the Book of the Dead ( PDF )

The Legend Of RA And Isis.
heaven nor earth, and when neither gods had been born, nor men created, the god Tmu was the father of
human beings,[1] even before death came into the world. The first act of Tmu was to create from his own
body the god Shu and the goddess Tefnut;[2] and afterwards Seb the earth and Nut the sky came into
being. These were followed by Osiris and Isis, Set and Nephthys.
Dr. Brugsch's version of the origin of the gods as put forth in his last work on the subject[3] is somewhat
different. According to him there was in the beginning neither heaven nor earth, and nothing existed
except a boundless primeval mass of water which was shrouded in darkness and which contained within
itself the germs or beginnings, male and female, of everything which was to be in the future world. The
divine primeval spirit which formed an essential part of the primeval matter felt within itself the desire to
begin the work of creation, and its word woke to life the world, the form and shape of which it had
already depicted to itself. The first act of creation began with the formation of an egg[4] out of the
primeval water, from which broke forth Ra, the immediate cause of all life upon earth. The almighty
power of the divine spirit embodied itself in its most brilliant form in the rising sun. When the inert mass
of primeval matter felt the desire of the primeval spirit to begin the work of creation, it began to move,
and the creatures which were to constitute the future world were formed
[1. Recueil de Travaux, t. viii., p. 104 (l. 664). The passage reads:--
mes Pepi pen au atf Tem an xepert pet an
Gave birth to Pepi this father Tmu [when] not was created heaven, not
xepert ta an xepert reth an mest neteru an xepert met
was created earth, not were created men, not were born the gods, not was created death.
2. Recueil de Travaux, I. vii., p. 170 (l. 466).
3. Religion und Mythologie, p. 101.
4 A number of valuable facts concerning the place of the egg in the Egyptian Religion have been collected by Lefébure,
Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, t. xvi., Paris, 1887, p. 16 ff.]
{p. xcix}
according to the divine intelligence Maa. Under the influence of Thoth, or that form of the divine
intelligence which created the world by a word, eight elements, four male and four female, arose out of
the primeval Nu, which possessed the properties of the male and female. These eight elements were
called Nu and Nut,[1] Heh and Hehet,[2] Kek and Keket,[3] and Enen and Enenet,[4] or Khemennu, the
"Eight," and they were considered as primeval fathers and mothers.[5] They are often represented in the
forms of four male and four female apes who stand in adoration and greet the rising sun with songs and
hymns of praise,[6] but they also appear as male and female human forms with the heads of frogs or
serpents.[7] The birth of light from the waters, and of fire from the moist mass of primeval matter, and of
Ra from Nu, formed the starting point of all mythological speculations, conjectures, and theories of the
Egyptian priests.[8] The light of the sun gave birth to itself out of chaos, and the conception of the future
world was depicted in Thoth the divine intelligence; when Thoth gave the word, what he commanded at
once took place by means of Ptah and Khnemu, the visible representatives of the power which turned
Thoth's command into deed. Khnemu made the egg of the sun,[9] and Ptah gave to the god of light a
finished body.[10] The first paut of the gods consisted of Shu, Tefnut, Seb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set,
Nephthys and Horus, and their governor Tmu or Atmu.[11]
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