Cosmogonies in Ancient Egypt
Part 1: Hermopolis & “The Great Lotus”
Even the Egyptians, like modern people, wondered where the world they live in came from and the answers were always far from being simple.
It is interesting to notice that theologians did not elaborate a canonical text relating it to the birth of the world (such as the Genesis of the Bible). On the contrary, there were numerous religious centers which offered an explanation of the origin of the universe.
Despite the theological differences, there are some elements, especially inspired by natural phenomena, such as the cycle of the Sun, the seasons and the flooding of the Nile, which belong to these elaborated anthropological systems.
The element that is undoubtedly found in most cosmogonies is the primordial ocean, the Nun, from which all creation took shape.
The Nun was a shapeless liquid that represented the primordial chaos from which the demiurge made his appearance. As we will see later, the name of this creator god varied according to the cosmogony elaborated.
The most important theological schools were those of Ermopoli, Eliopoli and Memphis. Their doctrines do not have an anthropocentric vision of creation, because man always comes after gods and just before animals and plants.
Hermopolitan cosmogony
Hermopolis was the capital of the 15th nome of Upper Egypt (South) and boasted the most ancient Egyptian cosmogony.
The God of the city was Thoth, to whom the city dedicated a large temple.
Its Egyptian name was Khemenu, “the city of the Eight”, precisely because, according to the Hermopolitan creation myth, the Ogdoade would have emerged from the Nun, i.e. a group of eight gods depicted as snakes or frogs, divided into four pairs.
They represented the forces of the primordial elements present within the Nun.
These Eight Gods, though not always the same, were; Heh and Hehet, personification of the space-time infinity; Nun and Nunet, personification of the primordial liquid; Kek and Keket, who represented the dark versus the bright; Tenemu and Tenemit, later replaced by Amon and Amunet, who embodied the hidden.
These archetypes believed to be the fathers and mothers of Ra, created an egg, which was placed on the primeval hill, emerged from the Nun.
From the egg was born, according to various versions, the god Atum, or the god Thoth, with whom the actual creation began.
The myth of the Ogdoade was revived above all in Thebes, where the couple Amon and Amunet received particular veneration and all the Eight Gods were considered the creation of the god Amon-Ra.
In Ermopoli, a myth was also elaborated that made the blue lotus the vehicle of creation.
In the Great Lake of the Nun, located there, “The Great Lotus” hatched to let the sun come out in the form of a child or a beetle who transformed into a child, from whose tears, human beings, were created.
