Everything about Ogdoad totally explained
In
Egyptian mythology, the
Ogdoad (Greek "οκτάδα" the number eight) were eight deities worshipped in
Hermopolis during what is called the
Old Kingdom, the third through sixth dynasties, dated between 2,686 to 2,134 B.C. First it was a cult having
Hathor and
Ra; later changing to a cult where Hathor and
Thoth were the main deities over a much larger number of deities; and even later, Ra was assimilated into
Atum-Ra through a merger with Atum of the
Ennead cosmogeny.
The eight deities were arranged in four female-male pairs, the females were associated with
snakes and the males were associated with
frogs:
Naunet and
Nu,
Amaunet and
Amun,
Kauket and
Kuk,
Huh and
Hauhet. Apart from their gender, there was little to distinguish the female goddess from the male god in a pair; indeed, the names of the males are merely the male forms of the female name. Essentially, each pair represents the female and male aspect of one of four concepts, namely the primordial waters (Naunet and Nu), air or invisibility (Amunet and Amun), darkness (Kauket and Kuk), and eternity or infinite space (Hauhet and Huh).
Together the four concepts represent the primal, fundamental state of the beginning, they're what always was. In the myth, however, their interaction ultimately proved to be unbalanced, resulting in the arising of a new entity. When the entity opened, it revealed
Ra, the fiery sun, inside. After a long interval of rest, Ra, together with the other deities, created all other things.
There are two main variations on the nature of the entity containing Ra:
Egg variant
The first version of the myth has the entity arising from the waters after the interaction as a mound of dirt, the
Milky Way, which was deified as
Hathor. In the myth an egg was laid upon this mound by a celestial bird. The egg contained
Ra. In the original version of this variant, the egg is laid by a cosmic
goose (it isn't explained where the goose originates). However, after the rise of the cult of
Thoth, the egg was said to have been a gift from Thoth, and laid by an
Ibis, the bird with which he was associated.
Lotus variant
Later, when
Atum had become assimilated into Ra as
Atum-Ra, the belief that Atum emerged from a
(blue) lotus bud, in the
Ennead cosmogeny, was adopted and attached to Ra. The lotus was said to have arisen from the waters after the explosive interaction as a bud, which floated on the surface, and slowly opened its petals to reveal the beetle,
Khepri, inside. Khepri, an aspect of Ra representing the
rising sun, immediately turns into a weeping boy -
Nefertum (
young Atum), whose tears form the creatures of the earth. In later Egyptian history, as the god Khepri became totally absorbed into Ra, the lotus was said to have revealed Ra, the boy, straight away, rather than Ra being Khepri temporarily. Sometimes the boy is identified as
Horus, although this is due to the merging of the myths of Horus and Ra into the one god
Ra-Herakty, later in Egyptian history.
Further Information
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