Creator
Nun
nnwHow it changed
Not a god who acts but a condition that persists. Nun is the dark, limitless water present before creation, and Egyptian thought had no idea of creation from nothing, so Nun never goes away: it stays outside and beneath the ordered world for as long as the world lasts, and the flood, the groundwater and the edge of sleep were all felt as places it still touches. In the Hermopolitan account the same water is split into the four paired qualities of the Ogdoad; here it is single.
Cult centre
None; a condition rather than a cult, though present at Hermopolis in the Ogdoad
Best attested
Old Kingdom onward, in the Pyramid Texts from the beginning
Family
- ConsortNaunet, in the Hermopolitan Ogdoad
Consort of Naunet in the Hermopolitan Ogdoad; otherwise outside the genealogies as the state before them.
Epithets
- “Father of the gods”
- “The oldest one”
How to recognise the figure
A man standing waist-deep in water, most often shown with both arms raised to lift the solar barque up into the sky at the first sunrise.
Appears in
c. 1300 BCE, though the text claims to be older
The Destruction of Mankind
Ra sends a goddess to punish humanity, then has to get her drunk to stop her finishing the job.
c. 2400 BCE, in the Pyramid Texts
Creation at Heliopolis
One god alone on a mound in the water, producing the first pair from himself.
Middle Kingdom onward, elaborated in the Graeco-Roman period
The eight of Hermopolis
Four frog-headed gods and four snake-headed goddesses, standing for the qualities of the water before there was anything.
Others in this group