Egyptian god of the primordial ocean
Nun
Nun is the primordial ocean of Egyptian mythology, the mass of chaotic waters that existed before creation and from which the sun god Ra arose. As the origin of everything he was called 'the father of the gods', although he never had a cult of his own.
The myth
In the beginning there was only Nun: an inert ocean without limits, surrounded by an absolute darkness that was not night, since night did not yet exist. Priests described this state by listing everything that did not exist. According to the stories, life arose spontaneously from Nun in the form of a demiurge who only thought. Because it did not yet exist, the demiurge could not see anything, so it spoke to describe what was happening. That word awakened Nun and began creation. Both, as primordial deities, stood outside the Creation proper.
Other versions tell that the first land, a mound, emerged from these waters. At Heliopolis creation was attributed to Atum, who was said to have existed in the waters of Nun as an inert being of potential. In other tellings the sun is born from a lotus that grows on the primordial mound, or takes the form of a heron, falcon, scarab or child. After creation, the waters of Nun surrounded the earth. They were thought to be responsible for the Nile's yearly flood, and their underground waters marked the boundary between the world of the living and that of the dead. Nun, as a deified concept, had a ba that was the Sun.
According to the myth, Nun did not only give rise to the world: he was also believed capable of returning everything to his waters at the end of existence. His female counterpart was Naunet, shown as a serpent or as a woman with a serpent's head.
Worship and religion
Nun was never given temples or festivals of his own. The sacred lakes of the religious centres represented his primordial ocean, and rituals of rebirth through symbolic washing took place in them. He appears on the walls of almost every Egyptian temple, and in tombs and papyri he is often identified with one of the hours of the night. At Abydos he was sometimes evoked through an underground stream.
Ancient sources: The Book of Gates, in its twelfth hour, shows him holding up the solar barque, and the Ogdoad counts him among the primordial deities of chaos.