EGYPTIAN COSMOGONY AND THEOGONY
('The Book of Overthrowing Apophis')
The following text is from 'The Book of Overthrowing Apophis,' a late
work, but one which conserves basic material from a relatively early period.
The Lord of All, after having come into being, says: I am he who came into being
as Khepri (i.e., the Becoming One). When I came into being, the beings came into
being, all the beings came into being after I became. Numerous are those who
became, who came out of my mouth, before heaven ever existed, nor earth came
into being, nor the worms, nor snakes were created in this place. 1, being in
weariness, was bound to them in the Watery Abyss. I found no place to stand. I
thought in my heart, I planned in myself, I made all forms being alone,
before I ejected Shu, before I spat out Tefnut 1
before any other who was in me had become. Then I planned in my own heart, and
many forms of beings came into being as forms of children, as forms of their
children. I conceived by my hand, I united myself with my hand, I poured out of
my own mouth. I ejected Shu, I spat out Tefnut. It was my father the Watery
Abyss who brought them up, and my eye followed them (?) while they became far
from me. After having become one god, there were (now) three gods in me. When I
came into being in this land, Shu and Tefnut jubilated in the Watery Abyss in
which they were. Then they brought with them my eye. After I had joined together
my members, I wept over them, and men came into being out of the tears which
came out of my eyes.2 Then she (the eye) became
enraged3 after she came back and had found that I
had placed another in her place, that she had been replaced by the Brilliant
One. Then I found a higher place for her on my brow4
and when she began to rule over the whole land her fury fell down on the
flowering (?) and I replaced what she had ravished. I came out of the flowering
(?), I created all snakes, and all that came into being with them. Shu and
Tefnut produced Geb and Nut; Geb and Nut produced out of a single body Osiris,
Horus the Eyeless one 5 Seth, Isis, and
Nephthys, one after the other among them. Their children are numerous in this
land.
Notes
1 Shu the air, Tefnut the moist.
2 Same myth in the Book of Gates, division 4
(The Tomb of Ramesses VI, P. 169).
3 An allusion to the myth of the Eye of the sun god which
departs into a foreign land and is brought back by Shu and Tefnut. Another
aspect. of this myth is to be found in the Book of the Divine Cow.
4 The fire-spitting snake, the uraeus on the
head of the god.
5 The Elder Horus of Letopolis.
Translation and notes by Alexandre Piankoff, in his The Shrines of
Tut-ankh-amon (New York, 1955), P. 24. Cf. the translation by John A.
Wilson, in ANET, pp. 6-7
Etext from http://alexm.here.ru/mirrors/www.enteract.com/jwalz/Eliade/054.html.