Ren (rn)

True name

Ren — the true name, conferred at birth and inscribed everywhere the deceased wishes their existence to persist. To know a being's true name is to have power over them; the famous Isis-and-Re myth turns on Isis tricking Re into revealing his ren. Conversely, to erase a name (damnatio memoriae) is to destroy a component of the person — which is why pharaohs of disfavoured dynasties are systematically chiselled out of monuments.