The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

78 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

or at Memphis an artist who had carved them out of stone, so it
was as a father and generator that Tum had called the universe
into being. In the Book of the Dead it is said of him that he is
“the creator of the heavens, the maker of (all) existences, who
has begotten all that there is, who gave birth to the gods, who
created himself, the lord of life who bestows upon the gods
the strength of youth.”An origin, however, was found for him
in Nu, the primeval abyss of waters, though it is possible that
Professor Maspero may be right in thinking that Nu really owes
his existence to the goddess Nut, and that he was introduced
into the cosmogony of Heliopolis under the influence of Asiatic
ideas. However this may be, Shu and Tefnut, who immediately
emanated from him, apparently represented the air. Later art
pictured them in Asiatic style as twin lions sitting back to back
and supporting between them the rising or setting sun.^55 But an
[084] old legend described Shu as having raised the heavens above the
earth, where he still keeps them suspended above him like the
Greek Atlas. A text at Esna, which identifies him with Khnum,
describes him as sustaining“the floor of the sky upon its four
supports”or cardinal points;“he raised Nut, and put himself
under her like a great column of air.”Tefnut, his twin sister, was
the north wind, which gives freshness and vigour to the world.
The next pair in the Ennead of Heliopolis were Seb and Nut,
the earth and the firmament, who issued from Shu and Tefnut.
Then came Osiris and Isis, the children of the earth and sky, and
lastly Set and Nebhât, the one the representative of the desert
land in which the Asiatic nomads pitched their tents, the other of
the civilised Egyptian family at whose head stoodNeb-hât,“the
lady of the house.”Upon the model of this Ennead two other
minor Enneads were afterwards formed.

(^55) Similarly, on early Babylonian seal-cylinders the leaves of the folding doors
through which the sun-god comes forth at daybreak are surmounted by lions.
See the illustration in King,Babylonian Religion and Mythologie, p. 32. (The
genuineness of this cylinder has been questioned without good reason.)