Nun

The Endless Primordial Waters

Before the Egyptian world had land, sky or sunlight, there was Nun: an endless expanse of dark, still water. Egyptian creation stories did not all agree on exactly how the universe began, but several imagined creation rising from this watery chaos. Nun was therefore both a place and a divine power.

In the creation tradition centred on Heliopolis, the creator Atum emerges from Nun. The first mound of dry land appears, recalling the way fertile ground emerged after the Nile flood. From Atum comes a family of gods that eventually includes Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys.

Nun could be represented as a male god, sometimes shown with a watery or blue-green appearance. He also belonged to a group of eight primeval deities worshipped at Hermopolis. These gods represented qualities of the world before creation, such as darkness, hiddenness and limitless water.

Creation did not mean Nun disappeared. The primeval waters were imagined as still surrounding the ordered world and existing beneath it. This made creation feel like a safe space held within something much older and more mysterious. Egyptian temples sometimes used sacred lakes to echo the waters of creation. Nun is a great example of Egyptian mythology turning a natural experience - the life-giving Nile flood - into an enormous idea about how the whole universe began.

Nun also appears beyond creation stories. Egyptian religious texts could imagine the sun god travelling through the dangerous darkness each night before being renewed at dawn, while the primeval waters remained part of the universe's hidden structure. The annual Nile flood made the image of water producing new land especially meaningful. As floodwater fell, dark fertile soil appeared and crops could grow again. Creation could therefore be imagined not as a one-time event from an unimaginably distant past, but as something echoed in nature every year. Nun represented chaos, but also the limitless potential from which order, land and life could emerge.

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