#usire

Djehuty, the god of scribes, knowledge, wisdom, and the moon

A well-known and ancient deity from the Kemet pantheon, Djehuty manages to seamlessly combine being an academic elitist and being a coward gentle soul that really just dreams of someday living in a perfect world where his fellow deities use their brains, you know, for a change. Such is the challenge of being a god of knowledge and wisdom in a world full of divinized natural forces who tend to act on impulse.

Djehuty is constantly faced with the struggle of knowing better than his more powerful (and violent) peers who apparently cannot fathom the usefulness of a knowledge and wisdom deity. As a result, he tends to slip into a judgmental, short-tempered, and rather condescending attitude when irritated, which is frequently (especially given that Sutekh adores him, about as much as he adores annoying the shit out of him). Djehuty just does not handle frustration all that well, unfortunately. Nor does it help that he is a traditionalist who hates change. Djehuty has to be practically forced into acquiescing to any kind of cultural change and has a loooooong adjustment period.

As one of the oldest gods of the Kemet pantheon, he’s seen a lot of shit, some of it genuinely traumatizing, and he’s well aware of the power difference between himself and more… er, physically powerful deities. But he’s managed to stay alive this long, which is more than he can say for other deities that operate in the cerebral realm, so he must be doing something right. Being under Sutekh’s protection helps a lot, though, and makes foreign envoy trips less stressful for him.

Highlights in his life include:

designing, with the artistic assistance of his close friend Ptah, the hieroglyphic and hieratic writing system (Djehuty can’t draw, unfortunately)

avoiding getting killed during all the major regime changes that have rocked the Kemet pantheon’s stability and its lands

cultivating a dramatic rivalry with his counterpart in Mesopotamia, Nabu, who is apparently incapable of not brutally criticizing everything he publishes (while being overly excited to read it too)

orchestrating an embezzling scheme in Ptah’s temple, though he did get caught by Sokar so he had to stop

trying desperately to befriend Nisaba, the Mesopotamian goddess of scribes, despite the fact that she clearly thinks his vibes are unpleasant

setting into motion the biggest conflict the Kemet pantheon has ever experienced - Djehuty was the catalyst behind Usire’s death, though very few gods know he was the culprit and not Sutekh

writing bad romance stories under a pseudonym, which Sutekh distributes to literate deities in foreign pantheons, thus earning himself royalties that preclude ever having to get wrapped up in an embezzling scheme again (probably)

Hm, I’m probably not the best to ask since I can’t read any of them in the original Chinese, but I do have a rec post here. I would suggest checking out the author’s other works, Heaven Official’s Blessing 天官赐福 (which is long and apparently heart-wrenching lol) and The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System 人渣反派自救系统 (which is downright hilarious). I’ve also started Thousand Autumns, recced to me by my friend, and I like it quite a bit so far.