Study of the Ogdoad Scenes in the Late Period | ||||
| حولية الاتحاد العام للآثاريين العرب "دراسات فى آثار الوطن العربى" | ||||
| Article 63, Volume 16, Issue 1, 2013, Page 133-150 PDF (1.23 MB) | ||||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/cguaa.2013.32558 | ||||
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| Authors | ||||
| faten el elimi; mofida elweshahy | ||||
| Faculty of Tourism and Hotels - Suez Canal University | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| Abstract: The Ogdoad (xmnw) were the original eight great deities, who were primarily worshipped at Hermopolis, but their aspects of the creation were combined in other areas with existing myths. They were thought to have helped Thoth with creation, then died and retired to the land of the dead where they continued to make the Nile flow and the sun rise every day. Hermopolis means "the city of Hermes" in Greek. The Greeks gave it that name because it was a major cult center of the god Thoth who they associated with their god Hermes, but the Egyptians knew it as xmnw (the City of the Eight). The name survived into Coptic as (Shmounein), from which the modern name, El Ashmunein, is derived. It was the capital of the Fifteenth Nome of Upper Egypt and now it is considered a village of El Minia government (approximately 300 km south Cairo). Each pair of the Ogdoad represented the male and female aspects of the four creative powers or sources, represents also an aspect of the primordial chaos out of which the world was created. They all came into being at the same time. Nun and Naunet represent the primordial water’s, Kuk and Kauket represent the infinite darkness, Heh and Hauhet represent empty space, and Amun and Amunet represent quintessence, or the secret powers of creation. The gods are usually depicted as men with the heads of frogs, the goddesses as women with the heads of snakes. Together they built an island in the middle of the vast emptiness and the egg that was placed upon it. From this egg, the sun god Atum was born, and he began the process of creating the world while the others withdrew. This research aimed to: - Study the scenes of the Ogdoad in the Egyptian Temples and tombs. - To identify the different forms of Ogdoad where the ancient Egyptian represent it in great and distinctive ways. And study the appearance of its new names and disappearance of another’s. - The relationship between the Ogdoad and the other Gods. | ||||
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