THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

in the Heliopolitan version, is the positive principle of completion paradoxically at
work within the nothingness of a pre-existing chaotic state. Atum also actualises the
latent polarity of male/female by being essentially androgynous. 46
Perhaps the most important feature of this system is the emphasis upon the
androgyny of the primal creative power, and a balancing of masculine and feminine
energies in each subsequent creative act which occurs as follows:
Nun
º
ATUM (androgynous)
SHU – – – TEFNUT
GEB – – – -NUT
OSIRIS – – -ISIS SETH – -NEPHTHYS 47
The group of gods engendered by Atum form an ennead, and it must be
understood that while the first moment of differentiation is contained as potential in
the androgyny of Nun and Atum, and attains plural form in the birth of Shu and
Tefnut, the formation of the ennead establishes the cosmogonic grounds for an
enhanced plurality. 48
This impression is reinforced by the fact that not only are the
specific gods changeable, in particular Nephthys and Seth, but that the “enneads”
depicted in various cosmologies often do not number nine and are not, strictly
speaking, defined by the nonary psd.t. The great ennead of Karnak, for example,
numbered fifteen gods. 49
It is compelling to consider the idea early put forward by H.
Brugsch that this “nine-ness” is in fact a squared plural: 32 . With this we must agree,
for the critical moment of differentiation and generation occurs with Atum as
androgynous Parent, giving birth to Shu and Tefnut – squaring this threeness
46
There is a similar ambiguity in various Gnostic texts which develop a Heliopolitan-style
Pleroma of sexually generated pairs of aeons. The Primal Source, or “Parent” is presumably
androgynous, yet there are hints that he has a consort at various junctures. In some
Valentinian versions, this consort is named Sige (Silence) which perhaps mirrors the role of
an undifferentiated Nun (i.e. voiceless) as a de facto consort. Atum is on par with the
Gnostic figure of Autogenes in Valentinian thought, who likewise is “self-begetting”.
47
A coffin text from the Bubastite period, gives a first-person account of this process: “I am
one [Atum] who became two [Shu-Tefnut]. I am two who became four [Shu-Tefnut-Geb-
Nut]. I am four who became eight [Shu-Tefnut-Geb-Nut-Osiris-Isis-Seth-Nephythys],” From
the coffin of a priest of Amun in the 22nd Dynasty: Hermann Kees, Der Götterglaube im
alten Ägypten (1941; reprint, Berlin, 1956), 171.
48
Winfried Barta, Untersuchungen zum Götterkreis der Neunheit (München: Deutscher
Kunstverlag, 1973), 24: “Einem ‘Neungötterkreis’ stand damit ein ‘Vielgötterkreis’
gegenüber.”
49
Barta , Untersuchungen zum Götterkreis der Neunheit, lists 84 known enneads in Egyptian
thought.