EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY

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CREATION OF EGYPT

Many myths of ancient Egypt are existing  that explain the creation of the world and all are equally accepted. Are existing at least 3 main cosmogonies that explain the origin of the world and that lead to 3 big theologians centres: Eliopoli, Ermopoli and Menfi and the Gods protagonists of these narrations were worshipped by all the nation without distinctions of territory.  

The myth of Eliopoli

The most ancient myth seems to be the one of Eliopoli, in which the local God, Atum (the Sun) is the demiurge (the creator). Atum was self created and raised from the Nun, the primordial ocean, the chaos, got up on a little hill. Through his spit he created the first divine couple: Shu, God of air, and Tefnut, Godess of humidity that together gave birth to Geb, God of earth and Nut, Goddess of sky. From this couple born the four children Osiris and Isis, Set and Nefti. This group of 9 deities, from who everything was then originated from, is the ennead.

The myth of Ermopoli 

To Ermopoli (the today El Ashmunein) was conceived a different cosmogonical myth: in the waters of Nun existed, before creation, 8 deities in form of frogs and snakes divided in four couples. These 8 primordial beings (ogdoad) were elements of chaos and cosmical disorder and their names verify it in a clear way: Nun, the primordial waters and his wife Naunet; Huh, the infinite and his wife Hauhet; Kuk, the darkness, and his wife Kauket; Ammone, the intangibility, the nothing and his wife Amaunet. In the Nun they united their forces and created an egg that was put in a hill raised from waters. From the egg born the Sun God, or the God Thot (local deity of Ermopoli) and from his began the real creation.

The myth of Menfi

The third cosmogonical tradition is the one of the Menfi clergy of the God Ptah (this myth has been tramanded thanks to a copy on stone dated to the reign of Shabaka of the XXV dinasty). Here the demiurge God is Ptah who wondered in the Nun (or that was the Nun himself); he stopped on the primordial Hill called Ta-tenen, that means “hill that raise” and got united with it becoming Ptah-ta-tenen, the God Ptah in form of creator. From this position he created all Gods, all the world, the plants, the animals, the stars and so on using the thought and the word. According the tradition he thought with heart (for the egyptians the heart was the centre of the thoughts) and created pronouncing the name of what he thought; in the beginning he created Atum, then the ennead, and the ogdoad, then the cities, the regions and all the Creation.

The minor myths

There is also a minor myth, the one of Elefantina that has as protagonist the God Khnum. This God, who lived in the primordial Hill (identified with the island of Elefantina) modeled with the mud on the wheel of the potter the first egg from which born the Sun. Then modeled the deities and every living being, the men and their Ka. He has the epithet “Father of fathers, mother of mothers and father of fathers of the Gods and Goddesses”. Great luck had the use of the image of this God with ram head sitting in front of the wheel of the potter while he’s moulding humanity.

Exists at last a solar myth, the legend of the Eye of Ra, that tells about the creation of the human kind. According to this myth the men were created a bit after the creation of the universe and the Gods, and quite casually: the protagonist is the Eye of the Sun God Ra-Atum that one day got tired, came out from the God and escaped. Ra-Atum sent Shu and Tefnut to search for it, but since they cannot find it the God created a substituted eye. Some time passed and the escaped eye came back and, noticed that he has been replaced, began to cry and from his tears (in egyptian “remut”) born the men (remet).

OTHER DEITIES

Of course Egyptian mythology is composed by many other deities. Here you can see some of them more in details.

RA: Identified primarily with the mid-day Sun. For the Egyptians, the sun most basically represented light, warmth and therefore growth. This made Ra hugely important to Egyptians, and it is probably therefore no coincidence that he is also seen as the ruler of all. The sun was either seen as the body or eye of Ra.

ANUBIS: jackal-headed god of embalming and tomb-caretaker who watches over the dead. Anubis was the guardian of the dead, who greeted the souls in the Underworld and protected them on their journey. It was he who deemed the deceased worthy of becoming a star. Ancient Egyptian texts say that Anubis silently walked through the shadows of life and death and lurked in dark places. He was watchful by day as well as by night.

BAST: protector of the pharaoh, cat-bodied or cat-headed. Also known as Bastet. Originally she was viewed as the protector goddess of Lower Egypt, and consequently depicted as a fierce lion. Indeed, her name means (female) devourer. Bast gradually became thought of as the goddess of perfumes, earning the title perfumed protector.

HAPY: god embodied by the Nile, and who represents life and fertility

HATHOR: goddess of love and music, was originally a personification of the Milky Way, which was seen as the milk that flowed from the udders of a heavenly cow. Hathor was an ancient goddess, worshipped as a cow-deity.

HORUS: the falcon-headed god, God of Pharaohs and Upper Egypt. Horus is the god of the sky, and the son of Osiris. His mother is Isis. Since he was god of the sky, Horus became depicted as a falcon, or as a falcon-headed man, leading to Horus' name, which meant The distant one. Since Horus was said to be the sky, it was natural that he was rapidly considered to also contain the sun and moon. It became said that the sun was one of his eyes and the moon the other, and that they traversed the sky when he, a falcon, flew across it.

ISIS: goddess of magic, also the wife of Osiris and goddess of the underworld. In art, originally Isis was pictured as a woman wearing a long sheath dress and crowned with the hieroglyphic sign for a throne, sometimes holding a lotus, as a sycamore tree. Usually, she was depicted with her son, the great god Horus. As the deification of the wife of the pharaoh, the first prominent role of Isis was as the assistant to the deceased king.

MA'AT: personified concept of truth, balance, justice, and order

OSIRIS: god of life, death, and fertility. He is also called the All-father. Osiris was not only the merciful judge of the dead in the afterlife, but also the underworld agency that granted all life, including sprouting vegetation and the fertile flooding of the Nile River. Osiris is the resurrection figure. He is usually depicted as a green-skinned pharaoh wearing the Atef crown, a form of the white crown of upper Egypt with a plume of feathers to either side.

SEKHMET: goddess of destruction and war, particularly against demons of sickness. It was said that her breath created the desert. Sekhmet was believed to protect the pharaoh in battle, stalking the land, and destroying his enemies with arrows of fire, her body being said to take on the bright glare of the midday sun, gaining her the title Lady of Flame. Indeed it was said that death and destruction were balsam for her heart, and hot desert winds were believed to be her breath. She was envisioned as a fierce lioness, and in art, was depicted as such, or as a woman with the head of a lioness, dressed in red, the colour of blood.

SET: as he was the god of the desert, Set was associated with sandstorms, and desert caravans. Due to the extreme hostility of the desert environment, Set was viewed as immensely powerful, and was regarded consequently as the chief god. Set became associated with things that were red, including people with red hair, which is not an attribute that Egyptians generally had, and so he became considered to also be a god of foreigners.

THOTH: god of the moon, drawing, writing, geometry, wisdom, medicine, music, astronomy, and magic. often depicted with the head of an ibis.
 

THE VENGEFUL EYE OF RA

Ra-Atum was old, his bones were like silver, his skin was like burnished gold, his hair like lapis-lazuli and when the people of Egypt see their king so old and weak they rumoured against him and they plotted to take to him the throne. The rebels got riunited in secret to the borders of desert, believing that they were safe there, but the Sun God who watched over Egypt, saw the traitors and heard their plots and got angry like never before.
He said to his loyal servant: “Go and call my daughter, the Eye of Ra; advert the powerful Shu and Tefnut and that with them come also their children Geb and Nut; bring here everybody, wake up the Nun himself! But they have to come here in secret, because the traitors don’t have to know.”

The great Gods came one by one entering in secret in the palace and the King of Gods speak in this way talking to the Nun: “Oh, you, older than anything living, and also you, primordial Gods, I cried and from my tears raised the men. I gave them life, but now they declared tired of my reign and plot against me. What do I have to do? I won’t destroy the children of my tears before hearing your opinions.”
For first answered Nun: “My son, you are more ancient than your father and you are the greatest God of all, you have to reign forever! Both men and Gods fear the terrible power of the Eye of the Sun, and then you have to send it against the rebel.”
At that point all the Gods screamed together to support the idea.

Sekhmet, the Eye of Ra, the most beautiful and terrible of all Goddesses descend in the desert taking the shape of a lioness, took the rebels, slay them and drunk their blood. Then raged through the villages and cities killing every men, women and children she found. But Ra-Atum heard the prays and the scream of the dying and felt sorry for his children. When darkness felt Sekhmet came back in tryumph to the father, who tried to calm down her fury, but the Goddess who tasted human blood and found it much sweet, waited anxiously the return of the morning to begin again to devanstate Egypt. Soon the power of Ra-Atum would become absolute, but he wouldn’t have no more people to reign on, so the Sun God thought to a way to save the rest of humanity from his terrible daughter without fail to keep the given word.

This is what he did: he ordered to his servants to go in the city of Abu to take all the available ochre; then he sent them to take the main priest of Ra to Eliopoli and all the slaves of his temple. To the main priest he ordered to pound the ochre and make a dye, and to the slaves to prepare the beer. For all night they worked and a bit after dawn the dye was mixed to the beer, in this way it seemed fresh blood.
Ra-Atum ordered the servants to put the capaciouses to the place where Sekhmet would have begin the new massacre, and ordered that the beer was poured in the camps flood them with red.
As soon as the light came back, Sekhmet plunged back on Egypt, and the first thing she saw was the huge pool of blood. She wallowed inside and got enchanted by her reflex on the red surface; she bow to drink, and she so like it that she dry up the pool. The beer was strong, so soon the Goddess was drunk; her head turning and she couldn’t remember why she had been sent to Egypt. With unfirm steps, she cam back to her father’s palace and felt asleep.

“Welcome sweet Sekhmet” said Ra-Atum “humanity will celebrate the day in which it survived to your fury, drinking strong beer every festivity”. Ra-Atum anyway was still angry for the betray of humanity and when after many days Sekhmet woke up she felt bad like never before and Ra-Atum asked her: “Does your head hurt? Do your cheeks burns? Do you feel bad?” and while he was spoking, the illness appeared in Egypt for the first time. Ra-Atum called for another Gods council and said: “I am too sad and tired to stay as a King of Egypt, leave me go away.”

After that Ra-Atum went on the Divine Cow and left Egypt for no returning.

 

Copyright © 2006 Lalaith Lomion | Design by Andreas Viklund