DeConick A.D

56
THE GNOSTIC TRUE MAN
describe the cosmos coming into existence as an act of Atum coming to
an awareness of his self, making a transition from lying inert and weary
in primeval water to becoming conscious and active. Atum stands up on
a mound, or he begins to writhe around as a serpent in the primal ocean,
encircled in his own coils.
As Atum gains awareness and comes into being, he is called by the
name Kheprer, which means “The One Who Comes into Being” (Pyramid
Texts 1587). Kheprer consequently manifests himself in the cosmos as
Rê, the sun god who rises every morning. In the Book of the Dead, this
process of becoming is expressed poetically (Book of the Dead 17):
I am Atum in rising up.
I am the only One.
I came into existence in Nun.
I am Rê in his rising in the beginning . . .
I am the Great God who came into existence by himself.
What happens when Atum is brought to consciousness and realizes
his aloneness? He must diversify or go mad in the total isolation. For
the first time, he experiences the erotic, the desire for others, and has an
erection. “I am the one who came into being as Atum,” he says. “It was
in Heliopolis that my penis became erect. I grasped hold of it and came
to orgasm. Thus it was that the siblings, Shu and Tefnut, were born”
(Pyramid Texts 1248).
But how were they born? The ancient Egyptians pictured Atum as a
hermaphrodite whose mouth is his womb. He creates through a sexual
process of autogenesis, where he inseminates his own uterine mouth. His
offspring are differentiations of himself, one male and the other female.
In the speeches of the Coffin Texts, Atum is shown to be the primeval
hermaphrodite who creates his children, Shu the god of air and Tefnut
the god of moisture, when he spits them out of his mouth in a great
exhalation or a roar. Shu, whose own breath eventually enlivens the human
body, is the manifestation of life, while Tefnut is the manifestation
of maat (truth).
Shu and Tefnut, a gendered couple, mate, producing Geb, the earth,
and Nut, the sky. The first Ogdoad, the eight gods, is completed with the
birth of the children of Geb and Nut, who are none other than Osiris,