THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

Such stories of the heavens you would imagine to be detached tenements in
some happy isle of the blessed, I know not where. There the god even of the
Valentinians has his dwelling place in the attics. They call him indeed, as to his
essence, Perfect Aeon, but in respect of his personality, Before the Beginning,
and sometimes Bythos (Depth), a name which is most unfit for one who dwells
in the heights above! They describe him as unbegotten, immense, infinite,
invisible, and eternal. 47
With the Hermopolitan theology, we have noted their emphasis upon the primordial
ogdoad, the so-called Chaos gods. In this system Nun has been dilated into eight
apophatic qualities and has therefore had his Heliopolitan pre-eminence somewhat
diluted. Tertullian appears to be detailing exactly this phenomenon with respect to
diverging opinions among the Valentinians:
There are some who do not claim the first place for Bythus, but only a lower
one. They put their Ogdoad in the foremost rank. 48
The names of the primal ogdoad in this variant leave no doubt as to their derivation
from the apophatic Hermopolitan eight: “Inconceivable”, “Indescribable”, “Invisible”,
“Nameless”, “Unbegotten”, etc.
The final fall of Nun occurred in the Christian era in Egypt, from 400 C.E.
onwards, although it was facilitated in this by the ambiguity of the word as it was
used in Gnostic and magical texts. More than this, the association of the word with a
“pagan” deity was undoubtedly recognised and so Nun’s fate was sealed. Nun,
although venerated for the longest of ages throughout Egyptian history eventually
suffered from his proximity to Chaos and Disorder, forces which were conceptually,
as well as politically, set loose upon occupied Egypt in the Late Period and which
betokened the flight of Ma’at to a higher supernal realm. The Hermopolitan chaosgods
were found guilty by association and the darkness in Nun eventually overcame
his august properties as later Coptic texts demonstrate. However, this dysteliological
element of perversity, always symbolised by the need to slay Apophis who lived in
the Abyss, fulfilled an essential theogonic role in both Egyptian and Gnostic
cosmologies. Simply put, this need pertains to the whole question of the original
necessity for aeonial extension, god and goddess hypostasisation etc. The parent
wished to “find his root” as one Gnostic tractate puts it; likewise great pains were
taken by the Egyptian theologians to ensure that the orderly masculine nhh aspect, and
the feminine, chaotic, dt side of Nun remained ever-present: Nun upholds the solar
bark, he also contains the deadly and destructive Apep in the entrails of his darkness:
this is a perfect image for the duality of the Egyptian view of creation, and of the
Gnostic Parent and his or her “Depths”. Thousands of years later, Jakob Böhme was
to put into words the very conundrum addressed by the earliest Egyptian theologians,
that of a will to emanate appearing in a boundless pregnant void:
47
De Praes. Haer. IV.VII, , trans. P. Holmes, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. III (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 506-7
48
De Praes. Haer. IV.XXXV, , trans. P. Holmes, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. III (New York:
Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 519