This post is the first (appropriately) in a planned series in which I will discuss Ancient Egyptian cosmology and my own musings about the nature of reality, good and evil, and other big questions.
Ancient Egyptian notions of the creation of the cosmos are surprisingly physics-friendly, especially that of the city of Khemenu (aka Hermopolis), where the Ogdoad, a group of eight deities, were worshipped.
Let me clarify this up front: I do not posit some bizarre “Ancient Aliens” theory whereby a race with advanced physics taught the Standard Model of Particle Physics to the Egyptians. I’m saying that in retrospect, the Hermopolitan myth can be mapped onto physics as a set of symbols.
See, the deities were four male/female pairs1: Nun and Naunet (“waters”), who represented the primeval waters, from which the cosmos would emerge; Heh and Hehet (“infinity, uncountableness”), who represented how endless those waters are, unbounded in both time and space; Kek2 and Keket (“darkness”), who actually help change night to day and back again, thus they do bring light; and … well, here it gets complicated; in some early versions the fourth pair are Qereh and Qerehet (“night”), but in later versions they are usually Amun and Amunet (“hidden”). You may know Amun from other Egyptian myths in which he is the ruler of the gods and the personal protector of anyone in need.
Four basic forces, in some sense … and then a fifth one that’s secretly in charge of it all? So now Amun is the Higgs boson?
Anyhow, these four pairs somehow converge and combine and produce the primordial mound from which the sun and the rest of the cosmos burst forth.
So it’s the Big Bang. Got it. (Again, I’m not saying the Egyptians knew the Standard Model of either particle physics or cosmology. I’m saying their myths make convenient symbols here.)
Notes
- There are lots of variants of anglicised spelling for these names. I’m going with pretty simple ones.
- Yes, kek. To make matters worse, he was often depicted with the head of a frog (as were the other males in the Ogdoad). No, the Egyptians did not foresee the 2016 Election and all the Trumpist insanity with Pepe, etc.