268
I
n the beginning there was
nothing but the primal ocean,
called Nun—“nonbeing”—
according to the ancient creation
myths described in images and
hieroglyphic inscriptions on tomb
walls in Egypt. At Heliopolis, one
of Egypt’s most ancient cities, now
part of Cairo, people worshipped
Ra, the sun god. In his function as
creator, Ra was worshipped as
Atum, meaning “the all.”The first gods
Atum emerged from the chaos of
Nun in whose waters he had
dwelled inert. From his own body,
he created other gods. From his
nostrils Atum sneezed out Shu, the
god of air, and from his mouth he
spat out Tefnut, the goddess of
moisture, sending both far across
the water. Later, Atum sent his
right eye, the sun, to look for Shu
and Tefnut. This eye was the
goddess Hathor, a devouring flame
full of wild and unpredictable force.
When she returned with Shu and
Tefnut, she was angry with Atum,
for another eye had grown in her
place. She wept bitter tears, which
became the first human beings.
Atum took the eye that was
both Hathor and the sun and set it
on his brow in the form of an angry
cobra to rule over the world untilIN BRIEF
THEME
CreationSOURCES
Pyramid Texts, Anonymous,
2700–2200 bce; Coffin Texts,
Anonymous c. 2050 –180 0 bce;
Book of the Dead, Anonymous,
c. 1550 –1550 bce; Book of
Smiting Down Apophis,
Anonymous, c. 312 bce;
Memphite Theology, Pharaoh
Shabaqo, c. 710 bce; The
Destruction of Mankind,
Anonymous, c. 1279 bce;
transcribed in Legends of the
Gods, E. A. Wallis Budge, 1912.SETTING
Ancient Egypt.KEY FIGURES
Atum The creator god; also
the sun god Ra, or Atum-Ra.Shu God of air.Tefnut Goddess of moisture.Hathor The eye of Ra; also (in
lioness form) called Sekhmet.Geb The land.Nut T he sk y.Thoth God of reckoning.Osiris King on earth; ruler
of the Underworld.Horus God of the sky.Seth God of the desert
and disorder.Isis Goddess of marriage,
fertility, and magic.Nephthys Goddess of death
and the night.The god Khepri—who later merged
with Atum—was depicted in scarab
form. Because the beetle appeared to
hatch from nowhere, the Egyptians
likened its birth to the world’s creation.This limitless god
created everything
that exists.Within this ocean were
the potentialities of
all creation.In the beginning,
there was only the
ocean of nonbeing.A limitless god
became aware
of himself as Atum.the end of time (when all creation
would pass away, and once more
the world would be covered by the
infinite flood). Then Atum caused
the primal waters to recede, so that
he had an island on which to stand.
Resting on this hillock, called
the “benben” mound, Atum brought
the world into being. He used threeTHE CREATION AND THE FIRST GODS
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269
See also: Prometheus helps mankind 36–39 ■ The night barque of Ra 272–73 ■ Ra’s secret name 274–75 ■
Osiris and the Underworld 276–83innate forces to call forth all the
elements of creation. They were:
Heka, creative power or magic; Sia,
the gift of perception; and Hu, for
pronouncement. The forces became
gods in their own right and were
his companions in the solar
barque—the vessel that Atum
sailed across the sky as Ra, the sun
god. All was regulated by a fourth
power—the goddess Maat—who
represented cosmic harmony.The gods multiply
Atum’s firstborn, Shu, the dry air of
calmness and preservation, and
Tefnut, the moist air of change,
together created Geb, the dry male
land, and Nut, the moist female sky.
Nut lay on top of Geb, and the sky
mated with the earth.
The children of Nut and Geb
were the numberless stars. Such
fecundity angered Shu, who thencursed his daughter to never again
give birth in any month of the year.
However, Thoth, a god of reckoning
and learning, gambled with the
moon god Khonsu and won Nut five
extra days, to be added to the 12
lunar months of 30 days each. On
these days she gave birth to Osiris,
Horus, Seth, Isis, and Nephthys.
To prevent further offspring—
or, according to another source, to
leave Atum some space to create
and populate the world—Shu
decided to separate the couple.
He wrenched his sky daughter Nut
away and held her aloft with his
hands, then pinned down his son
Geb, the earth, with his feet. This
story is thought possibly to have
inspired the later Greek legend of
Atlas—the Titan condemned to
bear the sky on his shoulders.The nine greatest gods
Nut, Geb, and their five children,
together with Shu and Tefnut, were
known as the Ennead and were the
nine greatest gods under Atum.
Like him, they contained the forcesANCIENT EGYPT AND AFRICA
Ra sails beneath the arched form of
Nut above the reclining earth god Geb,
in a scene from the Book of the Dead,
compiled in the 16th century bce.of both order and chaos. Osiris—
first king on earth, then ruler of the
Underworld—embodied order. Seth,
who lived in the desert and tried to
usurp Osiris’s power, embodied
chaos. Each took one of their sisters
as a wife; Osiris married Isis and
Seth married Nephthys. Seth also
lusted after Isis, and Osiris had a
child, the god Anubis, by Nephthys.
Horus, the other child of Geb
and Nut, was a god of the sky,
whose name means “he who is ❯❯The Nile
The Egyptian creation myth is
influenced by the flooding of
the Nile Delta, an annual
event that ancient Egypt’s rich
civilization depended upon.
The inundation deposited new
fertile silt along the banks of
the river, enabling the ancient
Egyptians to farm on a grand
scale. The flooding of the Nile
was worshipped as the work
of Hapi, god of fertility, who
lived in a cavern at the first
cataract at Aswan. “He floods
all the fields the sun god [Ra]
has made, giving life to all
creatures,” one hymn related.
Hapi, half-male and half-
female, was a chid of Horus.
The regenerating Nile flood
almost certainly inspired the
creation concept of the waters
of Nun, the primeval ocean
that the Egyptians believed
had covered the world at the
beginning of time. It is also
no coincidence that Atum-Ra,
sun god and creator, was
symbolically born from this
ocean in their mythology, just
as the fields of the Nile Delta
appeared each fall when the
floodwaters receded.US_266-271_Creation_Egypt.indd 269 05/12/17 4:16 pm