Ennead

• 1. Introduction

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  The Ennead, also called the Great Ennead, was a family of nine deities worshipped at Heliopolis. The Egyptians knew that city as Awanu, and its ruins now lie within the limits of modern Cairo. The word simply means "the nine", and the group opens with a sun god and closes with two pairs of siblings. Yet nine was not a number that belonged to one city or one priesthood. Several groups of nine gods existed in ancient Egypt, and each had its own supporters. Why did Heliopolis build its family of gods the way it did? Who was left out, who was written in, and who refused to bow to the claim? And how did a title that meant nothing more than "the Nine" travel into Greek, Latin, English, and eventually superhero card games?

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• 2. Creation at Heliopolis

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  According to the priests of Heliopolis, the world began as nothing but the primordial waters of precreation, personified as Nun. From those waters a mound rose on what the Egyptians called the First Occasion. On the mound sat Atum, a self-begotten god who was equated with the sun god Ra. He had come out of Nun through self-creation, with no parent to bring him forth.

  The next step in the story is blunt. In one telling Atum spat, and in another he masturbated. Either way, the result was two children. Shu was air personified, and Tefnut was moisture personified. These siblings mated, and their children were Geb, the earth, and Nut, the nighttime sky.

  Geb and Nut in turn had four children. Osiris and Isis became a couple, and so did Set and Nephthys. Osiris and Isis stood for fertility and order. Set and Nephthys stood for chaos, present to balance the other pair.

  Some lists of the Ennead add a tenth name. This is Horus the Elder, an ancient form of the falcon god who is not the son of Osiris and Isis. The younger Horus, who is their son, is also often included in the creation tradition.

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• 3. A Contested Claim

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  In Memphis, the priests of Ptah celebrated their god as singularly superior to the Nine. The Heliopolitan priests claimed preeminence for their own family of gods, but that claim was not respected throughout Egypt. Each nome, as the Egyptians called a regional district, typically had its own local deities. The priests of those deities insisted that their gods stood above all others.

  Memphis did not simply boast. It had its own creation myth. The contemporaneous city of Hermopolis offered another, known as the Ogdoad. In that account, eight different primordial gods accounted for the physical creation of the universe.

  This crowd of rival explanations did not bother the Egyptians the way it might bother a modern reader. Their mythology often gave many different explanations for the same phenomenon. No single story was held to be more accurate than the others. The truth was understood to be some mixture of them all.

  The Heliopolitan version is the one the source calls physiological creation. The Memphite Theology and the Hermopolitan Ogdoad are named beside it as the other major traditions. A group of nine was therefore never the only answer, and the Pyramid Texts show how many such groups there were.

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• 4. Nines Everywhere

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  The Pyramid Texts of Dynasties V and VI mention the "Great Ennead", the "Lesser Ennead", the "Dual Ennead", and the "Seven Enneads". Alongside the Great Ennead of Heliopolis, then, the ancient Egyptians counted several others. They created them as the unification under Dynasty I brought numerous local cults into contact with one another.

  Some pharaohs went further and built enneads that placed themselves among the gods. The most notable case is Seti I of Dynasty XIX. His mortuary temple at Redesiyah celebrated an ennead of six major gods and three deified forms of himself.

  The number nine may even have reached the night sky. An ennead appears in the Egyptian calendar of lucky and unlucky days, and it may refer to the Pleiades.

  Among all these groups, one rose above the rest in importance. It was the Heliopolitan family descended from Atum, and its own origins are harder to pin down than its fame.

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• 5. Rise and Revision

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  Atum, sometimes called Atum-re, stood at the head of the most important Ennead, which thrived from the Old Kingdom to the Ptolemaic period. Its development remains uncertain. It appears to have first emerged when the cult of Ra, supreme under Dynasty V, declined in importance under Dynasty VI.

  Egyptologists have traditionally theorized that the Heliopolitan priesthood built the Ennead to establish Atum above the other gods. Some major gods were kept in lesser positions, and others were omitted entirely. The most prominent of these was Osiris, god of vegetation and the afterlife. He was included as Atum's great-grandson.

  In the 20th century, some Egyptologists began to question the whole scenario. The traditional account is therefore a theory and not settled fact.

  The story did not end with the Ennead's success. Once the Great Ennead was well established, the cult of Ra, identified with Atum, recovered much of its former importance. It held that position until the cult of Horus superseded it. The two were then combined as Ra-Horus of the Horizons.

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• 6. A Name Without Vowels

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  The English word ennead is a borrowing, by way of Latin, of the Greek name enneás, meaning "the nine". That Greek term was a calque of the Egyptian name, which also meant "the Nine". A calque is a word-for-word translation of a term from another language.

  Nobody can say for certain how the Egyptian name originally sounded. Hieroglyphs do not record vowels. Linguists have proposed that the pronunciation shifted across Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, and Late Egyptian. Egyptologists today conventionally transcribe the word as Pesedjet.

  The name was also written in a wide range of variant hieroglyphic spellings. A dual Ennead had a spelling of its own.

  The nine individual gods each have their own hieroglyphs, and the Great Ennead has endured in more than inscriptions. It has found its way into modern entertainment.

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• 7. Modern Echoes

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  In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, four of Dio Brando's minions have Stands named after members of the Ennead. A film from 2016, Gods of Egypt, portrays most of the Ennead. Its main focus is the conflict between the protagonist god Horus and the antagonist god Set.

  The 2022 Marvel Cinematic Universe miniseries Moon Knight also touches on the Ennead. In its first episode, Steven Grant points out a problem with some museum marketing material. The material seems to describe the Ennead as a pantheon of seven gods rather than nine. In episode 3, the series names Hathor as part of the Ennead, a deviation from the traditional list.

  The cooperative superhero card game Sentinels of the Multiverse has its own version. Its Infernal Relics expansion introduced a group of supervillains collectively called the Ennead. Each member wields an ancient artifact that grants the powers and appearance of one of the mythological Ennead. In the game's universe, most of ancient Egyptian religion originated from stories about the original wielders of those artifacts.

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