In Thebes, the little town of Medinet Habu has, nestled on its low crest, the ruins of the magnificent 18th Dynasty Mortuary Temple of Rameses III.
Medinet Habu, a small village situated a little more than 2 miles to the south of the Ramesseum, was called Djanet by the ancient Egyptians and, according to popular belief, was the place where Amun appeared for the first time. From ancient times, Medinet Habu was the place of worship dedicated to this god, as evidenced by the crumbled ruins of a temple of the 18th Dynasty dedicated to Amun of Djanet, built during the time of Hatshepsut and Thutmoses III, atop the ruins of a still more ancient temple. This was what later induced Rameses III to order the construction there of his own memorial temple.
Growing up in the royal palace in Thebes, Moses would have known this place well and worshipped in its sacred halls. It was here that Moses was raised in his early years and spent the first 40 years of his life. He would have been taught not only the mathematics and sciences afforded a royal education in the courts of 18th Dynasty Egypt, but also would have experienced the worship and religious practices of the day.
The Ogdoad is the Egyptian creation myth that Moses would have been very familiar with and that some say laid his basis for writing about the creation in the Book of Genesis. The Ogdoad myth originated in Hermopolis and consisted of eight personified primeval forces, each of which was represented in the four couples of deities. In Egyptian cosmology, the number 4 represented the number of totality and completeness. The significance of these four primeval couples is not easy to understand today, for they lack any greater mythological context, and neither is there much substantive personification of the four couples of deities.4
The couples of the Ogdoad:
Nu and Naunet, representing the primeval waters.
Heh and Hauhet, signifying boundlessness.
The Inner Gate of the Ramesseum, in Luxor, Egypt. The Ramesseum is the temple complex of Ramses III, built on the site of what is now known as Medinat Habu, “The House of a Million Years.” On this same site are the ruins of a much more ancient temple in which Moses would have learned of the Ogdoad.
Photo courtesy of Dr. John T. Ward and Dr. Maria Nilsson, The Sirius Project copyright 2011. Used with permission.
Kek and Kauket, signifying darkness.
Amun and Amaunet, signifying air.
The four couples of the Ogdoad are less about their personalities and characteristics than they represent elemental forces in the creation of the world. The cosmogony they represent are the primeval physical matters of existence rather than the actual springing to life of the organic world, and of these eight deities, only Amun developed into a remarkable status and moved to Thebes with his female counterpart, Amaunet. These four pairs of deities also complement each other: For every “male” deity is the “female” counterpart, to make up a whole, according to the ancient Egyptian complementary way of thinking. The males are shown with the heads of frogs and the females with heads of snakes; such physical attributes are frequently said in ancient texts to inhabit the primeval waters.
At el-Ashmunein were unearthed only very scant inscriptions of the Ogdoad, telling us very little about this cosmogony, but they appear ever so
subtly in the writings of Moses. The main part of evidence is taken from Theban monuments, which were pieced together in 1929 by Kurt Sethe in his survey, Amun und die Acht Urgotter von Hermopolis,5 but the earliest references to the Hermopolitan cosmogony is found in the Pyramid Texts:
You have your offering-bread, O Niu and Nenet, you two protectors of the gods Who protect the gods with your shadow. You have your offering-bread, O Amun and Amaunet, You two protectors of the gods Who protect the gods with your shadow. You have your offering-bread, O Atum and Ruti, Who yourselves created your godheads and your persons. O Shu and Tefenet who made the gods, Who begot the gods and established the gods….6
These deities were said to comprise the very substances out of which creation was brought to the universe. At Hermopolis, the opinion was that at some point these eight primeval beings interacted, whereupon a great explosion occurred, which somehow laid free the Primeval Mound. The mound later became Hermopolis, though at first it was called the Isle of Flame, as the sun god was said to be born and to rise there for the very first time. Hermopolis claimed to predate the cosmogony of Heliopolis. Just as other creation centers maintained that their location was the original place where creation first had come into being, so was also the case at Hermopolis.
The Ogdoad were the fathers and the mothers who came into being at the start, who gave birth to the sun and who created Atum. From there on the rest of the cosmos is developed. But there are some twists to the story in which the eight divinities of the Ogdoad are thought to jointly have created what is known as the “cosmic egg” out of the primeval waters (Nun). This egg was invisible as it was created already before the sun came into being. From this egg, according to some sources, the bird of light, an aspect of the sun-god, burst. Other sources say that the egg was filled with air, the association of the elemental couple of Amun and Amaunet. According to the Coffin Texts, this is the first act of creation:
O Atum give me this sweet air which is your nostrils
for I am this egg which is in the Great Cackler,
I am the guardian of this great prop which separates the earth from the sky.
If I live, it will live; if I grow old, it will grow old;
if I breathe the air, it will breathe the air.
I am he who splits iron, I have gone round about the egg,
(even I) the Lord of Tomorrow.7
In another version of this myth, the egg is laid by a goose, the Primeval Goose, or the Gengen Wer, with which Amun was associated as the creator. The goose is thought to carry the egg out of which creation comes. This myth is only given in fragments, but obviously it states that the sun in the form of a bird came out of the egg that the Primeval Goose laid in the waters of creation. It is also a form of Amun in his creator-god aspect.
The act of the creation, as performed by the Ogdoad, takes this basic chronological order:
1. The Ogdoad created existence in the form of the Primeval Mound or in the form of the cosmic egg.
2. The cosmic egg was created by the Primeval Goose.
3. The cosmic egg held air, or 4. The cosmic egg held a bird.
5. And the bird was a form of the sun.
To sum it all up, all forms of initial creation happened in the darkness of the primeval waters. Creation was circular, as was the egg. Birth led to decline-death-rebirth-renewal of the cyclic existence. The significance of all this is that some things existed before existence. One of these in preexistence was Nun. Another was primeval beings such as frogs and snakes, frogs being associated with fertility, snakes being associated with circularity and rebirth (that is, they shed their old skin). The first creator-god is created out of Nun by some interaction between all these primeval creatures. Then the creator-god creates the rest of the cosmos.
These are the things Moses would have experienced in his religious training, growing up in the royal courts of Egypt. But how are they applicable to our study of the Nephilim, and why are these backdrops important to their study? Because the setting of a solid foundation is critical to an examination of the words he wrote in the Book of Genesis. As I stated earlier, it is important to sludge through some of what seems to be mundane history in order to understand why certain things were said in certain ways. Understanding what motivated Moses to write the things he did is an
all-important step to understanding the objectives of the things he wrote about.
Let’s look at how the Egyptian myth of creation was a foundation for what Moses wrote in the Book of Genesis.