ogdoad

In Egyptian mythology, the Ogdoad (Greek "οκτάδα" the number eight) were eight deities worshipped in Hermopolis during what is called the Old Kingdom, the third through sixth dynasties, dated between 2,686 to 2,134 B.C. First it was a cult having Hathor and Ra; later changing to a cult where Hathor and Thoth were the main deities over a much larger number of deities; and even later, Ra was assimilated into Atum-Ra through a merger with Atum of the Ennead cosmogeny.

The eight deities were arranged in four female-male pairs, the females were associated with snakes and the males were associated with frogs: Naunet and Nu, Amaunet and Amun, Kauket and Kuk, Huh and Hauhet. Apart from their gender, there was little to distinguish the female goddess from the male god in a pair; indeed, the names of the males are merely the male forms of the female name. Essentially, each pair represents the female and male aspect of one of four concepts, namely the primordial waters (Naunet and Nu), air or invisibility (Amunet and Amun), darkness (Kauket and Kuk), and eternity or infinite space (Hauhet and Huh).

Together the four concepts represent the primal, fundamental state of the beginning, they are what always was. In the myth, however, their interaction ultimately proved to be unbalanced, resulting in the arising of a new entity. When the entity opened, it revealed Ra, the fiery sun, inside. After a long interval of rest, Ra, together with the other deities, created all other things.

There are two main variations on the nature of the entity containing Ra:

Egg variant

The first version of the myth has the entity arising from the waters after the interaction as a mound of dirt, the Milky Way, which was deified as Hathor. In the myth an egg was laid upon this mound by a celestial bird. The egg contained Ra. In the original version of this variant, the egg is laid by a cosmic goose (it is not explained where the goose originates). However, after the rise of the cult of Thoth, the egg was said to have been a gift from Thoth, and laid by an Ibis, the bird with which he was associated.

Lotus variant

Later, when Atum had become assimilated into Ra as Atum-Ra, the belief that Atum emerged from a (blue) lotus bud, in the Ennead cosmogeny, was adopted and attached to Ra. The lotus was said to have arisen from the waters after the explosive interaction as a bud, which floated on the surface, and slowly opened its petals to reveal the beetle, Khepri, inside. Khepri, an aspect of Ra representing the rising sun, immediately turns into a weeping boy - Nefertum (young Atum), whose tears form the creatures of the earth. In later Egyptian history, as the god Khepri became totally absorbed into Ra, the lotus was said to have revealed Ra, the boy, straight away, rather than Ra being Khepri temporarily. Sometimes the boy is identified as Horus, although this is due to the merging of the myths of Horus and Ra into the one god Ra-Herakty, later in Egyptian history.

References

• Encyclopedie van de Mythologie. van Reeth, Dr. A. Tirion, Baarn: 1994 ISBN: 9051213042
• Ewa Wasilewska Creation Stories of the Middle East, Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2000, pp.60ff.
• George Hart The Routledge Dictionary Of Egyptian Gods And Goddesses, Routledge 2005, p.113
• Françoise Dunand, Christiane Zivie-Coche Gods and Men in Egypt: 3.000 BCE to 395 CE, Cornell University Press 2004
• John D. Baines, Byron Esely Shafer, David P. Silverman, Leonard H. Lesko Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths, and Personal Practice, Cornell University Press 1991

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