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Nun

AlsoNun

The Primordial Chaos-Water That Preceded All Things

The Beginning of Chaos and Order · Primordial Creators
Primordial WaterChaosBefore Creation

Who they are

Before sky, gods, and light, there was only Nun — the boundless, dark, formless primordial water. He is not a created god but the state "before creation happened" itself: still, deep, holding every possibility. It was from the first mound that rose out of this water that the creator god Atum-Ra brought himself into being. Nun never vanished: the Egyptians believed this chaos-water still surrounds the ordered world on every side and beneath it, that the Nile's flood is his gift, and that the end of the world will be his swallowing all things again and returning them to the formless. He is the earliest embodiment of an old intuition — that order is born from chaos, and will one day return to it.

Key stories

The First Mound

Every year, after the Nile's waters recede, the first high ground to emerge from the mud is the first to dry and the first to sprout life — and the Egyptians imagined creation as the same scene: from the boundless waters of Nun rose the first "primordial mound" (the benben stone), on which the creator god brought himself into being. The temples of Heliopolis and Memphis each claimed to stand on the exact spot of that mound. The shape of the pyramid, by one account, is that mound of creation turned to stone.

The Water Around the World

In the Egyptian view of the cosmos, the ordered world is only a bubble floating within Nun. Above the body of the sky goddess Nut there is water, and beneath the earth there is water too; the underworld the sun crosses each night is likewise steeped in this primordial water. This is not fear but a humble clarity: order (Maat) is won from chaos, and must be maintained day after day by the gods and the pharaoh — let it slacken, and Nun will close over it again at any moment.

Relationships

Created
☀️Atum-Ra　Atum-Ra brought himself into being from the waters of Nun

Appears in

CreationThe Primordial Water of Nun
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