THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

of an event”. 66
This distinction is important, again following Morenz, for if the
beginning arises out of an event, there is an eventless existence prior to the beginning
of what is essentially a theogony, the genealogy of the gods: “Chaos is therefore to be
thought of not only as confused but also monotonous”. 67
The Egyptian experience of
the desert, which embodies the almost complete lack of a procreative principle, is the
backdrop against which the divine generation of political power along the Nile is set.
Seth, the ‘God of Confusion’ is situated in the desert itself, and his abode becomes the
very boundary between the transitory and the everlasting. It is this same boundary, as
Hornung points out, that exists between order and chaos, the existent and nonexistent.
68
One need not argue that these metaphysical speculations necessarily preceded
their incorporation into a political framework, nor need one insist that they necessarily
arose therefrom; rather we assume that the two occurred more or less simultaneously.
The absolute dependence of a procreative order upon the Nile, as set about by a vast
zone of death which in turn isolated the Egyptians from other world-views, these
factors profoundly shaped the Egyptian view of a natural world-order and, most
importantly, the feeling of certainty that their political will to power was the end
result of a theogonic process.
The Hermopolitan theology is also extremely important in previewing certain
key Gnostic mythological elements The formation of an Ogdoad, formed from the
four pairs of so-called Heh, or Chaos gods, is the main distinguishing feature. 69
A
Coffin Text depicts the creation of the eight gods “in chaos, in the Abyss, in darkness
and in gloom”. 70
In this system, Atum is likewise engendered out of Nun, and he also
brings forth Shu and Tefnut. However, the theologians were obviously much
concerned with explicating the nature of Nun and in positing a female presence
coterminous with Nun. Nun thus had his consort Nunet who, in contradistinction to
Nun’s primeval ocean, was the counter-heaven beneath. Nun and Nunet (or Naunet as
the Greeks called her) become the primordial couple of the Ogdoad which takes on
three other couples whose nature is likewise intended to define the nature of the
primeval substance out of which the main theogony was to proceed:
Nun/Naunet Huh/Hauhet Kuk/Kauket Amun/Amaunet
(watery abyss) (formlessness) (darkness) (hiddenness)
There is an interpenetration of ideas that exist in the Heh-gods; for example, Nun was
seen to embody an inert or indolent quality, while Huh, with his expanding qualities
66
Morenz, Egyptian Religion, 166.
67
Morenz, Egyptian Religion,166.
68
Hornung, Conceptions of God, 158.
69
There is no word for “chaos” as such in Egyptian; heh means “million” or “many”, and their
qualities indicate that this numerical surfeit was one of formlessness.
70
CT II Spell 65; R.O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, vol. 1, Spells 1-354
(Warminster: Aris & Phillips Ltd., 1978), 78.