Chapter 43 (part 75)

xcviii} heaven nor earth, and when neither gods had been born, nor men created, the god Tmu was the father of human beings,[1] 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;[2] 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[3] 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[4] 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). The passage reads:-- mes Pepi pen au atf Tem an xepert pet an Gave birth to Pepi this father Tmu [when] not was created heaven, not xepert ta an xepert reth an mest neteru an xepert met was created earth, not were created men, not were born the gods, not was created death. 2. Recueil de Travaux , I. vii., p. 170 (l. 466). 3. Religion und Mythologie , p. 101. 4 A number of valuable facts concerning the place of the egg in the Egyptian Religion have been collected by Lefébure, Revue de l'Histoire des Religions , t. xvi., Paris, 1887, p. 16 ff.] {p. xcix} according to the divine intelligence Maa . Under the influence of Thoth, or that form of the divine intelligence which created the world by a word, eight elements, four male and four female, arose out of the primeval Nu , which possessed the properties of the male and female.