Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [36]
Keeping this in mind helps to explain why the Egyptian Creation myths defy a simple, “logical” narrative. These are stories that go back to the most distant moments of early human civilization, and then evolve and change over the course of centuries. While some details differ in these various Egyptian Creation stories, there are similarities and recurring characters. All share a central belief that the sun—or more precisely, a sun god—was at the center of the creation, which emerged from a primeval watery chaos called Nun, an endless, formless deep that existed at the beginning of time and was the source of the Nile.
The primeval ocean of chaos that existed before the first gods came into being, these waters contained all of the potential for life, awaiting only the emergence of a creator. This watery creation provides an intriguing parallel to the opening lines of the Bible—“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”
Probably the oldest version of Egyptian Creation myth came from Memphis, the ancient political capital of Egypt. Memphis is the city’s Greek name. The original Egyptian name is translated as “White Walls” and referred to the enclosure around the sacred city. Here, the belief held that the world was created by a very old creator god called Ptah, temples to whom were built all over Egypt. Most scholars believe that the Greeks translated the Egyptian word Hewet-ka-Ptah, which literally means “Temple of the Spirit of Ptah,” as Aeguptos, and it was eventually transformed into the word we now use as Egypt.
A patron of craftsmen, Ptah was able to create the world simply by thought and word alone—” through his heart and through his tongue,” as ancient priestly writings put it. Simply by speaking a string of names, Ptah produced all of Egypt, the other gods, including the sun god Atum (see below), the cities and temples. In other words, this Creation story was similar to the much later biblical Creation in Genesis 1, in which the Hebrew God speaks and creates the universe. (“God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”) For centuries, scholars have speculated and argued about whether the parallels between the Egyptian and Hebrew Creation accounts are just coincidence or whether the Egyptian Creation stories could have influenced the ancient Hebrews. It is an unanswered, and possibly unanswerable, question.
Manifested by the sacred Apis bull in Memphis, the most important of all sacred animals in Egypt, Ptah was seen as a creator deity, and Egyptian kings were crowned in his temple. But Ptah never rose to become Egypt’s supreme god and, at a later time, Ptah was merged with other gods to become a god of the dead. The Greeks later equated Ptah with their blacksmith god Hephaestus, known by the Romans as Vulcan. In another minor myth, Ptah was given credit for the miraculous defeat of an Assyrian army when he instructed an army of rats to gnaw through the attackers’ bowstrings and the leather on their shields, forcing them to retreat. One of the most recognizable representations of Ptah is a small gilded statue found in the tomb of Tutankhamun.
A second major Egyptian Creation story came from Hermopolis, farther south in central Egypt, a prosperous city built in honor of the god known as Thoth. This god of wisdom and transmitter of knowledge is credited with the invention of writing. The ancient Egyptian name of this city was Khemnu, and Hermopolis was its later Greek name, because the Greeks associated Thoth with their god Hermes. But in ancient Egyptian, Khemnu means “Eight Town,” and the myth that developed here held