THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

But Kalyptos is a single aeon; he has four different aeons. In accord with each
of the aeons they have powers, not like first and second powers, for all these are
eternities... all of them exist in one, dwelling together and perfected individually
in fellowship and filled with the aeon which really exists (1.115.14-116.6) 38
It is the description of these four as “eternities” that denotes the Heh-god function,
along with the oxymoronic description of their natures that occurs a little further on in
the text:
The knowledge of the knowledge is there together with a setting up of ignorance
Chaos is there and a perfect place for all of them, and they are strange. True
light (is there), also enlightened darkness along with he who does not really
exist: it does not really exist. (117.4-13) 39
The traditional oxymoronic depiction of Nun’s innertness which still has this
moving to and fro of latency within it is to be found in the other “Kalyptos” tractate
Allogenes:
Since it is impossible for the [individuals] to comprehend the Universal One
[situated in the] place that is higher than perfect, they apprehend by means of a
First [Thought] – (it is) not as Being (alone), [but] it is along with the latency of
Existence that he confers Being. He [provides] everything for [himself] since it
is he who shall come to be when he recognises himself. And he is [One] who
subsists as a [cause] and source [of Being] and [an] immaterial [material and an]
innumerable [number and a formless] form and a [shapeless] shape and a
powerlessness and a power and an insubstantial substance and a motionless
motion and an inactive activity. [Yet he is a] provider of [provisions and] a
divinity [of] divinity...
And that One moved motionlessly in that which governs, lest he sink into the
boundless by means of another activity of Mentality. (48.9-32 & 53.10-14) 40
A most compelling depiction of Nun and the Chaos (Heh) gods is to be found at the
very beginning of The Untitled Text:
This is the First Parent of the Entireties. This is the first Eternity. This is the
King of the Unvanquishable. This is he in whom the Entireties move to and
fro. 41
This is he who gave form to them within himself. This is the self-
38
Coptic transcription from NHS, vol.XXXI, 198, 200.
39
Ibid., 202.
40
Coptic transcription from NHS, vol. XXVIII, 198, 208.
41
Charlotte A. Baynes, A Coptic Gnostic Treatise (Cambridge: University of Cambridge
Press, 1933), 41, claims the Coptic CWPM comes from the hieroglyphic inscriptions
associated with the waters of the innundation. I have been unable to completely detail this.
Adolf Erman and Hermann Grapow, Wörterbuch der Aegyptisch Sprache, Band 4 (Leipzig:
J.C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1930), 198, list the associations with the waters, “to
weep”, also “a characteristic of Apophis.” Vycichl, Dictionaire Étymologique de la Langue