KEMP, also Kempty, the coarse rough hairs of wool, which are avoided by the manufacturer in his purchases of wool, deteriorating as it does the appearance of even common fabrics by their inferiority and harshness, and not taking dye readily. The kemp of the Kashmir goats' wool is, however, made into coarse cloth.—Simmonds' KEN, an Egyptian goddess of Assyrian origin, the Astarte, A staroth, and Mylitta of the Assyrians, Syrians, and Arabs. This divinity appears to have been introduced into the Egyptian pantheon in the time of the 18th dynasty, or at the com mencement of the close connection between Assyria and Egypt. On comparing a representa tion of the goddess in the rock sculptures of 3Ialthaigah with an Egyptian bas - relief in the British Museum, the mode of treating the subject is seen to be nearly the same. In both we have a female standing on a lion. The Egyptian figure holds two snakes and a flower, the stalks of which are twisted into the form of a ring; the Assyrian carries a ring alone. The flower resembles that borne by the winged figures in the place of Khor sabad, and is not found in the edifices of the first Assyrian period, where the flowers in the hands of a similar figure are of a different shape. For
instance, the goddess Athor or Athy, Dr. Hicks reads the same name as that of the presiding divinity on the monuments of Assyria. Dr. Birch admits, in his observations on the cartouches, that the introduction of the Assyrian gods Baal and Astarte, of Renpu or Reseph, of Ken and Anata or Anaitis, can be traced to the 18th and 19th dynasties, and is coeval with the epoch of the great conquests of Egypt in Central Asia. On a tablet at Turin she is called Atsh or Adesh, the name of the chief city of the Khitae, a Mesopo tamian people attacked by the Ramessids (Prime. Mon. P1. xxxvii.). She usually appears in a triad with Renpu and Khein or Chainno, also deities of Semitic extraction. The worship of the Sakti seems to have been introduced into India from the Egyptians and Assyrians, and the image of the Hindu Durga is unquestionably a modified type of Ken and Astarte. The imago of Kali is an original of the Hindus, the worship of which is inculcated in the Upa Puranas, written at a con siderably later period than the Puranas which first originated the present form of the idolatry of the Hindus.—Layard, Nineveh, ii. p. 213; Tr. of Hind. i. p. 37.