In Egyptian mythology, the Ogdoad were eight primordial deities. They were also called the Hehu or Infinites, the celestial rulers of a cosmic age.
They were believed to be the origin of all myths and legends.
The Ogdoad predate the Egyptian religious system currently recognized and more commonly known Egyptian gods, such as Osiris, his sister/wife Isis, and the emissary of the underworld, Anubis.
References to the Ogdoad date to the Old Kingdom of Egypt, and even at the time of composition of the Pyramid Texts towards the end of the Old Kingdom, they appear to have been antiquated and mostly forgotten by everyone except religious experts. They are frequently mentioned in the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom.
The Ogdoad were concerned with the preservation and flourishing of the celestial world, and later—as well as indirectly—the formation of the human race.
According to ancient Egyptian myths, before the world was formed, there was a watery mass of dark, directionless chaos. In this chaos lived the Ogdoad. The Ogdoad was a system of eight deities, four gods and their female aspect (the number four was considered to represent completeness).
Texts of the Late Period describe them as having the heads of frogs (male) and serpents (female), and they are often depicted in this way in reliefs of the Ptolemaic Kingdom.
The eight deities were arranged in four male-female pairs (the female names being merely derivative female forms of the male names).
These deities were Nun and Naunet represented the primeval waters; Heh and Hauhet represented eternity; Kek and Kuaket represented darkness; and Amun and Amunet represented air (or that which is hidden). However, the gods difffer from one source to another.
E. A. Wallis Budge (1904) compares the concept to a group of four pairs of primeval gods mentioned in the Babylonian Enûma Eliš, viz. Abzu and Tiamat, Lahmu and Lahamu, Anshar and Kishar, Anu and Nudimmud.
Primeaval darkness was sometimes represented by Gereh and Gerehet and Heh and Hehet are sometimes included as forces of chaos, possibly representing the currents of the primeaval waters. When Amun rose in prominence as a creator god in his own right, he and Amunet were replaced by Nia and Niat, gods of the void.
Nun and Nunet
Nun (Nu) is referred in Egyptian mythology as the “father of the god”. The name Nun means “primeval waters”. Nunet (or Naunet) is the female aspect of Nun. She is depicted as “the Mother of all Mothers”.
The name Nun means “waters”. They represented chaos and the primeval waters to which everything have sprouted from nothingness.
Nun appearance portrayed as a bearded man or a frog headed man with blue green skin which represents water and wearing the palm frond that symbolized long life, one on his head, and another on his hand. Sometimes, Nun also depicted as man carrying a solar bark on his upraised arms. On the boat standing is by eight deities.
Nunet, like her three sisters Kauket, Amaunet and Hauhet, was represented as a woman with the head of a snake, mostly that of a cobra, or as a snake itself.
Nunet is believed to be the goddess of the primordial abyss to the underworld. She guards the twelve veils of negation believed to be the flaws of the original creation. Access to these cracks would lead to the void that was Nun. She embodies the primal womb – where cycles of life, death and rebirth continues for all creatures and beings. She is also believed to be the mother of the sun god together with the composite deity known as Nun-Ptah.
In Khumunu, she is believed to be the goddess who supported the mountains that helped support the sky where the sun god was born from the watery abyss.
She is rarely mentioned as an individual deity outside her connection with Nun. Together they do not have a specific cult center yet they represented sacred lakes and underground streams that are known to be found in the country.
Huh and Hauhet
Huh is the male aspect and Hauhet also known as Heh or Hehet is the female aspect.
The name Huh also spelled as Heh, Hah, Hauh, Huah, or Hahuh literally means “endlessness.” They represented space, eternity and infinity. They also symbolizes limitless, long life, intelligence and a perceptive mind.
Huh is sometimes depicted as a crouching man holding a palm stem in each hand with shen ring at the base of each palm stem, the Egyptian sign of long life. The shen ring symbolized infinity. The image of Heh with his arms raised was the hieroglyph for the number one million, which was essentially considered equivalent to infinity in Egyptian mathematics. So, he was also given the title as “the god of millions of years”.
Hauhet represented fire and had the head of a cat in some myths. Most often, she is just thought of as a representation of her husband Huh and not a separate goddess. She exists, as scholars would say, because of the duality of the nature of the Ogdoad deities. However, legend has it, that the cosmic egg (the first act of creation) was believed to have arisen from the hands of Hauhet and Huh out of the proto matter. Out of the egg, Ra, the sun and light god, arises thus the creation of life in the world. Because of this, together with Huh, they represented the 12th hour of the night welcoming the rebirth of the sun.
Kek and Kauket
Kek (Kuk, Keku, or Pepe.. lol, j/k) is the deification of the primordial concept of darkness. The name Kek means darkness, the god of the darkness of chaos before the creation was began.
Kek's female counterpart was Kauket also known as Keket.
Kek and Kauket represented darkness, obscurity and night. In some aspects they also represent night and day, and were called "raiser up of the light" and the "raiser up of the night", respectively.
Like her Ogdoad brothers and sisters, Kek was represented as a frog-headed man, and the female form as a serpent-headed woman.
Amun and Amaunet
Her name, jmnt, is a feminine noun that means "The Hidden One". She is a member of the Ogdoad of Hermopolis, who represented aspects of the primeval existence before the creation: Amunet was paired with Amun — whose name means "The Hidden One" too, with a masculine ending (jmn) — within this divine group, from the earliest known documentation. Such pairing of deities is characteristic of the religious concepts of the ancient Egyptians, being the Ogdoad itself composed by four balanced couples of deities or deified primeval concepts.
It seems likely that Amunet may have been artificially conceived by theologians as a complement to Amun, rather than being an originally independent deity. The Pyramid Texts mention the beneficent shadow of Amun and Amunet:
O Amun and Amunet! You pair of the gods, who joined the gods with their shadow.
— PT 446c
The fourth pair appears with varying names; sometimes the name Amun is replaced by Ni, Nenu, Nu, or Qerḥ, and the name Amunet Qerḥet by Ennit, Nenuit, Nunu, Nit, or Qerḥet.
Amun and Amaunet were deities having several different characteristics during the long history of the pantheon of Ancient Egypt.
But initially, they were the two aspects of the primordial concept of air and invisibility in the Ogdoad cosmogony. Amun's name translates into the “Hidden One” suggestive of his role as the invisible god of the wind and air. Their powers are also connected to the words silence, stillness, mystery and obscurity.
As with all goddesses in the Ogdoad, Amunet was depicted either as an Egyptian cobra snake, or as a snake-headed woman. The male deities in the Ogdoad generally were depicted with the head of a frog.
Amun is believed to be a self-created god. Amaunet was said to be the mother who is father, implying that she was a creator who needed no male to procreate.
As the deites became more significant, eventually both aspects of the abstract concept were depicted as independent deities and identified as a pair.
Amun and Amaunet changed in personification over the duration of the dynasties of Egypt.
Because Amun represented the element of "hiddenness" or "obscurity" while the others represented more clearly defined concepts such as "darkness," "water," and "infinity." Amun as "The Obscure One" left room for people to define him according to their own understanding of what they needed him to be.
The Cosmic Egg
There are at minimum three different views from the Egyptians that succeeded the time of the Ogdoad as to how the world as they knew it came into creation.
The first held that the world was born from a cosmic egg created by the gods of the Ogdoad. It was invisible as the sun had not yet been born. When it cracked, it revealed the “bird of light" (occasionally the egg was said to contain air, associated with Amun and Amaunet). This form of the sun was called Ra, one of the only Egyptian deities to have surpassed the laws of time to be accepted by both the followers of the Ogdoad and the later religion, and thus the world was born.
Alternatively, a second version says that the egg was laid by an ibis, (a bird sacred to Thoth). However, the cult of Thoth developed after the original myth of the Ogdoad, so it is probable that this story was an attempt to incorporate Thoth into the pre-existing Ogdoad (who were sometimes known as “the souls of Thoth” or the “Eastern Souls”, eight baboons who helped the sun to rise every morning).
Another belief is that the universe was created from a lotus flower that "rose from the Sea of the Two Knives". Within the petals was the same sun god as mentioned above, Ra, who then forged the cosmos.
And finally, another opinion begins in the same way—a lotus flower rising from the sea—however, within the flower was not Ra but one of the sacred scarab beetles representing the sun. This beetle then transformed into a boy whose tears made humanity, and went by the name Nefertum ("young Amun").
It is also interesting to note the similarity between the Ogdoad and the description of the creation of the world found in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament).
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