Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/465

 COSMOGONY

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COSMOGONY

3n he built, Esagila [a counterpart nf the Esagila nf Wdu] was completed. He created the gods; the munnaki [tutelary spirits of the earth] created the lorious city tugether with him. The seat of their eart's joy he proclaimed on high Marduk bound ugether a foimdation [o«j»] upon the waters. He lade dust and cast it over the foundation, that the ods might sit in a pleasant place. He made man- iud. Aruru [the gotldess of Sippar] made the seed f mankind with him". Marduk then creates the nimals, the plants, the city, the state, Xi|)pur, Erech, nd their temples. Lvigalduazaga is consideretl to be nother name for Marduk. In the text it is doubtful

hether the Animnaki were created by Maniuk or •hether they were assistant-creators with Marduk. 'he latter seems prcferaljle. The meaning of "he ound together a fountlation" is doubtful, because of lie imcertainty about the word amu. The ancients dought the earth to be like a section of a hollow ball Dating on the great waters, convex side upwards, [arduk is here forming his rough skeleton of the irth as a raft on the waters, and he fills it up with ail or clay dust according to the text. This co.s- logony is probably not so ancient as that of the reation Epos, Ijecause it makes Marduk sole creator without reference even to .\nu or Ea. It is reraarka- le that man is creatcfl before animals and plants, and Aolars have not failed to draw attention to a similar tatement in Genesis, ii, 7-9. Furthermore, the Tigris nd the Euphrates are named in this cosmogony: He made them and set them in their place — well pro- lainied he their name", which also reminds one of the lention of the rivers in the .same chapter of Genesis, ome remote connexion is of course possible.

EGYPTI.A..V. — The fundamental ideas of Egj'ptian osmogonies can be gathered from the Book of the )ead, chapter xvii, which goes back to the eleventh ynasty (c. 2560 B. c), if not to the sixth (c. 3000 . c). Cosmogonic speculations in greater detail can e found in the funeral inscriptions of Seti I, in the 'alley of the Dead nearThebes (c. 1400 B.C.), nor are bey wanting in texts on monuments and papyri down 3 late in the Ptolemaic period. But according to Irugsch, Egyptian thought was but little subject to hange even during the score of centuries and more uring which it is known to us. In the beginning dere was neither heaven norearth. Shoreless waters, overed with thick darkness, filled the world-space, 'hese primeval waters are called Xun, and they were lid to contain the male and female germs and the cginnings of the future world. From the very first Kere dwelt in this watery proto-matter a divine force r proto-soul, which pervaded and penetrated its as et not differentiated parts. This penetration was so bsolute that this soul became almost identical with tie matter it [lervaded. The divine proto-soul then onified as the god Thot, brought the universe into eing; whereas the image of the universe had pre- iously formed itself in the eyes of Thot. The word f Thot brought movement in the still watery sub- tance of Xun — movement both conscious and pur- oseful. Xun now began to differentiate itself, i. e. f deities (four pairs, male and female): Xun and funet. Hell and Hchet, Keke and Keket, Xenu and fenut. Xun and .Nunet represent the begetting and earing Proto-Matter-.Soul ; lleh and Hehet are rather itficult ide:is to grasp, perhaps active and passive ifinity would be a good ex[)ression. This infinity is lostly conceived in relation to time, and is coiise- uently equivalent to, and often described by, the Jrcek Ai'iiK; a.s infinity of force it resembles 'Eput. Cek and Keket are the abysmal darkness, the Erebos f the Egj-ptians. Xenu and Nenul s>niibolize rest; he two otiier names or titles of Nenu.Gohr and Hems, mbody the same idea — to settle or lie down, to cease
 * lt a desire for creative activity and tliis his will, per-
 * s qualities became manifest in a cosmogonic ogdoad

fniMi wiirk. I 'nnlrary to the Babylonian idea of war with the Dragon of Chaos, tranquillity is, in Egypt, a principle of progress. All united, these divinities of the ogdoad form the beginnings and are the fathers and mothers of all things. Pictorially, they are indi- cated by figures of four men and women; the men carry a frog: the women a serpent's head on their shoulders. The frog and serpent represent the first elements of animal creation; the unaccounted for aiJjiearance and disappearance of frogs in marshes seemed like a sort of spontaneous generation of animal life out of stagnant water; the serpent periodically shedding its skin was a symbol of the yearly renewal of nature. The male figures are coloured blue, to signify water the begetter of all things; the female are flesh-coloured, to signify the life produced. These cosmogonic gods then transform the invisible divine wUl of Thot into a visible universe, harmoniously welded together. The first act of creation is the for- mation of an egg, which rises upon the hands of Heh and Hehet out of the proto-matter. Out of the egg arises the god of light, Ra, the immediate cause of life in this world. Xow this imiverse was conceived as being both the house and body of God, divinity not dwelling in, but being identical with, the cosmic All.

This universe, however, was formed by concurrence of nine divine things, i. e. the great Ennead of Gods: (1) Shu, the dry air of day; (2) Tafnut, the night air, pregnant with the rays of the waxing moon; (.3) Keb, the god of the earth, or soil; (4) Xut, the goddess of the heavens above ; {5) Osiris, the moist or fructifying element ; (6) Isis, the maternal or conceiving force of the earth; (7) Set, the god of evil and contradiction — the destructive element in nature, opposing the light, moisture, and fertility of the earth — in popular myth- ology, the brother-enemy of Osiris and Isis ; (8) Horus, popularly conceived as the divine child of Isis and Osiris, living nature in the circle of her perpetual re- juvenesence; (9) Xephthys, the boundary spirit or horizon, the world-limit, or the strand of the endless sea.

Parallel with these quasi-scientific explanations of the universe, the popular mind attributed to its favourite divinities a share in the cosmogony. In Upper Egyjit the egg-jiroductive energy gave first rise to a divinity, Clinum, the potter who shapes the egg on his wheel ; in Lower Egypt, Ptah, the artificer, becomes the creator of the egg. Sometimes, however, a divine bird is required to lay it. Not unfrequently the cosmogonic functions of the egg are attributed to the lotus-bud. In one of the inscriptions of Denderah, Pharao hands a lotus-flower to the solar deity, say- ing: " I hand thee the flower which arose in the begin- ning, the glorious lily on the great sea. Thou camest forth in the city of Chmun out of its leaves, and thou did.st give light to the earth till then wrapped in dark- ness". On the other hand, Ra is not merely the enlightener, but the personal creator of the world, the Lord, infinite in his being, the Master Everlasting, who was before all things ; none is like unto him. He suspended the heavens aliove, that he might dwell therein; he laid the foundations of the earth, that it might sustain his form; he created the deep, that he might be hidden in the lower spheres, he, the noble youth, came forth out of Xun. This personification of the spirits of light in the sun-god Ra could evoke real sublimity of thought and expression, so much so that, for a little while, the idea reached a quasi- mnnothoism under Amenophis III and IV. On the other h.iiid the amplitude of <livine titles of each local deity plays havoc with cosmogonic consistency, thus Ptah in ^iemphis is ruler of infinity (Heh) and Lord of eternity (Tet), Min Anium, Ijord of Infinity, la.sting for eternity; Hathor of Denderah, Mistress of Infinity and f'reatrix of Eternity; Hathor and Horus are mother and father to Horsamtui, a phase of R4 the sun-god, and similar fancies.