subject: The Power Of The Sun God: The Heliopolitan View [print this page] The power of the sun god: the Heliopolitan view
Ueliopolis, the chief centre of solar worship, produced a somewhat different mythic system built sround the so-called Ennead (see p. 78) or group of nine deities which consisted of the sun god and eight of his descendants. The Heliopolitan theologians naturally stressed the role of the sun god in their creation stories which focus, as a result, not so onuch on the inert aspects of preexistence but on the dynamic aspects of the resultant creation itself. The form of the sun god usually associated with this creation was Arum (see p. 98), who was sometimes &aid to have existed within the primeval waters in his egg as a way of explaining the origin of the god- At the moment of creation Atum was said to have been born out of the primordial flood as he source of all further creation.
The god next pro- duced two children, Shu (air) and Tefnut (moisture). from himself. Several versions of the story exist, but in all of them Atums children are produced hrough the exhalation of the gods body fluids or ucus either through the metaphor of masturbaion, spitting or sneezing. turn, this first pair produced their own children, eb (earth) and Nut (sky), who took their respective laces below and above their parents, giving the reation its full spatial extent. Geb and Nut then roduced the deities Osiris and Isis, Seth and Nephthys who viewed from one perspective represented. he fertile land of Egypt and the surrounding esert, so that the key elements of the Egyptian universe were completed at this time. Frequently the od Horus, son and heir of Osiris and the deity most losely associated with kingship, was added to this roup, thus supplying the link between the physical reation and societal structures.
All these aspects owever, were viewed as simply extensions of the riginal coming into being of the sun god who lay at he heart of this world view and who was thus the ather of all and ruler of the gods- he power of thought and expression: he Memphite view While the scholars of Heliopolis focused mainly on he emergence and development of the sun god.
Atum, the priests of nearby Memphis looked at creation from the perspective of their own god Ptah. As the god of metalworkers, craftsmen and architects it was natural that Ptah was viewed as the great craftsman who made all things. But there was also another, much deeper, link between Ptah and the creation of the world which set the Memphite Adew of creation apart. The so-called Memphite Theology which is preserved on the Shabaka Stone in the Egyptian collection of the British Museum reveals this important aspect of the Memphite theological system.
While the inscription dates to the 25th dynasty it was copied from a much earlier source, apparently of the early 19th dynasty, though its principles may have dated to even earlier times. The text alludes to the Heliopolitan creation account centred on the god Aturn, but goes on to claim that the Memphite god Ptah preceded the sun god and that it was Ptah who created Atum and ultimately the other gods and all else :through his heart and through his tongue. The expression alludes to the conscious planning of creation and its execution through rational thought and speech, and this story -priests of Memphis is the earliest known example of the so-called logos doctrine in which the world is formed through a gods creative speech. As such it was one of the most intellectual creation myths to arise in Egypt and in the ancient world as a whole.
It lies before, and in line with, the philosophical concepts found in the Hebrew Bible where God said, let there be light, and there was light* (Genesis 13)i, and the Christian scriptures which state that Tn the beginning was the Word [logos] and the word was God.,.all things wer^rd [logos] and the word was like Atum, however, Ptah was* also viewed as com- bining male and female elements within himself. This is seen in early texts, and in the latest period of Egyptian histoiy the name of the god was written. acrophonically as pet-ta-keh or p(et+t(a)+h(eh) as though he were supporting the sky (pet) above the earth (ta) in the manner of the Heh deities (see p. 109), but also bridging and combining the female element of the sky and the male element of the earth in the androgynous manner of the primordial anale-female duality Ptah-Naunet.
