or Tom, who was the special object of worship in the city of Pi-Tom, with which the Israelites were only too familiar, was called Ankh and the "great god," and had no image.