THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

The creative principle as enacted in the Heliopolitan ennead is depicted in
profoundly sexual terms, indeed incestuous in that all sexual pairings occur “within
the family” as it were. 62
The first level of this process can be viewed as the essential
development of differentiation as principles, the male and female primal pair of Shu
and Tefnut. The second level of this theogony involves the primordial laying out of
physis, earth and sky, as embodied in Geb and Nut. The third level depicts the
establishment of nomos, the political-historical embodied in Osiris, Isis, Seth and
Nephthys. 63
This last level underlies the establishment of the Egyptian state and it is
here that we look to ascertain the purpose of the entire process.
The power of the Egyptian state, which was quintessentially theocratic,
required its own justification within the larger theogonic process. 64
Indeed, one could
say that, at least in the Old Kingdom oligarchies, a fourth level existed beneath the
third, peopled by the “royals” who enacted their own powers as extensions from the
archetypal level above in terms of the royal pair mirroring the procreative functions of
their heavenly counterparts. Above all, the divine theogony was to be located in the
sexual polarities of their specific physical beings. This was a recipe for a vigorous
nepotism in the power-politics of the time. 65
There can be little doubt that the Heliopolitan system arose out of the Egyptian
experience of the natural order. The very birth of the sun god each day was depicted
in these terms, and the dramatic contrast of the Nile with its sheath of “black land” as
set against the “red land” of the desert, would have amplified the Egyptian experience
of the procreative as a cosmogonic principle underlying its appearance within a virtual
wasteland. Here, too, we might expect an experiential ground for Egyptian views on
the Abyss. In both theologies, creation took place “at the first time” (sp tpy) which,
according to Morenz, does not just mean the beginning... it only means the beginning
62
This need not be viewed as the “grossly sensual” onanism as Morenz would have it,
Egyptian Religion, 163. Morenz attempts to ameliorate this image by showing that the verb
msi may mean “to bring forth” in various applications; however the Heliopolitan view of
creation clearly emphasises the sexual pairing of male and female powers above all else. See
Tobin, Theological Principles, 65, for a more convincing discussion on the employment of
the verb msi “to beget” or “to bear” in Egyptian thought.
63
With the exception of the Greek terms employed, I am following Tobin’s discussion here,
Theological Principles, 63-64.
64
For a more modern version of this I would mention Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), whose
main work Leviathan sets out to justify sovereignty; this he does by positing divine will at
work in the very manifestation of sovereign rule which, good or bad in various instances, is
always preferable to anarchy and disorder.
65
Incest was widespread amongst the royals, although not necessarily de rigueur, it is difficult
to ascertain if it was a distinct effort to ritually enact the larger theogonic process. On the
subject of divine kingship in the Old Kingdom, a recent and important work in the area
draws the following conclusions: Barry J. Kemp, “Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and
Second Intermediate Period,” in Ancient Egypt: A Social History, ed. B.G. Trigger, B.J.
Kemp, D. O’Connor, A.B. Lloyd (1983; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986), 73: “Any functional explanation must begin with the Osiris-Horus-Seth motif which,
as it were, underpinned kingship and one of whose main themes was to relate the person of
the living king in the closest possible way to his country’s royal ancestors, and thus to
ensure that the historical process of royal succession remained always embraced within a
central and authoritative body of myth.”.