The Souls of Pe and Nekhen, mentioned first in the Pyramid Texts

Pyramid Texts

The Pyramid Texts are a collection of ancient Egyptian religious texts from the time of the Old Kingdom. The pyramid texts are possibly the oldest known religious texts in the world. Written in Old Egyptian, the pyramid texts were carved on the walls and sarcophagi of the pyramids at Saqqara during...

, refer to the ancestors of the ancient Egyptian kings. Nekhen

Nekhen

Nekhen was the religious and political capital of Upper Egypt at the end of the Predynastic period...

 (Greek Hierakonpolis) was the Upper Egyptian centre of Horus worship, whose successors the Egyptian pharaohs were thought to be. Pe

Buto

Buto , Butus , or Butosus, , now Tell al-Fara'in near the city of Desouk , was an ancient city located 95 km east of Alexandria in the Nile Delta of Egypt. The city stood on the Sebennytic arm of the Nile, near its mouth, and on the southern shore of the Butic Lake...

(Greek Buto) was a Lower Egyptian town, not known for its Horus worship, but Re had awarded the town to Horus after his eye was injured in the struggle for the throne of Egypt.

The approbation of their predecessors, even as mythological and nameless as the Souls of Pe and Nekhen, was important to the Egyptian kings, who referred to them in many inscriptions. Even the Kushite pharaohs saw themselves as descendants of the Souls of Pe and Nekhen.

It appears that the Souls of Heliopolis comprised the Souls of Pe and Nekhen.