THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

while giving rise to the cosmogony, forever maintained the threat of disorder in its
chaotic inert presence. It is the supreme Mystery in Egyptian speculation:
How the upper side of this sky exists is in uniform darkness,
the southern, northern, western and eastern limits of which are unknown,
these having been fixed in the Waters, in innertness.
there is no light of the Ram there: he does no appear there –
(a place) whose south, north, west and east land is unknown by the gods or
akhs,
there being no brightness there.
And as for every place void of sky and void of land, that is the entire Duat. 42
The initial triumph of light over darkness, procreative energy over innertness, is not a
decisive one. This is what prevents Egyptian thought from being monistic, for the
threat from darkness and disorder is forever maintained. 43
The second internal factor arises within the theogony itself in the form of Seth,
the disrupter, destroyer, and god of confusion. We shall return to this once the basic
theogonic structure has been described.
The Heliopolitan system, likely the historical root system for all others, details
the initial act of creation by Atum, in sexual terms, but without a partner. This
onanistic act initiates a procreative principle which is thereafter enacted amongst male
and female pairs of hypostases, commencing with Shu and Tefnut. The act itself takes
place against a backdrop of the disorderly abyss, a pre-temporal condition, a
substance-less state of potential which awaited a catalyst in order to bring forth
natural forces through creation:
I was born in the Abyss before the sky existed, before the earth existed, before
that which was to be made firm existed, before turmoil existed (PT Utt. 486,
§1040). 44
Out of the watery wastes of Nun, the pre-creation state of undifferentiation, a creative
principle initiates a theogonic process, thereby establishing a realm of order. 45
Atum,
42
From the cenotaph of Seti I, in J.P. Allen, Genesis in Egypt, 1.
43
Helmer Ringgren, “Light and Darkness in Ancient Egyptian Religion,” in Liber Amicorum:
Studies in Honour of Professor Dr. C.J. Bleeker (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969), 144.
44
R.O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1969), 173.
45
This is strongly suggestive of Plotinus’ concern with emanation and necessity arising within
the One. Rist sets out to demonstrate that, “if emanation follows from the One’s nature and
the One’s nature is caused by the One’s will, then emanation will be an act of a kind of a
free will and Plotinus will be freed from the shackles of a deterministic universe,” Plotinus:
the Road to Reality, 76. Rist’s analysis demonstrates very convincingly that this was likely
the intent of Plotinus. It seems to me that Plotinus, who was of course born and educated in
Egypt albeit within a Greek social milieu, advanced an embellishment upon the perennial
Egyptian depiction of the free-will of Atum (the first appearance of a “will to differentiate”
within Nun), the result of which was a non-deterministic universe for the Egyptians (or vice
versa), and a distinct lack of fatalism in their outlook.