Making the First Pair of Gods Alone
At the dawn of creation there was no one to couple with, so Atum brought forth the first pair of gods from his own body — the texts state plainly that he made the air god Shu and the moisture goddess Tefnut "with his hand" or from his spittle. Egyptian myth does not shy from the bodily side of creation: the cosmos was not spoken into being but grew out of a god's body. Shu and Tefnut then bore the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut, and the pantheon unfolded.
The Solar Barque and the Great Serpent
Each night the sun god Ra sails the "Barque of a Million Years" into the underworld (the Duat), passing through twelve hours of a realm of darkness. The chaos-serpent Apophis tries every night to swallow the solar barque and end the world, and the gods and the dead fight together to slay him. The next morning the sun is reborn on the eastern horizon — but the victory is never permanent, and the next night the battle repeats. Sunrise, to the Egyptians, was no matter-of-course of nature but a war that had to be won afresh every single night.