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Min (formerly incorrectly transcribed as Chem) was a god and the patron of traveling caravans, in Egyptian mythology, known since the Predynastic Period, and even worshipped by the Scorpion King. Originally, Min was the constellation Orion, which as the most god-like constellation, put Min in charge of the sky, consequently in charge of thunder, and of rain, since they fell from the sky. Subsequently, Min was identified with Horus, who was also a God of the raised arm (a reference to the shape of Orion), and usually depicted as such.
This identification as Horus survived until the Middle Kingdom, when the two had begun to develop seperate identities, Horus as a solar deity (since the sun crosses the sky), Min as a fertility deity (since rain makes the land fertile). In particular, the rendering of Orion that was Min, was one which chose to depict the 3 bright stars of Orion's belt as an erect phallus, contributing to this seperation. With his many different aspects, Min was a popular god, but in later mythology was absorbed into the more significant (at the time) god Amun, since Amun was associated with the Ram, which was viewed as a symbol of virility. This association with virility lead to Amun-Min gaining the epithet Kamutef, meaning Bull of his mother. As Amun-Min, he was often found depicted on the walls of Karnak.
Min was associated by the Greeks with their god Pan, a fertility god, whom the Greeks thought had invented masturbation, and thus they named Akhmim, his main cult centre, as Panopolis. He was also associated strongly with the citie of Coptos. In both locations he was worshipped in the form of a white bull (representing virility). Min was worshiped right through Egyptian predynastic times up to Roman times, a deity whose temples were built and rebuilt through Egypt's entire history.
As a god of male sexual potency, he was honoured during the coronation rites of the New Kingdom, in which the Pharoah was expected to sow his seed, generally thought to have been plant seeds, although there have been controversial suggestions that the pharoah was expected to demonstrate that he could ejaculate and thus ensure the annual flooding of the Nile, since the Pharoah was thought of as the manifestation of Ra (or more accurately, Atum-Ra). At the beginning of the harvest season, his image was taken out of the temple and brought it to the fields in the festival of the departure of Min, during which they blessed the harvest, and played games naked in his honour, the most important of which was climbing a huge pole.
In Egyptian art, Min was depicted as wearing a crown with feathers and holding his penis, erect, in his left hand (a masturbatory reference to fertility), while holding a flail (referring to his authority - or rather that of the pharoahs) in his upward facing, and bent, right hand (c.f. the constellation of Orion). Around his forehead Min wears a red ribbon that trails to the ground, claimed by some to represent sexual energy. The symbols of Min were the white bull, a barbed arrow, and a bed of lettuce, which the Egyptians believed to be an aphrodisiac, as the Egyptian Lettuce was tall, straight, and released a milk-like substance when rubbed, characteristics superficially similar to the penis.
Min was always depicted in an ithyphallic (with an erect and uncovered phallus) style, and thus Christians routinely defaced his monuments in temples they co-opted, and Victorian Egyptologists would take only waist-up photographs of Min, or otherwise find ways to cover his protruding manhood. However, to the ancient Egyptians, Min was not a matter of scandal - they had very relaxed standards of nudity: in their warm climate, dancing girls, serving women, and farmers often worked naked, and children did not wear any clothes until they came of age.
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