Ogdoad (Egyptian)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Ogdoad were eight primordial deities worshiped at Hermopolis in ancient Egypt, a name the Greeks translated as "the Eightfold." Egyptian priests grouped these gods into four male-female pairs, believers in beings who existed before the world itself began. Later artists gave these gods startling animal forms, part frog, part serpent. Scholars still argue over exactly what forces each pair was meant to embody.

• 2. Frogs And Serpents

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  A dedication that Hatshepsut carved at Speos Artemidos marks the earliest certain mention of the Ogdoad, dating to the Eighteenth Dynasty. Texts from Egypt's Late Period describe the four male gods with the heads of frogs and the four female goddesses with the heads of serpents. Temple reliefs from the Ptolemaic Kingdom, the last of Egypt's ruling dynasties, carved the gods this way again and again. The first pair in that list, Nu and Naunet, still awaited an explanation of what they actually represented.

• 3. The Primordial Waters

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  Scribes wrote the names Nu and Naunet with the hieroglyphic signs for sky and water, casting this pair as the primordial ocean itself. Every pair in the Ogdoad carries names with nearly the same meaning, differing only in small grammatical endings between the male and female forms. Heh and Heuhet, the next pair, carry no such obvious clue built into their names.

• 4. Endless Time

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  In 1885 the scholar Brugsch proposed that Heh's name relates to an Egyptian word for an undefined or unlimited number. He compared the concept to the Greek idea of aion, or endless time. Brugsch also noticed passages suggesting that Heh personified the atmosphere between heaven and earth, a role similar to the god Shu. Kek and Kauket, the next pair, would draw their own comparison to a very different Greek god.

• 5. Darkness And Its Edges

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  The names Kek and Kauket are written with a hieroglyph combining the sky sign with a staff used in words for darkness and obscurity. The plain Egyptian word kkw simply means darkness, linking this pair to Egypt's primordial night, a force the Greeks called Erebus. Yet in some contexts Kek and Kauket represent both night and day, marking the turning point between one and the other. The fourth original pair, Amun and Amunet, hid a very different kind of secret within their name.

• 6. The Hidden Ones

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  Amun and Amunet's names were written with the Egyptian root imn, meaning Invisibility or Hidden. This pairing stood for the concealed potential still folded inside the primordial waters. As Amun's home city of Thebes grew in influence, priests elevated him from a member of the Ogdoad to King of the Gods. Once Amun outgrew that older role, he and Amunet were frequently swapped out for other name pairs in Ogdoad lists. Tenem and Tenemet, sometimes translated as Gloom, drew their meaning from a root word for becoming lost or going astray. Qerh and Qerhet took their name from the word for night, though a linked sign for halting suggests inactivity and repose instead. Niau and Niaut carried a starker meaning still, translated as Emptiness, Negation, or Void. A further variant pairing appears under several spellings, including Ni and Ennit, Nenu and Nenuit, and Nu and Nit. Even Egyptologists admit no one has ever settled exactly what each of these four pairs was meant to mean.

• 7. Guessing At Meaning

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  The Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge concluded that "the ancient Egyptians themselves had no very clear idea" about these four pairs' true purpose. Decades later, the scholar Karenga, writing in 2004, proposed four ontological concepts tied to the four pairs, fluidity, darkness, unboundedness, and invisibility. Karenga tied "fluidity" to the flood and its waters, and linked "invisibility" to repose and inactivity as well as hiddenness. He framed that scheme around the New Kingdom period specifically. That leaves open how Ptolemaic priests, carving these same eight gods centuries later, understood them in their own age.