Chapter 8 (part 9)

The priests of Annu at a very early period grouped together the nine greatest gods of Egypt, forming what is called the paut neteru or "company of the gods," or as it is written in the pyramid texts, paut aat , "the great company of gods"; the texts also show that there was a second group of nine gods called paut net'eset or "lesser company of the gods"; and a third group of nine gods is also known. When all three pauts of gods are addressed they appear as ###. The great cycle of the gods in Annu was composed of the gods Tmu, Shu, Tefnut, Seb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys; but, though paut means " nine," the texts do not always limit a paut of the gods to that number, for sometimes the gods amount to twelve, and sometimes, even though the number be nine, other gods are substituted for the original gods of the paut . We should naturally expect Ra to stand at the head of the great paut of the gods; but it must be remembered that the chief local god of Annu was Tmu, and, as the priests of that city revised and edited the pyramid texts known to us, they naturally substituted their own form of the god Ra, or at best united him with Ra, and called him Tmu-Ra. In the primeval matter, or water, lived the god Tmu, and when he rose for the first time, in the form of the sun, he created the world. Here at once we have Tmu assimilated with Nu. A curious passage in the pyramid of Pepi I. shows that while as yet there was neither [1. La Mythologie Égyptienne ( Études , t. ii., p. 237). 2. See Pyramid of Teta, l. 307 (Maspero, Recueil de Travaux , t. v., p. 46).] heaven nor earth, and when neither gods had been born, nor men created, the god Tmu was the father of human beings, even before death came into the world. The first act of Tmu was to create from his own body the god Shu and the goddess Tefnut; and afterwards Seb the earth and Nut the sky came into being. These were followed by Osiris and Isis, Set and Nephthys. Dr. Brugsch's version of the origin of the gods as put forth in his last work on the subject is somewhat different. According to him there was in the beginning neither heaven nor earth, and nothing existed except a boundless primeval mass of water which was shrouded in darkness and which contained within itself the germs or beginnings, male and female, of everything which was to be in the future world. The divine primeval spirit which formed an essential part of the primeval matter felt within itself the desire to begin the work of creation, and its word woke to life the world, the form and shape of which it had already depicted to itself. The first act of creation began with the formation of an egg out of the primeval water, from which broke forth Ra, the immediate cause of all life upon earth. The almighty power of the divine spirit embodied itself in its most brilliant form in the rising sun. When the inert mass of primeval matter felt the desire of the primeval spirit to begin the work of creation, it began to move, and the creatures which were to constitute the future world were formed [1. Recueil de Travaux , t. viii., p. 104 (l. 664).