Egypt
Myth
There are two main Egyptian creation myths,
one from the Upper Kingdom, and one from the Lower Kingdom. They are
almost the same, the main difference being that the myth from the Upper Kingdom
has more detail when describing the ocean. The Upper Kingdom creation
myth states that, in the beginning, there was only the “primal ocean of chaos”,
Nun. Nun held the beginnings of everything that had yet to come. Ra,
the sun god and the first god who gave birth to all the other gods, starting
with Shu and Tefnut, comes from the waters of Nun. “And so the physical
universe was created” (Criss). The people of the Lower Kingdom also
believed that only the ocean existed at first. Again, the first god
to appear was Ra. The sun god emerged from an egg that appeared on the
surface of water (O'Connell). The myths agree on the presence of an ocean
before anything else, however, in the Upper Kingdom myths, the ocean has a
name, Nun.
Geography
Click to see picure full sized
The Egyptian landscape
is dominated by a desert climate, with almost no water. Because of
this, the Egyptian civilization was clustered around the one source of fresh
water, the Nile River. When the Nile flooded its banks yearly, it provided
fertile ground for growing crops. Egypt is bordered on its north side
by the Mediterranean Sea, and on its eastern side by the Red Sea. Both
of these, although salt water and not useful for irrigation, provided food
in the form of fish. Because of all this water, it would have been
natural for the Ancient Egyptians to notice that where there was water, there
was life, and therefore, water must be the source of all life.
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