The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

122 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

However this may be, Thoth was the creator of the world
through the word of his mouth. In the cosmogony of Hermopolis
the universe and the gods that direct it are the creation of his
word, which later ages refined into the sound of his voice. From
Hermopolis the doctrine passed to other parts of Egypt, and
under the Theban dynasties tended to displace or absorb the
older Heliopolitan doctrine of creation by generation. But the
doctrine was known also in Babylonia, where the god whose
word is creative was Asari, the Merodach of the Semites. In the
Babylonian Epic of the Creation the“word”of Merodach creates
and destroys, like the“word”of Yahweh in the Old Testament. I
must leave to another lecture the consideration as to how far the
[132] Logos of Alexandrine philosophy has been influenced by the
theology of Hermopolis.
Whether Thoth were originally Nu or not, Nu at all events
forms the second member of the Hermopolitan Ennead. Professor
Maspero has shown that it was modelled on the Ennead of
Heliopolis.^95 But in accordance with the more abstract character
of the cosmogony of which it was a part, the divinities of which
it is composed are abstractions that look strangely out of place in
the Egyptian Pantheon.
Nu is provided with the feminine Nut, who is not to be
confounded with the old goddess of the sky, and from them are
derived the successive pairs$e%ui and$e%et, Kek and Keket,
Nini and Ninit,“eternity,” “darkness,”and“inertia.”^96 The whole
scheme is Asiatic rather than Egyptian, but the gods composing
it are already mentioned in the Pyramid texts.
The four pairs of abstract deities constituted“the eight”gods
after whom Hermopolis received one of its names (Khmunu, now

Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, p. 240.

(^95) Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie égyptiennes, ii. pp. 381-385.
(^96) This is Brugsch's translation (Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter,
p. 123 sqq.); but the meaning of the last name is doubtful, and the first is rather
“time”than“eternity.”