THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

existent. In essence, the whole issue of latency, or potential, is at the heart of this view
of the godhead: that which comes to be through the collective efforts of the chaosgods
and their female partners already “was” in a dormant state. This precise moment
is also clearly delimited by the Egyptians as a shift from this primal inchoate Monad
into two. This is the basis for an essential dualism that is to be found throughout
Egyptian thought: light and darkness, sky and earth, the two lands, dynamic and
static, male and female, and finally even time is divided into two aspects: nhh and dt.
We can also draw in an interesting connection with the practice of incubation.
This access to the divine through dreams actually occurred before the Ptolemaic
period and there is a strong sense here of “accessing” Nun in this regard. A. de Buck
has written a provocative interpretation of this phenomenon, wherein he maintains
that sleep itself was regarded as a descent into Nun, hence the feeling of renewal that
results from it 14
: Nun is, afterall, source of all life. 15
The sun and the dead king
themselves make the same journey through his depths.
It is in the Late Period that a profound transformation of religious views
occurs, even if these results are more dramatically apparent beyond the temple
precincts. Foreign subjugation under the Persians, Greeks, and finally Romans,
created a need for redrawn boundaries, definitions of evil, and eschatology. In this
process key divinities such as Seth and Nun can be seen to reflect the mythos-shift
more than other deities for the simple reason that their own natures had always been
depicted in proximity to the forces of darkness and chaos now set loose upon the land.
Certainly Nun was still depicted on the walls of all the Ptolemaic temples in his usual
form and is well represented in the larger Ptolemaic temples of the south, often
presented in fusion with Ptah (Kalabscha, Philae, Edfu), Sobek (Kom Ombo), Hapy
(Opet temple, Karnak), Horus (Opet temple, Dendara), and Khnum-Amun (Esna).
Even in poorly preserved temples one finds depictions of Nun on the few standing
walls left (e.g. Tod, Medamud, Mut temple at Karnak, Behbeit el Hagar). Nun, along
with the entire Hermopolitan Ogdoad forms the large front-court relief at the Opet
temple. This temple was quite popular in Roman times in association with childbirth
and it is surely no coincidence to find inscriptional variations here that make use of
the child determinative in Nun:
In Esna we have a number of depictions of the Ptolemaic kings offering
incense to the Hermopolitan Ogdoad, and in one case, specifically to Nun and his
female consort Naunet. From these and other examples too numerous to cite here, we
draw the obvious conclusion that Nun was well represented in all the great temples of
Egypt well into Roman times. We can be sure that this inclusion was not simply rote
or formulaic; Ptolemaic inscriptional evidence shows that his role was being actively
developed in theological terms, and that his mysterious traditional pre-eminence was
maintained within the temple precincts. The Opet temple is important for it shows
14
Adriaan de Buck, De Godsdienstige Opvatting van den Slaap Inzonderheid in het Oude
Egypte (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1939).
15
Alexandre Piankoff, The Shrines of Tut-Ankh-Amon, 24: “...the outflow of the primeval
ocean, the Watery Abyss, Nun, in which before the Creation reposed the germs of all living
things.”