ENRIQUE LUCO CONTESTIN

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION

The nature of the Ancient Egyptian cosmovision

Centro de estudios del Egipto

y del Mediterráneo Oriental - CEEMO
This interpretation essay intends to investigate the nature of the Egyptian
cosmotheology that underlies the theological discourse of the priestly texts of all
ages. We turn to the notion of the Egyptian demiurge as: “The one in the multiple”,
that we consider to be proper to the Egyptian monism of all its historical eras, which
contrasts with the cosmovision of the dualistic classical philosophy which poses a
different vision of the universe than the classical one that can be summed up in the
phrase: “The one and the multiple”; summary of an entire equivocal position with
regard to the Egyptian cosmovision, based on assigning an implicit platonic dualist
worldview. This situation is exacerbated by a radical difference, not always assumed,
founded in the contrast between the Egyptian inclusive multipurpose logic and the
western a disjunctive causal logic that flies over the interpretations of Egyptian
religion. What is striking in this cosmovision is that it presents a radicalized
immanentist ontology and transnatural significance of the demiurge, synthesizable
as a single substance; a single attribute of an eternal living one divided as their ways
and forms in the cosmos; a single ontology. One of their core foundations is the
concept of transformation–emanation as an expression of the demiurge and its
creation that poses an ontological continuum without rupture characteristic of this
cosmotheology and their religiosity. This essay is the attempt to revalue a paradigm
of interpretation of the ancient Egyptian religious cosmovision, the monistic or
unitarian cosmovision and its derivations, drafted in the 1980s by Nordic
Egyptologists -Symposia of Uppsala (1987) and Bergen (1988)- and that projects the
scholar to a divergent perception of the Egyptian experience of the sacred in respect
of the interpretations currently in vogue.

Key words: Egyptology; Symbolic Anthropology; Egyptian Religion; Geertz; Atum; cosmovision;
Morentz; sekhem; Deleuze, monism, Englund; emanation; Sorensen; neheb-kau; homology; Troy;
non-metaphysical significance; Finnestad; summotheism; Empedocles; reciprocal conditionals.

CEEMO – Essay

Enrique Luco Contestin graduated Licenciado en Estudios Orientales at the

Universidad del Salvador - USAL in Buenos Aires, and is the initiator of
Egyptological Studies at the EEO. Since the 1980, he has been a professor of
the Historia de la Cultura Egipcia, and Religión y Filosofía Egipcia since 1986.
Currently, he is a tenured emeritus professor at the USAL - Escuela de Estudios
Orientales. He is a founding member, and of the CD, and a researcher at the
Centro de Estudios del Egipto y del Mediterráneo Oriental – CEEMO. He is a
full member of the International Association of Egyptologists –AIE
 I sb

Ancient Egyptian Religion

English translation
Marcelo Mazía
 Enrique Luco Contestin

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION

The Nature of the Ancient Egyptian Cosmovision
An interpretation essay

Professor Emeritus in Religión y Filosofía Egipcia

Universidad del Salvador - USAL
Facultad de Filosofía, Letras y Estudios Orientales - EEO
Centro de Estudios del Egipto y del Mediterráneo Oriental.
CEEMO
Luco Contestin, Enrique Jorge

Ancient Egyptian Religion : The nature of the Ancient Egyptian cosmovision / Enrique Jorge Luco
Contestin. - 1a ed. - Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires : Enrique Jorge Luco Contestin, 2022.

DVD-ROM, PDF

Traducción de : Marcelo Mazía.

ISBN 978-987-88-4588-3

1. Antropología. 2. Cosmovisión. I. Mazía, Marcelo, trad. II. Título.

CDD 306.6

© Enrique Jorge Luco Contestin, [[email protected]]

Original title in Spanish: La Religión del Antiguo Egipto, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1° Edición en Español, Mayo 2020.

COVER IMAGE
Justified Sennefer holds the Sekhem scepter in his right hand
which represents the power of divine life.
Here it indicates that the deceased is in possession
of all the life capacities of him in the underword.
after the judgment of Osiris.
New Kingdom, din XVIII-XIX

All rights reserved for all countries. The total or partial reproduction of this work, nor its transmission or reproduction
in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying or other formats without the permission of the
publisher is not permitted. The infraction is penalized by laws 11,723 and 25,446.
CENTRO DE ESTUDIOS DEL EGIPTO Y DEL MEDITERRÁNEO
ORIENTAL - CEEMO

COMISIÓN DIRECTIVA

Presidente: Prof. Javier M. Paysás

Vicepresidente: Dr. Ernesto R. Quiroga Vergara
Secretario: Lic. Enrique J. Luco Contestin
Tesorero: Sr. Emilio Contartesi
Protesorero: Lic. Raúl Franco
Vocales: Abg. Diego M. Santos – Prof. Juan V. Estigarribia
Vocal suplente: Anl. Prog. Martha Torres
Miembros Fundadores (In memoriam)
Prof. Celia E. Bibé – Prof. Estela Biondi
Comisión Revisora de Cuentas:
Titular: Lic. Andrea Remete
Suplente: Lic. Susana Romero
COMMON ABBREVIATIONS

AK – Ancient Kingdom

BD – Book of the Dead

CT – Coffins Texts

MK – Middle Kingdom

NK – New Kingdom

PT – Piramid Texts
To spread something is to open paths,
to question it is to open conscience
 In memoriam

Dr. Ismael Quiles S.I.

Founder of the Universidad del Salvador
and the Escuela de Estudios Orientales.
My teacher
 I dedicate this essay to my daughter Sofia, companion since her childhood in the
fascination that Egypt exerts on me, and especially to my wife Ana who has
accompanied me since our youth in this adventure that is Egypt; she always
encouraged me to writethis essay and also with her advice on anthropological theory.
And also the Teacher Celia Bibé,
lifelong fellow student.

Dr. Siegfried Morentz, his writings were and are

a permanent source of inspiration.

I want to thank my colleagues and friends, the professors and researchers at

CEEMO, Susana Romero and Ernesto Quiroga Vergara for their dedication in
reading this essay, and particularly Juan Estigarribia who devoted his time to reading
this study and put at my disposal his vast knowledge of Egyptian culture with wise
advice.

Also my acknowledgment and special gratitude to Professor Javier Paysás, EEO-

USAL and CEEMO, who with infinite patience read the Egyptological and style
contents of the preliminary studies; certainly a chiaroscuro in his beginnings, its
advice was of great value for the development of this essay. I cannot fail to mention
my appreciation to Professor Diego Santos, UBA, UNIPE and CEEMO, who
verified the transliterated and translated texts in this essay and for providing me with
the article The Book of Snakes, from the tomb of Iufaa at Abusir, which corroborates
in good part of the invariable serpentine nature of the demiurge proposed in this
essay; his technical and linguistic suggestions were invaluable. My renewed gratitude
to Professor Javier Paysás, who has dedicated his time to reading these pages in
English.

I extend my gratitude to Dr. Carlos Rúa, director of the EEO, for his patience with
my arguments about Egyptian culture, a distant subject from Sinology but to whom
Egypt is also attracted. To Dr. Bernardo Nante, dean of the Facultad de Filosofía,
Letras y Estudios Orientales, USAL-EEO, for his interest in this project from the
beginning.
Thank you all.
 Note to the Reader

Considering that the Egyptian language is part of the Afro-asiatic stock, which introduced writing without
vowel support and that we do not know its exact pronunciation, in this study, we annotate the words and
phrases of that origin with the scientific transliteration that includes only the consonants and
semiconsonants. Below we place the technical transcription with a vowel "e" between consonants, according
to standards accepted by academic Egyptology, with the sole purpose of facilitating the reader who does
not know the ancient Egyptian language, a technical vocalization that allows a bearable reading of this study.
It is necessary to make it clear that the vocalizations thus obtained are artificial and have no relation to
ancient Egyptian language. Also, we note that the reference bibliography is cited according to the Chicago
standards, with certain modifications, for reasons of economy of editing space. Finally, the attentive reader
will notice that some words of the Egyptian texts translated into Inglish are in italics. We warn that it is a
resource of ours, to highlight the relationship of its meaning with the affirmations that we make in this
essay; they should not be taken as part of the original translation of said texts, under any circumstances.
 CONTENTS
Preface 2

FIRST PART. The cosmovision: an approach to the religious

thought of the ancient Egyptian culture.

1. Introduction 6
2. Approach to the concept of cosmovision 8
3. The Egyptian cosmovision 10
4. The cosmovision properties 13
5. Some methodological assumptions 16
6. Egyptian beliefs as a religious system 17
7. The study of Egyptian religious thought and its conditions 18
Addendum: The ontological-theological component in the ancient Egyptian cosmovision 20

SECOND PART. Homology and complementarity: nature and

attribute of the divine in the monistic cosmovision of Ancient Egypt.

Section 1 24
Section 2 35
Section 3 46
Section 4 59
Section 5 63
Section 6 89
Section 7 102
Section 8 109
Section 9 Some reflections by way of synthesis 127

PART THREE. Epilogue. 137

Colophon 145

Index of illustrations 146

Bibliography 147
The author 156

1
 Preface

The goal is to reach conclusions, starting

of small facts but of dense texture,
and lend support to general statements.
C. Geertz

To study the religious experience of Pharaonic Egypt is to try to approach

the interpretation of its cosmovision from the values of its own conception of
the world, understanding this thought as an original and unrepeatable cultural
construction of Egyptian society, matured in a long-term temporality. In simple
words, with this essay we try to unravel the profound meaning of the ancient
Egyptian religious cosmovision, made explicit in the theological, liturgical and
wisdom texts that supported it. These are presented to us unclear in their
meaning because they are usually commented on from a dualistic cosmovision
and a disjunctive causal logic typical of our classical cultural heritage, which
prevents us from attributing their own meanings, and without filters coming
from our interpretation of the divine, the cosmos and humanity.
With these principles in mind, this interpretation essay aims to investigate
the conceptualization of the Egyptian cosmovision that underlies the
theological discourse of the priestly texts of all its times. We resort to the notion
of the Egyptian demiurge as: "The one in the many", which we consider to be
typical of Egyptian monism of all its historical periods and which contrasts with
the cosmovision of classical dualistic philosophy that poses a vision of the
universe that can be synthesized in the phrase: "The one and the many". This
disjunctive phrase sums up an entire equivocal position regarding the
interpretation of the Egyptian cosmovision, by implicitly assigning it the
dualistic cosmovision of classical philosophy.
It is important to note that this essay constitutes an attempt to revalue a
paradigm of interpretation of the Egyptian religious cosmovision, monism,
which is not new and which poses to the scholar a divergent perception of the
Egyptian experience of the sacred, with respect to what is currently in force. In
this study I also intend to recover the contributions of the distinguished Dr.
Siegfried Morentz, particularly that of consubstantiality, which he brilliantly
developed in his work La Religion Égyptienne – essai d'interprétation, a

2
definition that implicitly implies the concept of monism although without
mentioning it. Dr. Morentz's thesis on the nature of the Egyptian divine is
complemented by the original contributions of the participants in the Symposia
of Uppsala (1987) and Bergen (1988), who explicitly introduce the concept of
cosmo-anthropological-theological monism. In those conferences, Dr. Gertie
Englund introduces him to what she calls a totalizing conception of the world
and attributes homologies to be the core of the logic of the Egyptian system of
thought. Dr. Bjerre Finnestad outlines the same theme, but from an ontological
context, by posing the problem of Egyptian logic, inflection in the innovative
and accurate proposal of the lack of essential ontological separation between
being, things and existences with a marked biological character as a unifying
factor. These concepts naturally complement each other with Dr. Lana Troy's
studies on the theological work of the priesthood. She calls the “reduction
formula” of the multiple to the One that defines them as “homologous
prototypes” and categorizes them admirably. She confirms that the reduction
of the multiple to the One was one of the methods of theological elaboration
of the Egyptian priesthood; that implied the concept of homology and that in
fact is opposed to the analogies of philosophy and theology of the Western
world.
I do not want to fail to mention the beneficial influence of the prolific Dr.
Jan Assmann, very present throughout the essay, and I particularly highlight his
fine interpretation of Amarna theology and later Ramesside Summodeism. But
it is also worth noting the essential and positive influence on this essay of the
contemporary writer and philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and his rigorous
interpretation of Spinoza's ontological thought, which gave me part of the
intellectual support to articulate, in a coherent whole, the loose threads of
cosmotheism. Egyptian monism. His work allows me to present a believable,
though hopelessly incomplete canvas of this very particular culture, foreign to
Western thought. I must reveal that, without the contributions of Espinosa's
philosophy through the profound Deleuzian gaze, the realization of this work
would have been impossible.
But it is important to express that these distinguished authors have formed
the core of my interpretation of this religious experience for quite some time.
His works constitute the basic bibliography -among many others- of the
program of the chair "Egyptian Religion and Philosophy" of the School of
Oriental Studies of the University of Salvador, of which I am currently a
consulting professor and have been a professor for the last twenty five years

3
. All of them made it possible for me to form an alternative interpretation to
the conventional ones, which qualify the religious experience in various ways:
monotheism, monolatry, henotheism, polytheism, pantheism, among others
that are crowded in the academic bibliography. Sometimes we are presented
with several interpretations the same title charging this religious cosmovision
with ambiguity.
This essay, in the context outlined so far, constitutes a low-level theory of
culture, since the descriptions and affirmations that we will make are theoretical
and do not intend to reconstruct or clone the original cosmovision, the object
of interpretation, in our study case, on the nature of the religious cosmovision
of Ancient Egypt (Geertz, c.1). This affirmation implies recognizing that no
hermeneutics is definitive, that the questions we ask ourselves are more
important than the answers we give, always provisional (Ciurana, 26 ss.).
In conclusion to these words addressed to the unsuspecting reader, I point
out that this essay is an open and inconclusive study, which only intends to
bring the most comprehensive and systematic approach to the complex
cosmovision and ancient Egyptian religiosity, to expose it, in the most
comprehensive way, possible, that is, thematized and, as far as possible,
highlight its nature. This is nothing other than the attempt to try a description
and transfer to our gnoseological system the cosmo-religious thought of the
ancient Egyptian culture, considered as a whole from its first written
testimonies until its disappearance (Braudel, c. 1 - iii). Thus, this essay intends
to glimpse the deep meaning of life proposed by the Egyptian cosmovision, in
its most permanent founding principles, for the society of ancient Egypt in its
complex, tumultuous and long duration.

Completed in Buenos Aires, May 2020.

4
 FIRST PART

THE COSMOVISION

Souls and Shadows greet the demiurge - light.

Tausert Tomb - 19th Dynasty

5
 The cosmovision: an approach to the religious thought
of the ancient egyptian culture

Cosmovision is the portrait of the way things

are in their sheer effectiveness, their conception
of nature, of the person, of society.
C. Geertz

1. Introduction.

The concept of cosmovision, which we intend to introduce in the studies of

Egyptian religion, as a methodological framework for approaching its study, is
typical of cultural anthropology and especially of the ethnography of culture
[Geertz, c. 1]. It refers to the multiple and complex forms of "apprehension of
the world" that human societies enunciate in their cultural diversity. [Cervelló,
c. 1 int.]. This concept encompasses the totality of the social experience of any
culture, both in its tangible and intangible aspects [1.- Assmann, c. 1], and it can
be defined as a complex system of social experiences, due to the multiple edges
that penetrate and articulate the cultural expressions of societies [Geertz, c. 1]
and that mark their particular identity. Also Braudel, from historical studies,
raised something of similar importance but more restricted to his concept of
"mental tools", language [Braudel, c. I and II] and other categories of social
analysis, that are the sustaining core of the cultural identity of any society.
The study on the nature of religious beliefs and ancient Egyptian religiosity
was reconsidered, in the second half of the 20th century at the Uppsala and
Bergen Symposiums, with a bias of renewed interpretation, different from the
conventional proposals of this cultural problem in the field of Egyptology. In
these meetings, the concepts of bionatural cosmological monism and
cosmovision were given relevance for their elucidation, among others referring
to the logic of this thought [Pedermann Sorensen and Finnestad, 1989, int. and
alii. / Ferrater Mora, 287]. These two concepts - monism and cosmovision - are
the conceptual frame of this work of interpretation. All the social disciplines to
which we refer are bound to unravel, with different methodologies, the religious
thought and the perception of the world of societies and cultures, addressing
their religious thought and logic that are characteristic of them.

6
[Geertz, c. 1]. In this essay we make Geertz's concept of "cosmovision" our
own: "The ethos of a culture is the tone, character, quality, and style of its moral and
aesthetic life, the disposition of its mind, the underlying attitude that a people has before
itself and before the world. His "cosmovision" is the portrait of the way things are, in their
pure effectiveness, his conception of nature, of the person, of society" [Geertz in Reinoso,
p. 3]. Thus we try to enter the center of the thought about the divine in the
religion of Ancient Egypt. We will do so respecting, at all times, the non-
Aristotelian logic that is its own, as the central reference of our reflections given
that, according to Finnestad, Professor Hornung in his studies the egyptian
logic: “abrogates the logical ‘yes – no’, alternative and presupposition of a ‘non-
Aristotelian’ logic: ‘a given X can be A and not A and can be not-A: tertium datur (5).
Hornung view on this matter differs from evolutionary theories about ‘primitive thought’,
which quantum physics refers to as a modern example of a field dealing with paradoxical
phenomena that are held in high esteem by this logic.” (6) [Finnestad, 29-
30].Furthermore: U. Benner pointed out that the problem is really more
complex and can be expressed as follows: “X can be A and not be A, but if X can be
A and B, and this is not incompatible with Aristotelian logic, that is to say that X it can be
B, but that X cannot be said to be A and B and not A and B at the same time’”. [Finnestad,
note 5 and 6]. In general, we can affirm that Egyptian logic is polyvalent and
inclusive, different from our Aristotelian causal and disjunctive deductive logic,
inherited from the classical world. This definition of Egyptian logic will be the
general framework and the thelos of our interpretation of the nature of the
ancient Egyptian religious reflection.
The complexity of the Egyptian religious thought -unitas multiplex- is of
such magnitude that it deserves to strip us, in some way, of the principle of the
Aristotelian excluded third in the interpretation of its cultural and symbolic
universe, to avoid the simplification that produces the fragmentation of classical
logic in its treatment. Because, in a certain way, the whole is included in the parts, and
the parts are included in the whole, as the guiding principle of the theological
speculation of the Egyptian priesthood in all its epochs. It can be affirmed that
the part, no matter how small it may be in the Egyptian cosmovision, could be
taken to a universal level and suitable for interpreting the whole [Gadamer; pp.
360-61]. Therefore, it is about weakening classical logic as a principle of
interpretation, by an articulating-integrating look, rather than replacing it, if we
want to understand the complex processes of this cultural entity and this
cosmological thought, so alien to our perspective of the world.
If we consider the preceding statements, the Egyptian cosmovision, as a
cultural expression, conveys the experiences, social and symbolic relationships

7
shared by society. They are doctrines and systems of thought transmitted from
age to age, encompassing the entire spectrum of its social history. This is made
visible in their sacred texts and institutions, which transcend their historical eras
and periods. They go through them and give a sense of continuity and identity
to their bearers at each historical moment [1- Assmann, c. 4-7]. They are beliefs
and knowledge, useful behaviors and artifacts that, as a people, they share in all
their social strata, [Braudel, c. III] delimiting and articulating a subjective vision
-a cosmovision– of the world, which is a factor of differentiation and originality
with respect to other societies and cultural systems [Piulats, c.1].

2.- Approach to the concept of cosmovision.

Without culture there would be no human beings.

C. Geertz

It is important to clarify that the Egyptian religion –the cosmovision- is the

core of the cultural “identity” and the common thread of Egyptian society in
its long historical evolution [4.- Assmann / 1 Bilolo, 2-3]. Therefore, to
understand this culture in global terms, it is necessary to identify its founding
cosmotheological nuclei, in order to try to capture its complex “singularity”,
which differentiates it from other cultural expressions [Finnestad, 3-4]. To
achieve this goal, it is important to identify and examine the core concepts that
are resistant to change and relate their modifications, which are slow over time
[Hornung, c. 5, excursus].
The study of these components must be understood in the context of "Long
Duration processes" [Braudel, c. 3] that: “it is neither of a certain economy nor a
certain society, but what persists through a series of economies and societies and what
is barely allowed to be diverted” [Braudel, c. 3, 42]. They are those most resistant
elements of a culture, -its hard core-, which change very slowly; it is their
religious beliefs and doctrines, and their cosmological systems derived from
them, which are present in all their epochs. Sometimes, identical to themselves
and other times, subtly mutated or reinterpreted, according to their historical
vicissitudes [1.-Assmann, c. 8].
The concept of cosmovision that we support in this essay, from the
perspective of "long-term processes", is very close to what Braudel calls "the
mentality of a culture", and is what: "...distinguishes them best, is this set of core
values of psychological structures. These mentalities are also insensitive to the passage

8
of time. They vary slowly, only transform after long incubations…” [Braudel, c. 2, 32].
Therefore, this religious experience must be approached in a systematic way,
using appropriate methods of interpretation and thematization [2- Bilolo, I–II],
to penetrate the vision of the world, -cosmovision-, built by the Egyptian
society in its three thousand years of history. We understand the culture of a
people, in this case the Ancient Egypt, as: “a set of texts that anthropologists strive
to read over the shoulders of those to whom these texts properly belong. For this, it is
necessary to try to look at these symbolic systems as forms ´that say something about
something, and say it to someone´” [Geertz in Reinoso, p. 4], “societies contain within
themselves their own interpretations; the only thing that is needed is to learn how to
access them” [Reinoso, 4].
If we look at the religious sources available to the scholar, we notice that
there are five intimately interconnected nuclear rituals [Morentz, c. x]. These
structure the deep thought of Egyptian society and validate its vision of the
universe, organized around a monarchy considered divine, both because of its
pre-existence in the cosmos and because of its presence in the cosmos itself,
and which, like an axis-mundi, traverses and articulates all the periods of
Egyptian culture [Cervelló, c. iii/ 1. Frankfort, part I].
The originality of the Egyptian cosmovision was explicitly stated as a
doctrine of the divinity of the monarch, in the Pyramid Texts, and was never
abandoned, despite its dogmatic variants from different times. We transcribe it
because of its importance, decisive in the formulation of the divine monarchy
and the Egyptian theocratic state, which is a watershed at the moment of
interpreting this cosmo-religion and clearly differentiating it from other cultural
experiences of the sacred;

… The king was formed by his father Atum

before the sky existed,
before the earth existed,
before humanity existed,
before the Netjeru (nTr.w) were born,
before death existed...
PT 1466, 1-Allen.

The five rituals mentioned that reinforce this belief and justify the purpose
and finality of the humanity, both in its installation in the world and in its
passage through it, which is the core of its thelos, are: 1- The ritual of divine birth
of the monarch, 2- The coronation ritual of the monarch, 3- The “Sed” ritual,
of recovery of energy of life and power; 4- The daily ritual of preservation

9
of life, 5- The funerary ritual [1- Frankfort, Part III]. All of them have in
common the purpose of promoting "life", hand in hand with a ruler, precious
of total divinity, guarantor of the generation and preservation of it, of its land
maintenance [Anthes, 145 /Morentz, c. vi] and, finally, of its circulation from
the visible terrestrial dimension to the invisible dimension of the cosmos [2.-
Assmann., c. 3]. The study of Maat as a rule of order that justifies the circulation
of life from the visible and tangible dimension of the cosmos to its invisible and
intangible dimension is central. In short, Maat bases the permanent passage of
life and its multiple forms, from the natural dimension to the transnatural or
“hidden” dimension, the ineffable realm of the One sacred [3 - Assmann, c. iii–
iv].
The incidence of the holy festival as a social articulator and collective
participation in the sacred, surrounds the Egyptian as an impalpable mesh of
the sacred, which surrounds him and governs his existence from its beginning
to its end and justifies its continuation in the invisible dimension of the cosmos.
[1- Assmann, c 1, 32 and ss. / 1- Rosenvasser, 2]. At this point, it is imperative
to affirm the importance of written language, central to the rituals mentioned,
for being the articulator of thought as "mental tools" [Braudel, c. 2] and a means
to convey the “cosmovision” of Egyptian culture. In other words: writing is
one of the systems of organization, interpretation and adaptation of society to
the surrounding universe, in all spheres of social and cultural life. For the study
of Egyptian religion, language is decisive for the constant canonization of
religious, cosmological and sociopolitical concepts, which made them resistant
to rapid changes, fixing the mentality, cultural and religious identity of Egyptian
society [1. - Assmann, c. 4-6].

3. - The Egyptian cosmovision.

“Societies contain within themselves their

own interpretations, all that is needed
is to learn how to access them”
C.J. Reinoso

The cosmovision is nothing more than the constellation of inherited beliefs,

values and ways of proceeding, it is the result of complex historical processes.
It is a system of symbols, some historically constructed and internalized
individually by the members of a social group, and applied socially as a means

10
of cohesion that constitutes it as a socialized group with its own identity. We
call this “tradition” or “cultural memory”, which is not a superstructural
ornament, but the human condition in its fullness.
This constellation, in the Egyptian case, is expressed in a double dimension
[1-Englund; 8]. The visible -tangible culture-, rich in codified forms of
production, such as literary and architectural ones of all kinds, which are the
tangible emergent of a particular vision of the universe [Guideon, 251-280 and
304-321]. The invisible dimension of society -intangible culture- [1.-Asmann, c.
1] that brings together the basic and resistant components of the "cosmovision"
of this culture. It is presented to us in religious, cosmological, moral, ethical and
legal beliefs expressed in canonized doctrines, which justify the actions of
society and its individuals in the world.
Many of these cultural traits -both visible and intangible- are what guide
societies to know how to "interpret and be in the world" and, especially, how
to "live the world" [Laveque, 4-5- 8], expounded in the wisdom texts of all ages.
They are shared, to a greater or lesser degree and in different dimensions, with
other cultural groups. Sometimes, they are related by a common origin or by
simple geographical contiguity. Others, more broadly, because they are part of
archetypal forms of the collective unconscious of humanity.
But some of these traits are more complex, underlying forms or patterns –
archetypes- of repetitive images and symbols, which appear in different ways in
all societies and which represent the collective unconscious that all human
beings share, regardless of each culture. It is what we commonly designate as
“the human condition”. The implicit concept of "archetype" that we use is
opposed to the notion of Platonic "idea", although they may seem close to us,
because ours belongs exclusively to the sphere of human nature, and the
Platonic, to the sphere of speculation of the divine [Scrimieri Martin, part 2 and
3].
Therefore, we will proceed with caution, avoiding seeking relationships by
simple analogy between cultures by basing ourselves on some isolated traits,
similar or common to human nature, which can be misleading and lead to gross
confusion of interpretation. [Cervelló, c. 1]. Thus, we renounce to any
intercultural comparison where everything is mixed and the institutions lose
their local color, and the documents, their deep significance. Both are
decontextualized and installed in the ambiguity of cultural relativism.
The cosmovision, in addition to everything already mentioned, constitutes a
set of beliefs that a person or a group has by inheritance about its reality, and
constitutes a set of complex presuppositions, which a group receives from its

11
ancestors, assumes and practices, explains in doctrines, rites and paradigmatic
texts of wisdom, and transmits them to their offspring for their particular
immersion in the natural environment. The cosmovision as a model explains to
the society that supports it, how the natural and social cosmos works, guiding
nd justifying personal and collective behavior, indicating how this reality should
be assumed in mutual reciprocities, most of the time, canonized as sacred model
behavior of the past and, therefore, indubitable and necessarily repeatable [4.-
Assmann, c. i / Mauss, part I, c. 3 and 4].
In the case of Egypt, these presuppositions are not western-style
philosophical or scientific constructs [Morentz, c. viii]. Egyptian culture is not
the result of the reflections of a group of select sages who impose on society a
way of interpreting the world, but quite the opposite. They are experiences of
the sacred and collective customs that find, in ritual and doctrine, the ideal
means for the canonization of their subjectivity, carried out and managed by a
college of expert priests [1.-Assmann, c. 4]. In short, the cosmovision is the
means that the Egyptian culture has to perceive, interpret and explain the world.
It is not simply an intellectual conceptualization but, rather, an experiential
dimension of collective participation of all social classes, administered by a
college of expert priests. [Morentz, c. v].
The cosmovision of a society guides the person to respond, from cultural
subjectivity, to the questions that everyone asks: What is real? What makes
things be or exist? What is divinity or only sacred nature? What is the truth?
What is the human being? What happens when you die and after? How should
we live? [4.- Assmann, c. 1] among other questions that all societies ask
themselves in relation to the precariousness and finitude of the human
condition, and they are the ones that we should try to answer from an academic
perspective. As can be seen, the questions that the scholar must ask allude to
the profound nature of the person immersed in society and its culture. In our
particular case, the Egyptian, understanding that: “problems, being existential,
are universal; their solutions, being human, are diverse” [Geertz in Reinoso, 4].
These answers must be sought in their symbolic elements that are resistant
to change, in dense and concentrated descriptions, in small points that can be
universalized due to their centrality [Geertz. c., 1], and which encompass wide
temporal spaces. Practically, we refer to the total duration of this system of
thought until its extinction as a culture that is, treated as a whole and almost
from a methodological perspective close to Frankfort-Morentz-Braudel

12
[Cervelló, int.].
We are not satisfied with the mere description of our object of reflection and
its particular temporal inflection. As an example, we can say that we are
interested in knowing "what" they mean in their polysemic complexity, both
sacred texts and funerary monuments, as ceremonial centers. Unveil "what"
they mean, in their own cosmovision, the beliefs conveyed by the sacred texts
and “what” is put into play in the performance of divine liturgies or funerary
rituals [Goyon, c. 1 and 2 / Giedion, 103-109 and 317-321].
We are interested in trying to dwell on the centrality of our object of
reflection, and the words we take from Goethe are a clear explanation of our
proposed approach to the cosmovision of Ancient Egypt:

How, when, where? The gods remain silent!

You pay attention to because and don't ask why.
W. Goethe, Sentences,
Lavapeur, 129.

In other words, we are interested in avoiding questions that allude,

excessively, to the Greek tekné, to "how", since, according to our criteria, it does
not solve the possibility of penetrating deep Egyptian thought, and by way of
example, accessing the multiple meaning of funerary complexes as ceremonial
centers, only with the mere description of the monuments as an architectural
object [Giedion, 324-330 and 380-428]. The exclusive “how” alludes to a
diachronic axiality that can avoid the cultural meaning that arises from the
synchrony, for example, between the rites put into play in the liturgies and the
associated monuments, charging tangible heritage with meaning. So that the
mere course of something, whether phenomenon or event through time, does
not necessarily provide the answers of "what" they mean in their relational
complexity, which is what we intend to find, and that most of the time obscures
them with descriptions elliptical, recurrent or peripheral descriptions.

4. - The cosmovision properties.

The concept of cosmovision is complex, multivalent and reaffirms the

cultural uniqueness of the Egyptian civilization by a double distinction. The first
is an I-we as a cultural subject, which distinguishes one cultural-we from the
others–they as strangers, in individual terms and in collective participation
[Bastide, part I and II]. The other-them as otherness is, above all, a stranger–

13
personal and collective- that must be observed, prevented and conjured. Most
of the times it is perceived as a source of multiple dangers, distinguishable in
the rituals of execration of the enemies of Egypt [Wilson, c. x, 266 c], identified
with the evil entities that cause diseases, death and attack the mummified body
that must be preserved, especially the heart and genitals, from the assaults of
the malignant entities [Goyon, part iii c. 2, 255-256 / LM c. 27, 28, 29c, 30c].
But the presence of the strange has a positive face: the possibility of
understanding one's own cultural self-us, identifying one's own as supportive
neighbors, co-participants of the tangible and intangible social components,
inherited and shared from generation to generation [Cervelló, c. 1 int.]. The
relationship I – others reaffirms ties of cultural identity with one's own, which
are experienced by differentiation with the others-they perceived, socially and
culturally, as strangers and, therefore, different and dangerous [Moreno García,
c. 7, 267-280].
The use of the concept of cosmovision enables the specific view of a
particular aspect of a culture, without losing the appreciation of its complex
multiformity and universality, which must be accounted for. In other words,
the notion of cosmovision allows exploring the ways of being of the subjects
immersed in their culture, of their ways of perceiving and reading the
surrounding social and natural cosmos, where both are only parts of a dynamic
and complex unit that we call culture. , and that represents the world view as a
social construction for those who hold it. The cosmovision as a global concept
contains a constellation of specific ways of being, which allow us a perception
of the interiority of the Egyptian culture in central themes. We will mention
some, significant for our reflections:

- The cosmovision leads us to conceptualize how the people of a culture, the

Egyptian in our case, in their social interaction understood how and why events
occur, which enabled them to enunciate ethical and moral values in relation to
exemplary sacred events of their cultural heritage, considered models of
desirable and repeatable social procedures [Morentz, c. vi]. It allows us to
interpret the meaning of the geographical environment for the individuals of a
particular culture, -the environment as habitat and sacred space- and also, of
other humans, and things that are peripheral to them [Forde, int.]. The latter,
due to the differentiation of physical features, of different cultural, material and
symbolic forms, which enable the apprehension of the cultural identity studied.

- It enables us to access the conceptualization of time in that culture, providing

14
us with significant information about what they conceive of as time: cyclical or
linear; combined or processual; or multiple and simultaneous [Tobin, concl.].
Also, how they perceive the passage of time [McBride, c. 15]: if as past, present,
future or, simply, a perfect present of the sacred, totalizing, where past and
future have almost no real existence, they present themselves as the mere
anteriority and posteriority of a sacred and eternal present that subsumes
everything [2- Bilolo, c. 2].

- Temporality is manifested in the structure of the Egyptian language, which

emerges in the peculiar conformation of the existential verb [Gardiner, §107-
110] and the maturation of the perfect forms, which are its own until the
appearance of the imperfect verbal form or continues in Middle Kingdom
[Gardiner, § 67], marking an important inflection in the Egyptian cosmovision,
establishing a dialogical relationship between epochs, observable in sacred and
sapiential literature.

The cosmovision allows us to understand the Egyptian perception of the

cosmos as a system, which allows us to reason how they interpreted the physical
environment; either as subject or as object; its origin and constitution, its
spatialization process and its permanence. This implies the need to understand
its sacred and profane meanings -mountains, sea, far, near, much- and its
toponymy of terrestrial and celestial geography. Identifying the profound nature
of the universe makes it easier for us to understand how and in what framework
they externalize nature and the transnatural in their cosmo-religious
conceptions. [Naydler, c. 2]. This makes it possible to elucidate whether the
cosmos is constituted by a single substance or principle, -arche of the pre-
Socratic monist philosophers-, which encompasses everything in a
consubstantial totalizing "continuum" (monism) without ontological rupture,
or if it is constituted by two (dualism) or more substances or principles
(pluralism), that discontinue the universe and the entities that populate it
[Ferrater Mora, 287], establishing the latter a defined polytheistic religiosity.

Differential Cosmovisions:

The cosmovision pays attention to the differential perception of the cosmos

as a means of avoiding self-referential ethnocentrism, and it is what must be
taken into account when facing the study of Egyptian religion. We get it by

15
observing what the ancient Egyptians saw when looking at their surroundings:
things very different from our perception of the universe, which we will
exemplify with the following comparison:

OBSERVED THING WHAT WE SEE WHAT THE EGYPTIANS SAW

Daytime sky luminous sky space iron vault

Horus with outstretched wings
Nighttime sky sky with stars Nut unfurled
residence of the Netjeru (NTr.w),
pharaohs and justified

Earthquake tectonic plates the earth Ta (t3) moved

moving by Geb his Ba-soul (b3)

Diseases Natural causes transnatural causes

virus or bacteria an evil netjer

5.- Some methodological assumptions.

If culture is compared to a text, anthropology

should be understood as a hermeneutic,
as an attempt to understand the social expressions
that are enigmatic on the surface.
C. Geertz in Reinoso

The cognition shared by a society, which we define here as “cosmovision”,

is the culture. The behavior of a society is partially conditioned and limited by
the norms of interpretation -whether religious or philosophical- and of
valuations -political, ethical and legal- that culture provides to the society that
contains it to settle in the world. This partiality enables and justifies the cultural
changes that occur within them, in their historical evolution.
The cosmovision is constructed by the social experience of the culture, and
can be discerned by the ways in which its members speak, describe and explain
their vision of the world and of themselves. These ways of perceiving reality are
expressed in concepts and evaluations of themselves, which can be extracted
from written, monumental and archaeological sources, although certain texts of

16
the cultural heritage of Ancient Egypt could be treated as true oral testimonies,
contained in some examples of the biographical genre and of wisdom [Morentz,
c. x].
The interpretation of the Egyptian cosmovision, -in the terms that we
affirmed before-, implies an ethnography of the culture whose field passes in
the past time. It is a low level theory, since the descriptions and statements are
theoretical and do not intend to reconstruct or clone the original cosmovision
object of interpretation, in our case, the nature of the religious cosmovision of
Ancient Egypt [Geertz; c. 1]. Only a description based on a network of
meanings, images, metaphors and historical institutions, comprehensively
interpreted from its complex interiority/subjectivity, to expose it as fully as
possible. That is, thematized and modeled to highlight its nature, significance
and permanence over time [Costilla; 2 part]. It would be an explanation
translated into our epistemological categories of a culture that takes place in the
past, the primary object of Ethnohistory and also of the History of Religions.
The study of the Egyptian religion from this perspective is "emic", that is, it
tries to penetrate the point of view or cosmovision of the acting subject and
not the point of view of the observer. This methodological position excludes
the projection of the interpreter's self-referential values, an attitude commonly
designated as “ethnocentrism” [Geertz, c. 1]. People's experience should not be
stripped of the context that surrounds it. This form of approach is called a
holistic or systemic approach. In other words, when the Egyptian religion is
studied, the experience of the faithful is being studied, be it them the ruling and
priestly elites or the simple believer, because it is a shared experience.

6. - Egyptian beliefs as a religious system.

At this point in our discussion, we are in a position to affirm that Egyptian
beliefs about the sacred [Otto, c. 1 to 3], have the components that every belief
system must have to be considered a religion [Puech, foreword].
The first component is the intellectual, which is manifested in the complex
theological elaborations of all its historical periods, with the particularity that
each priestly college deepened an attribute of particular power, generally
identified with the dominant forces of the universe deposited in the Creator, to
show its omnipotent and totalizing nature. This existence is a dominating power
of the cosmos and of its secondary manifestations, identified as part of itself
[Piulats, c. 2]. This cosmovision generated a vast doctrinal and ritual

17
corpus [Morentz, c. v and x/ Molinero Polo, c. vi]. Sacred stories, mythical
cycles and liturgies that are characterized by descriptive detail in their detailed
iconographic and textual forms that have come down to us fragmentary, and
with great faults, caused, both by the disappearance of innumerable texts whose
past existence we know, as well as by the deliberate concealment, by the
priesthood, from the common people of that literature considered powerful.
The second component is the emotional one linked to the experience of the
sacred, originating in the feeling of annihilation and dependence that they
experienced with respect to those holy, powerful and dominant forces.
[Derchain, c. 1], which operated on the natural universe, the transnatural
universe and on themselves. They were conceived as an invisible presence that
permeated all created reality, powers that they tried to explain, placate and direct
through complex ritualism. These feelings originated a corpus of propitiatory
and piety rituals regarding the sacred, with the express purpose of establishing
a relationship with the invisible divinity [Morentz, c. iii], collaborate with the
maintenance of the natural order of creation, always threatened by the forces
of primordial chaos, and fight against evil; which is the expression of cosmic
disorder and the cause of death caused by the rebellious acts of humanity, by
marginalizing itself from divine designs. The consequence was the formulation
of an elaborate ethic, the Maat [2- Assmann, c ii, 1-2-3].
The third component is social reciprocity, the result of the maturation of this
complex and refined system of beliefs, which had its maximum expression in
the formulation of an ethic, the Maat, the alter ego of the demiurge [3- Assmann
/ Karenga, c. 5 and 7]. These rules articulated the relationships between men
through social and individual norms of high moral content. The obligations
towards society, the family and the person had their compensation, both in the
visible natural world and in the invisible transnatural universe or beyond [BD,
c. 125, 2-Faukner]. The compensation of living in Maat was the transcendence
by survival or immortality of the components [3- Assmann, J., III /1.-
Frankfort, c. 13] immaterial aspects of the person after death and rebirth and
permanence together with the Creator in the Duat, in his inner
dimension/space. [Naydler; c. 12 / Frankfort, c. 4]

7. - The study of the Egyptian religious thought and its

conditions.

The limitation in the study of the Egyptian religious cosmovision is the

impossibility of accessing, in a comprehensive and detailed way, its cosmo-
ontological conceptions, from the first stages of its formative and archaic

18
development [Wengrow, c. 9]. When we access this conception of the world,
we find it elaborated in a complex way [Morentz, c i], expressed in a
monumental literary-religious documentation, highly developed with respect to
its predynastic origins. I am referring to the corpus of the oldest religious texts
of humanity, the Texts of the Pyramids, -PT-, and support of the entire later
religious and liturgical system, which largely provides the bases for the
reflections of this interpretation essay. This belief system has its origins in the
Egyptian Neolithic, and its basic conformation is consolidated in protohistoric
times, in the final Gerzean period / Naqada III, approx. 3600-3000 BC
[Wengrow, c. 8 and 9 / Jiménez Serrano, c. 1 and 2 / Castillos]. In its later
development there are multiple, more complex reworkings, which occurred in
the Old Kingdom and in later historical times. They are based on very archaic
beliefs, to which we access very partially, through archaeological sources and
then through monumental sources, the Texts of the Pyramids -PT- among
others.
The PT were written on the inner walls of pyramids from the 5th to the 6th
dynasties [1 – Allen/Gideon, 301-324]. Many of their speeches date back to the
end of the protodynastic period and are the expression of an astral religiosity.
A second series of texts is the elaboration of the first Heliopolitan theological
speculation, referring to the non-solarised demiurge Atum, which takes place
early, probably, between the First Dynasty and the beginning of the Third,
finding their speeches encrypted in the PT. The latest theological elaboration is
the result of the triumph of solar theology, also Heliopolitan, from the
beginning of the III dynasty, made explicit in the PT. Non-solarized theological
texts are well preserved in Funerary Rituals from ancient and middle ages
[Goyon, part. 1 and 2].
The Pyramid Texts -PT- have been bequeathed to us by the funerary
monuments of the last dynasties of Ancient Times, in such a way that they
appear highly developed and, for us, confusedly mixed. Due to their diverse
origins, it is difficult to establish the chronology of certain texts and, therefore,
also makes them difficult to interpret and elucidate [1- Allen, c. int.]. This belief
system was enriching its textual heritage with subsequent theological
elaborations such as the Texts of the Coffins -TA- to which is added the Book
of the Dead -BD-, among other subsequent rituals and liturgies, formulated
during successive historical epochs, until its extinction as a religion in Roman
times [MacBride, part. iii].
One of the main characteristics of Egyptian religious beliefs, is that they
coexist in the internal structure of the doctrines of historical times, ancient

19
forms of Neolithic thought with the strong imprint of a Mesolithic pastoral
socioeconomic substrate [1.- Frankfort, c. 14] of large cattle breeders. This is
reflected in its iconographic forms and expressions of its sacred literature [1-
and 2.- Wendorf and Schild] perpetuated, in all its historical periods, [Brass] by
a complex symbology of its theocratic political system, -divine royalty- ,
articulated by a practical and concrete language, synthetic and descriptive, very
symbolic language [Cervelló, c iii/ Campagno, 33 ss.]. A language capable of
subtle scriptural combinations, which lacked any tendency to abstraction,
generating a polyvalent and holistic logic, very different from the causal logic
of the classical world, of which we are cultural heirs. This archaism was
maintained throughout the existence of the pharaonic culture, strengthened by
the peculiar conservatism regarding the permanent use of a language of
canonized images and symbols, complementary and non-contradictory for the
Egyptians that describe their religious thought and protect their sacredness
through textual canonization. [Tobin, int. – concl. / 1 -Assmann, c 1].
Modern studies seek to unravel the nature of this cosmo-religious thought,
appealing to conceptions that have been extensively studied by ethnography
and, in particular, Africanism. It was compared, during the first half of the 20th
century, with the religious systems of various ethnic groups of Nilotic origin,
from Lake Victoria and the upper Nile basin, on issues related to the function
of the ancestors in relation to the king, and their intimate link with agricultural
and livestock prosperity [1- Frankfort, c. 8 / Evans-Pritchard, c. 10–11]. The
Egyptian royalty, considered divine [Cervelló, iv-2], has in common, with some
current African populations, the belief in the divinity of the ruler and the
perception of a two-dimensional monistic universe, in a cosmological context
full of invisible entities, among other founding aspects of great socio-cultural
importance [Cervelló, c. i and ii / Naydler, c. 10-11/ Evans Pritchard, c. i, ii, iii,
ix].

Addendum. The ontological - theological unity in the ancient

Egyptian cosmovision

Whatever the method that is implemented to address the ancient Egyptian cosmovision, it is
necessary to admit that the ways of interpreting the ordering of that cultural universe, are
limited to a restricted number of possibilities and it is of vital importance to identify the
cosmovision of this society and its possible secondary combinations. All societies have some
specific way of perceiving the sacred or numinous in the immediate environment, and

20
interpreting it as part of the universe and of each person, within the framework of their
cultural subjectivity, and the ancient Egyptians were no exception. Our task will be to identify
their perception of the surrounding environment as a cultural reality. Their particular
cosmovision, in the context of an unrevealed religion, was the center and pivot of their
immersion in the world, and provided them with the justification of human existence and a
special life experience, both individual and participatory [Eliade, v II]. In religious texts, one
of them is repeatedly presented to us, sometimes combined with significant aspects or notes,
in other complementary ways. We present them below, in a schematic and synthetic way,
without the pretense of constituting a precise study on the subject, but they are the
framework and permanent general reference guide for our interpretation and modelling.

Theistic: belief in a God who is a person. He is an androgynous originator and orderer of all
that exists, both visible and invisible. He, thus, is simultaneously immanent and transcendent;
consubstantial and trans-substantial. He is a being in whom all the attributes coincide, an
absolute and dominating existence, in which wanting as will coincides with execution. In
other words, he is in all things and existences, but he is not the totality of them, yielding, by
his own will, autonomy and transcendence, to some kind of existence. The universe is part
of his person, created by metamorphosis of himself and, also, a direct modality of the first
divinity, but without being the cosmos in its entirety, despite his presence in everything that
exists as the soul of that cosmos. It was a dynamic cosmovision of the world that was
perceived as its hypostatic emanation. It implies the historical evolution of an unrevealed
demiurge and, therefore, the beginning of a sacred natural history, which is theological-
cosmological.

Pantheistic: it is the belief in a God who is an androgynous person and absolute Creator and
ruler of the cosmos and, as in the previous case, an absolute in whom the will coincides with
the execution. It is a conception that maintains that the universe is his creation and, also, his
person is fully present in totality, in the same world. Thus, the Creator is the soul of the
universe and everything created is nothing more than a dynamic and direct modality of the
divine nature or, more properly, its corporeal prolongation, for being in totality, the same
cosmos. The totalizing divine is manifested and exteriorized in the fractioned cosmos, and
dispersed in the things and beings that compose it, ultimately converting them into its only
reality, which dissolves into things and existences. Pantheism, in its most extreme position,
can understand that the sacred world is the only reality. The divine, in this case, is reduced
to the multiplicity of the world, making the Creator the self-awareness of the universe. It
implies the historical evolution of an unrevealed demiurge and, therefore, the beginning of a
sacred natural history, which is theological-cosmological.

Deist: belief in an absolute and androgynous God, diffuse and impersonal, which is reduced
to a force, an energy or, simply, an abstract philosophical-theological system. He is not a
person, with all that the concept means; he can only be called an entity that is reduced to a
supra-organic principle of the natural. He is an imprecise entity that has created the universe
and lets it run at its own pace. He is impersonal and does not listen to people's pleas and
complaints. He is not careful with what he has created, he does nothing with his creation,
delegating his demiurgic capacities to a mediator. It implies the historical evolution of an
unrevealed impersonal demiurge and, therefore, the beginning of a sacred natural history that

21
is theological-cosmological.

Naturalistic: The universe is a closed system and the humanity is alone within it. There is
nothing supernatural or transnatural; there is only subsistence, only matter and its constant
re-convertibility process exist. There is only what is seen, and death is the extinction of the
person.

22
 PART II

THE HOMOLOGY

Souls and Shadows greet the demiurge - light.

Tausert's tomb - 19th Dynasty.

23
 Homology and complementarity: nature and attribute
of the divine in the monistic cosmovision of Ancient Egypt.

The universe is an interval of multiplicity,

of differentiation, between the One and the One.
J. Assmann

The Egyptian cosmotheology is the political doctrine

of the divine monarchy and
the pharaonic state.
The author
1
The demiurge is presented in theological and liturgical texts, as the personal
existence of a One, "he who generates himself" passionately, Sekheper djsef, -
in Egyptian an active participle- (sxpr Ds=f) [Morentz, c. viii 226 – 227/ 1-
Faulkner, 163]. A universal and omnipresent Being, without beginning or end,
endowed with absolute power over creation, due to the fact that it integrates
the multiplicity of the universe into its corporeality and disposes of it. Faced
with this reality, it is worth asking:

Where does the conception of the nature of the Creator come from in
Egyptian religiosity, as the divine One in the multiplicity of the cosmos,
and inversely?

This definition was introduced into Egyptian religious studies, with great
success, by Hornung in his work: "The one and the many, Egyptian conceptions of
divinity"; meticulous study referring to Egyptian ontology, published in the
seventies of the last century, although it was not the first to use this definition
of the divine [Hornung, c. 2 ss.]
To answer this question, in principle, it is necessary to recognize that this
definition of the sacred was adopted by Mircea Eliade and the School of History
of Religions, and spread in his youth book: Mephistopheles and the Androgyne [3-
Eliade, c. 2]. But it is important to note that the original definition of the sacred,
as Eliade's coincidentia oppositorum, does not belong to him. This conception has
its modern origin in the theological proposals of the philosopher and theologian
Nicolás de Cusa, who, greatly influenced by hermeticism [D'Amico, 110 ss.],
and the Neoplatonism of Proclus and Plotinus [Gonzales, doctrine], asked
himself the following:

24
 “How is the plurality of the One understood without multiplication? Or: How do you
understand the multiplication of the One without multiplication (of the One”)?”
Cusa, Learned ignorance.
Murillo i and iii
He also stated:
"The unity of elusive truth is known in conjectural otherness, and the very conjecture of
otherness in the simple unity of truth."
Cusa, De conieucturis,
Murillo, b. 11 and Malgaray, 69.

Cusa's theologian affirms that the divinity is not separated from the world,
but is also in everything that is and in what is, not-yet. The Creator is found,
simultaneously, in the two dimensions mentioned, being -all one and multiple
at the same time- and, also, administrator of all the possible oppositions in
beings and things, because it is the point of synthesis of all the possibilities of
existences and non-existences [1- Soto Bruna, pt. III ss]. But in addition, the
theologian of Cusa is categorical about the presence of divine power, and
affirms:
“God is all in all and at the same time
an All above all”
Cusa, The Beryl.
González, 17 ss.

In this sentence he makes explicit the previous definition of God, outside of

all disjunction and reason [Peña, points 2, 7 ss.], affirming that "Everything"
contains in its person the totality of the elements of the universe, also includes
the possible existences as complementary reality of Everything, because the
divine dominates the totality of existences and not-yet existences. In other
words: “Everything in everything” alludes to its immanence in the world and,
“above all”, to its transcendence to the world [2- Soto Bruna, 137 ss.], reasoning
that we can outline as follows;
God
He is

all possibilities and all non-possibilities

simultaneous

25
 This paradoxical phrase takes for granted the inclusive presence of the divine in
all existences and all non-existences. Therefore, we are in the presence of a
unified and transcendent conception of the Creator, in his relationship with the
cosmos. For Cusa, God is absolute above any ontological duality that human
thought can outline about the multiplicity of the universe, in its desire to know
it directly.
It is important to note that he makes a thoughtful use of the copulative
conjunction –AND- in conjunctive function, proposing an entitative and
contracted unity of human intelligence and cosmic diversity in divine
intelligence [Peña, part 2, 13], with an Aristotelian dualistic cosmological garb,
where the cosmovision of his time is installed, from which the theologian tries
to get rid of. Cusa presents us with a transcendent monistic ontology [Soto, 752
ss.] in a dualistic guise, which he inherits from the neoplatonic philosophy of
Plotinus and Proclus, among others. By applying the philosophical principle of
coincidentia oppositorum to his theology, he explicitly calls into question the
Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction [Núñez, part 4, 1 ss.].
The use of analogies and mirror projections, as a tool to understand the
creation of the multiple from the One, is the necessary result of the dualistic
cosmology that he inherits from classical philosophy, which he tries to modify.
Nicholas of Cusa: “he wonders rather how to unite the one and the many? How to
understand that God, in his simple unity, has created a multiple and complex world? The
founding question of his thought is analogy” [Hubert, 423]. It is a very sensible
methodological answer to a classical dualistic cosmology. Cusa's theologian
directly posits a particular relationship between humanity and the Divine, which
completes the circle of possibilities in the God-Humanity relationship, where
God is ineffable and particularly unknowable, from reason rejecting all
disjunction. This affirmation is evident in the definition that we have mentioned
previously, and that can be appreciated with more precision in the following
fragment of the same author:

“To see God is to see all things as God,

And to God in all things, in this way we know…
that He cannot be seen by us.”
Cusa, Apology of docta ignorantiae.
12-13, Nuñez, 111.

The divine goes beyond the cosmic or natural, ensuring its ineffability. We

26
can only perceive of God fragments of his totality because he is infinite and,
therefore, it is the only thing that human reason allows us to apprehend of his
totality, given the finite nature of humanity.

§
The coincidentia oppositorum is rescued, at the beginning of the nineteen forties,
by Eliade, from the school of History of Religions, in his early work,
enigmatically titled: Mephistopheles and the androgyne, [3 – Eliade, 98 and ss.] for his
studies of the divine in world religions. He agrees with Nicholas of Cusa in the
theological definition of God as "coincidentia oppositorum", held by the theologian
as the least imperfect synthesis to define the nature of the divine, the absolute
Being that is: "diversity in unity and unity in diversity” [3- Eliade, 101].
The correct inclusive definition of the divine of the theologian of Cusa,
supported by the rigorous interpretation of Judeo-Christian philosophical and
theological sources, and a correct separation from Aristotelian logic, was taken
by Eliade, who imprinted profound conceptual modifications on it, influenced
by the work of Jung. Years before Eliade's work, Jung attaches, to the definition
of the theologian of Cusa, his psychological conceptions referring to the
collective unconscious and its archetypes, defined by Jung himself as complex
oppositorum, mysterium coniuctionis or the mystery of totality. The Jungian
reinterpretation makes an inflection in the conscious and the contents of the
unconscious, as opposites articulated in a duality, in the interiority of the human
person, which, at some point, must unite, even if briefly. He calls this process
the mystery of totality [3-Eliade, 102].
It is important to draw attention to the interpretation of the coincidentia
oppositorum, which Eliade tries to take to universal terms, to warn that it has great
conceptual limitations for being biased, insufficient and partial when defining
the nature of the demiurge in world religions. His work is based exclusively on
classical and Indo-European sources, with a marked dualistic bias close to
Zurvanist and Manichean approaches, among other cases. Eliade takes for
granted the disjunctive the character of the nature of the divine in the religious
beliefs studied in his work: "Mephistopheles and the androgyne”, and then tacitly
transfers it to the level of the entire religious universe. The reinterpretation of
the coincidentia oppositorum in the nature of the divine that Eliade raises, is strongly
installed in the studies of the History of Religions, favored by the encompassing
ambiguity of its formulation. He affirms, in fact, the existence of an irreducible
ontological and cosmological dualism, implicit in all religions, an argument
derived from sources of clear dualistic content used in his essay, and in the
comparison that he posits between the divine and the diabolical [3- Eliade, 105].

27
 It should be noted that this promoted dualism is not reflected in the Egyptian
cosmovision, in the relationship between the divine, the cosmos and humanity,
nor does it represent African sacred beliefs in general. Academic studies of
Egyptian religion had to wait until the late 1990s for the abysmal difference
between Indo-European cosmovisions and those of today's African world and
ancient Egypt, in particular, to be elucidated. This difference was clarified by
the studies of Cervelló Autuori, in his theory of the pan-African cultural
substratum and divine kingship, in contrast to the sacred kingship of the Indo-
European and Oriental peoples. His thesis, based on the erudite study of the
nature of the Egyptian-African divine monarchies, marks the profound
differences with the cosmovisions of non-African cultures [Cervelló, c. ii and
iii].
In the fifties of the last century, independently of Eliade, the nature of
Egyptian religion in the relationship of the demiurge with the cosmos, began to
be discreetly studied [Hornung, int. / 2- Frankfort, int.], from an ontological
and theological perspective, treated, for the first time, in an integral and
encompassing way in Morentz's emblematic and precursory work: La Religion
Égyptienne – essai d'interprétation [Morentz, c. viii]. Until that moment never
examined from that perspective, it affirms the importance of "the one and the
multiplicity" in the creative divinity, from an independent position to that of
Eliade. The approach of this distinguished author is tacitly close to the Cusean
criticism of the logic and cosmology of Aristotelian philosophy, already
mentioned [Núñez, part 3]. Morentz affirms, with great clarity, that the
Egyptian understanding of the cosmos in its relationship with the divine is
strongly inclusive, an ontological continuum that manifests itself in the
consubstantiality between both poles, when he affirms:

“(Egyptian) theology is the fruit of the Egyptian's relationship with God (nTr), to the
extent that it makes the multiplicity enter into the one adored by the believer and
is everything for him in that act. As for historical-political situations, they are, to
speak with Goethe, nothing more than the conditions in which a phenomenon
appears. [Morentz, c. vii, 188]…Our intention was rather to show on this side the
topicality of the problem of the unity of the divine behind the multiplicity of the
pantheon” [Morentz, c. vii, 198].

The author devotes a chapter to it [Morentz, c. vii 192], to explain his thesis
of the conception of the "creation and advent of the world", with that
framework of interpretation, and that, according to his opinion, was the
procedure used by the priesthood in its theological speculations. The method
of the Egyptian theologians consisted in thinking of the plurality of the world,
28
reducing it to a ternary that synthesizes its multiplicity in the One-demiurge,
which this author reduces to three theological formulas: modalism, tritheism
and trinitarianism [Morentz, c. vii 194 and ss.]. This method is justified with a
game of words and meanings that consists of using expressions that apparently
involve contradiction. In the Egyptian language and, above all, in sacred texts,
there are three ways of writing the plural in the same text: the first with the
phoneme .w that indicates it and its feminine wt, for example, Netjeru divinities
(nTr.w) [Gardiner § 71 ss.]; and the second form, very common, is with the
numeral three jentu (xntw) [Gardiner, §260]. The third is written with three
strokes or the triple repetition of a main sign. Thus, divinities nTr.w is written in
three different ways, with the same result. The plural phoneme, the numeral
three and the hieroglyphic writing ideogram reveal the multiplicity of nature and
the cosmos as a collective plurality.
It is important to highlight that the plural and the numeral "three", in
Egyptian, can also mean the collective "many", expressible equally with the
numeral phoneme and the plurals for "three" already seen, in the sense of an
"apparent" plural, or “abstract”, with the meaning of “totality”, since in essence
it is “many” [Bergman, part. 2 et ss. /Gardiner, § 77]. In the Egyptian
cosmovision, totality is nothing more than the maximum possibilities of
something or someone, in our example, the Creator. Therefore, the abstract
plural is “totality of modes of existence”, that is, the multiplicity of the
“universe”, represented in the Netjeru, which, as a collective, is significantly
“everything”, transformable into the One-demiurge. Because "totality" is the
multiple form –jepru- of the One-demiurge in Egyptian thought [Morentz, c vii
192 ss.].
It is the first great paradox of theological speculation founded on the
Egyptian language. This paradox is based on a false plural, or apparent plural,
also abstract or intensive, that marks a tension between two poles: unity-diversity
with an inclusive meaning [Bergman, 12-13 / Zabkar, c. ii]. For the Egyptian,
"totality", despite being One, does not cease to mean, at the same time, a
collective and plural "many", which our author in his study reduces to three
models: modalism, tritheism and trinitarianism [Morentz, c. viii]. It is important
to point out that this complex meaning of the plural between the one and the
multiple, as a totality and its tensions, is also seen in ontological-anthropological
conceptions such as ba-bau, ka-kau and sekhem-sekhemu of the Egyptian
religion [Bergman, point 2 / 2- Frankfort, c. 5].

But how does the author resolve the possible ontological jump between
unity and diversity, or between the singular absolute demiurge and the
plurality of the universe in the Egyptian priestly theological speculation,
that kept the Greek dualist philosophers so awake?
29
 This question has its answer provided by Morentz, based on his thesis on the
community of substance between "the multiplicity of the universe in the One-
demiurge" or "the One-demiurge in the multiplicity of the universe". He called
it "consubstantiation" of the original unity or first existence with the cosmos;
unity preserved in natural multiplicity after becoming [Morentz, c. i 30 and c vii
211.]. This intimate relationship is articulated through the explicit or tacit use
of the predicative preposition "m" of the Egyptian language, whose
meaning: "in", "within", is markedly inclusive in the theological formulas of all
epochs, a model that is found everywhere in Egyptian sacred literature, and
poses the problem of "the uniqueness of the divine in the multiplicity of the
pantheon" [Morentz, c. vii 209 ss/ Jacq, 31, n. 31 and 36].
Now we can affirm the second great paradox of Egyptian ontology, almost in
terms of priestly theology referring to the demiurge as Atum, which is the logic
of inclusion according to Bergman, and which we model as: The One is in the
multiple and the multiple is in the One simultaneously. This inclusion is, moreover,
analogous to the proposal of Cuse's ontology. Morentz's analysis, which we
have described, can be seen in one of the several examples he uses to explain
the methodological foundations of the theological formulations of the Egyptian
clergy [Gardiner, §162 /Grandet and Mathiae, point 3.4 - 45 and 4.4 - 56 H.H.]:

he is like one
who became three

unn=f m wa
xpr=f m xntw
CT II 39 sp 80, Morentz,
c. vii - 195 no. 35.

The regular use of the inclusive function of the Egyptian preposition m for the
priesthood, in theological formulations, [Morentz, c vii 208 - 213], bridges any
ontological break between the divine and the universe, and lays the groundwork
for modern study of Egyptian ontology, within the framework of a unified
cosmology, typical of the theological thought of ancient Egypt. This is the great
discovery of Morentz, perhaps never fully recognized, and which makes this
work an essential starting point for studies of Pharaonic Egyptian religion. Then
we can affirm that: “Consequently, the reader will be wise to try from the beginning,
to assimilate the “additive-inclusive” way of looking at things, so characteristic of the
ancient Egyptians, that it does not present abrupt definitions, or better, proposes

30
several possible solutions corresponding to a multiplicity of approaches to the problem,
using the classic Frankfort formulation” [Bergman, part. 2]. In the Alexandrian world,
the diversity of Egyptian theological formulas, used to express the One in the
multiplicity of existences, were reduced to the Enneads, Ogdoads and the
ternaries that will be the ones that will perfect as a method of theological
elaboration, which is profusely observed in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism
[MacBride, c. 6].
Then, the Gnostic and official Christianity will adopt the ternaries of the
Egyptian clergy in the forms of: modalism, tritheism, trinitarianism and, especially,
hermeticism [García Bazán, c. 8, 9 and concl.], projecting all its influence on the
later European world: "It must be borne in mind that the most recent interpretations
of Egyptian religious thought, including those of Frankfort and Hornung (see the
introduction) have also been based on the ritual texts that (the hermetic author) has
presented in epistemological terms, pointing out the "ritual effectiveness" as a
determining feature. Our hermetic author is more faithful to the raw material of bases
for the generalization that modern interpreters make of ancient Egyptian thought... Yet,
the belief in ritual efficacy does not constitute a philosophy or a structured religious
thought” [Pedermann Sorensen, 42].
The multiplying effect of the Morentz work will be effective in the seventies
of the last century, with the affirmation of the existence of an Egyptian
philosophy -restricted to a complex ontology-, in an emblematic thesis outlined
in the Hornung work: "The one and the Multiple...", widely accepted in the field of
religious studies of academic Egyptology. The work of this author, nodal for
the studies of Egyptian religiosity, does not delve into the nature of the cosmos
in its relationship with the demiurge from within, which would imply treating
the cosmos with a broader perspective. This author precisely defines the
existence of an Egyptian ontology and, therefore, a restricted Egyptian
philosophy [Hornung c. 5, 159 ss.], settling for adhering to a traditional
position: the much-discussed henotheism. He concludes his investigation with
a synthesis of the various existing positions which, in fact, leaves open the
problem of the nature of Egyptian religion [Hornung, c. 7, 213].
This historical situation of Egyptology was raised by Englund in the Uppsala
Symposium (1987) affirming: “The essence of Egyptian religion is not easy to grasp.
This has been a problem for scholars for as long as Egyptology has existed. Different
generations of scholars have tried different categories, such as monotheism, polytheism,
pantheism, henotheism” [1-Englund, 7]. This problem was also observed by
Bergman when he stated: "The simple question of polytheism or monotheism, in the

31
study that occupies us, should yield to rather more nuanced evaluations of a given
religion. Concepts such as henotheism, kathenotheism and monolatry manifest
knowledge of a much more complex reality, even if these last terms have not enjoyed as
great a popularity as the first two. [Bergman, 12]. Closer to us, Volokhine updates
this complex problem, giving it a different slant by introducing the Egyptian
cosmovision as an aspect to be taken into account. Thus, for them: “…the world
is dynamic and capable of updating itself in a name (whether) numerous tangible forms
or not. …in the world, the Netjeru cannot be learned if the fluctuating aspects of their
bau manifestations (b3w), their kau forms (k3w) and their jepru transformations (xprw)
are not taken into account…The pharaonic Egyptian religion has, not only a vision of the
world, but also a kind of power over it” [Volokhine, 64 and 65]. These last two
arguments are what drive us to try to build a different interpretation of the
nature of Egyptian religion and its foundations, based on the concepts of
cosmovision, monism and the methodological use of Geertz's thick description,
which we try to apply in this essay.
Together with Hornung's affirmation about the existence of a restricted
Egyptian philosophy -in the strict sense, an ontology-, the thesis of the existence
of a precise ethics and theodicy around the Maat arises almost at the same time
and is currently recognized as the articulating center of the religious
cosmological thought of ancient Egypt, outlined in Assmann's distinctive work:
"Maat, l'Egypte Phraonique et la idée de justice sociale". This author gives an account
of the transcendent relationship between the divine, the humanity and the
cosmos, and places the Maat at the center of Egyptian theological and
cosmological thought, which poses a totally original Egyptian anthropology,
and which will leave its mark on all its historical epochs.
This thesis, currently widely accepted, fills a gap in this subject, which was
the need for a comprehensive study of the Maat, insistently claimed by Anthes,
in the fifties of the last century: "it should be a company that would lead to a history
of Egyptian wisdom, and hence a description of their philosophical thought” [Morentz, c.
6 n. 15]. I vehement wish fulfilled in the extensive study: "Maat, The Moral Ideal
in Ancient Egypt" by M. Karenga, where the author analyzes and describes, in
depth, the relationships of the divine with humanity in ancient Egyptian
religion. This work proposes a new comprehensive look at Egyptian ontology,
anthropology and theodicy from the centrality of Maat, positioning itself as one
of the most complete works on Maat in recent years.

§
In the Eliadian interpretation of the Coincidentia Oppositorum, outlined above,

32
we observe in it a manifest partiality in the attempt to universalize its proposal,
showing a lack of knowledge of the nature of cosmovisions in current African
cultures, and the ancient Egyptian in particular, focusing its works in the
Eastern dualistic cosmovisions [Valk, 46 and ss.]. Eliade's proposal, from the
beginning, is biased and insufficient and, therefore, inapplicable in universal
terms. It can only be acceptable if it is limited to the cultural sphere for which
it was raised, according to the sources used, which is the Eastern world, as well
as the Indo-European world, and its philosophical, cosmological and religious
dualisms, which put an inflection in the disjunctive opposition of aspects of the
natural reality: to be–not to be; father-son; good-bad; male-female; time-divinity
and so on [Duch, 247 ss.]. In other cultural cosmovisions, such as the Egyptian
and, in general, the African ones, on the contrary, they can be compatible
counterparts because they are consubstantial, typical of a cosmovision that
includes the multiplicity of the universe in a First Existence.
Eliade's paradigm emphasizes a dualistic bipolarity of the divine, which he
then transfers to nature. Thus, he fully commits the constitutive substance of
the cosmos, assigning a substantive differential status to the varied reality of
things and existences in the universe, which ultimately implies considering them
as terms that will never be homologated [3-Eliade, 107 ss.]. Eliade's vision, by
reworking the deep meaning of Cuse's inclusive definition of the Divine as
coincidentia oppositorum, artificially colors it with an explicit orientalizing dualism,
where the cosmos and the sacred are the tacit coniunctionis of the activity of two
naturally irreducible principles and, sometimes, opposed by their very nature.
We can conclude that Eliade's reinterpretation of the mystery of totality is
essentially idealistic, dualistic and substantially disjunctive because of the
oriental sources on which he bases his work. His study is far from the Egyptian
cosmovision, -in our opinion-, eminently inclusive and, also, close to the
proposal of the theologian of Cusa, who reaffirms his idea of the divine
inclusive unity in the cosmos and its totalizing, ineffable and transcendent
nature, even supporting and transcribing fragments of the Corpus Hermeticum,
as we will see below:

"Since God is the universality of things, then no proper name is its own, since either
it would be necessary for God to be named with every name, or all things with his
name"
Corpus Hermeticum, Codex 10054-56,
Brussels 10054-, Nuñez, 125.

33
§
The field of academic Egyptology dedicated to the study of the Egyptian
religion, in an integral way as a cosmovision, soon perceived the dualistic
meaning of Eliade's coincidentia oppositorum, with which he tried to explain, in a
global way, the profound phenomenon of the divine in the religions of the
world, in terms of two irreducible principles, including by default the Egyptian
religion.
The position of the Egyptological field was varied and succinctly explained
in the Uppsala (1987) and Bergen (1988) symposiums to clarify the nature of
ontology, Egyptian cosmotheology and, also, to guide future research [Uppsala
and Bergen Symposiums, int.]. In these conferences, three central concepts for
textual interpretation were raised. The first: that homologies are the principle
of the logic of deep thought and of the Egyptian theological elaboration system,
typical of a monistic cosmovision: “In this monistic thought, everything in life is
interrelated in a great all-encompassing network. In this network, certain evolutionary
patterns are continually repeated. Everything that is experienced as similar or
homologous is considered to be related to the prototype, and not only to the prototype
itself, but to any other reiteration of the same prototype” [1-Englund, 26].
The second: is that these systems of integration by reduction, as originally
proposed by Morentz, are authentic prototypes or broader regular patterns,
used to formulate and: “categorize Egyptian cosmotheological thought; the
representative variety of a Prototype have a homologous relationship with each other,
and they can also have a hierarchical relationship that provides useful structural
relationships for the expression of the Microcosm idea. For example, the states of chaos
and creation… have counterparts, like day and night within the created world [Troy, 61].
The third: is that the prototypes indicate that what follows or precedes it,
depending on the case, briefly summarizes or synthesizes the complexity of
what it intends to explain, sometimes ineffable; in this cass, the demiurge, his
nature ambiguous, attributes and becoming in the cosmos. Our conclusion is
that the basic method of synthesis from the one to the multiple and vice versa,
studied by Morentz -modalism, tritheism and trinitarianism- is incomplete and
should be extended with other analogous reduction formulas, which are part of
a broader model of theological elaboration, used by the priesthood to reduce
the multiplicity of the universe and identify it, in a consubstantial way with the
One demiurge. The ternary and dual formulas originally studied by Morentz are
part of a broader methodology, implemented by the Egyptian priestly college
for millennia, to theologically categorize the One-demiurge [Troy, 57].

34
 The previous affirmations clearly define the Egyptian cosmology, but they
do not advance on the way of typifying the Egyptian religion, which is the
foundation of this essay.

The demiurge, in the context of Egyptian religiosity, is a First-Existing

Sekheper djesef (sxpr Ds=f)) “he who generates himself” [Morentz, c. vii, 227 ss.],
endowed with absolute power over the diversity of creation, due to the fact that
it integrates, in itself, the multiplicity of the universe in all its possible forms:
biological-physical-temporal. These aspects of the cosmos and nature are
perceived by the Egyptian cosmovision, therefore substantially homologous,
compatible and complementary to each other, arising in a strict order of bionatural
emanation, articulating a hypostatic order of transformations -chepru- of
existences in the cosmos, without substantial rupture with its author.
This cosmovision proposes an eminently monistic mode and model of
perception of the universe, organized around the forms -kau- derived from the
nature of the demiurge. A clear example of this integration, forming prototypes
based on homology, can be seen in the context of the feminine, where
overlapping and interchangeability based on the principle of substantial and
functional homology, partial or total, is evident, as Englund states: “The interrelation
of homologous situations leads to what is called ‘multiplicity of approximations’, to the
fact that various and different affirmations about one and the same thing are
simultaneously valid, such as the fact that Re is the son of Atum, of Nut, of Hathor, of
Neith… The indescribable cannot be enclosed in a single image, term or phrase, but by
approaching it through a multitude of converging angles, man reaches an approximation
to reality” [1- Englund, 26].
Speaking of homologies as the foundation of the nature of the divine, in its
relationship with the cosmos in Egyptian religion, implies considering the term
homologue as a key to interpreting the nature of the cosmovision in Egyptian
culture in all its historical periods and, in this context, we should ask ourselves
again:

What does the concept of homology, that we use to describe the Egyptian
vision of nature, point to, and how did they perceive the multifaceted
reality of the cosmos and the sacred, under the sieve of this conception
of the universe?

35
 The concept of homology [Troy, 61], in this particular case, applied to the
Egyptian religion, means that one thing or existence is similar to another,
because they have in common their original nature–substance in common
between them-; by its class or the particular position that corresponds to it, with
respect to a larger group with archetypal and substantial characteristics, which
they share by way of emanation. They are hypostases that, in the Egyptian case,
become a cosmos -physical and bionatural- organized hierarchically, around
particular rules of generation. Maat, as the guiding principle of order [2-
Assmann, c. 1] and for the specific function of each existence or thing that
corresponds to it in the universe, due to its organic-natural-modal homology with
others, forming hypostatic, harmonic and complementary combinations, which
determine its position in the cosmos, and are established by the priestly
theological systematization.
Homologies ordered in prototypes, foundation of the Egyptian cosmovision
[Troy, 61], will be the hermeneutic orientation of this work, to access the
meaning of the texts in their contexts, to extract the ontological-cosmological
significance they convey, considering that: "the monistic approach must be
documented through the materials placed in correlation and in combination with each
other -´free of preconditions´-in order to see this particular conception of being”
[Finnestad, 32]. We will rely on these principles to try to penetrate the interiority
of Egyptian cosmotheology.
The Egyptian cosmovision, particularly inclusive, conceives the multiplicity of
the universe and its creation, entirely consubstantial and emanating from the
Creator in all its aspects, by conceiving the diversity of the world as complementary
counterparts, harmoniously integrated into a larger unit, which is the demiurge:
“There seems to be no essential ontological separation, there is a conceptual distinction
between species, human beings, animals, vegetation, cosmic constituents. Or, to put it
another way: The categories applied in Egyptian religious ontology do not accentuate the
differences between men and animals, or even between men and vegetative or cosmic
phenomena. Rather, we see the opposite interest: emphasizing affinities and connections
[Finnestad, 31].
The integrative capacity of the Creator constitutes the main attribute that
justifies his totalizing nature, which underlies cosmic and natural diversity [1-
Englund, 25]. This principle, expressed in another way, establishes an intimate
and natural consubstantial relationship between the divine, the cosmos and, by
extension, the first divinity is installed as organizer, integrator and administrator
of the varied diversity of nature in all its aspects, allowing it the demiurge to
incorporate all existences and things into its centrality [Morentz, c. vii, 200 et
ss. and Caron].

36
 Thus, the power exercised by the One over creation and its multiplicity of
forms, natural and existing, arises as a direct consequence of its nature,
consubstantial to all reality, which goes so far as to treat liturgical objects as
"divine existents", netjerit (nTr.yt) [Morentz c. x]. Its self-engendering causes an
explosion of movement and life, beyond its own, which is the origin of the
cosmos itself: "there is no dichotomy between the animate and inanimate or personal
and impersonal objects" [Guglielmi, in Finnestad, 31 n. 11]. In short, all existences are
forms and transformations derived from the self-transformation of the
demiurge, in Egyptian Sekheper djesef – Kheper djesef (sxpr Ds=f – xpr Ds=f),), lit.
“He who generates himself-He who transforms himself”, indicating the sequence of the
theo-cosmogonic becoming [Morentz, c. vii, 227].
Says Re
I found power-sekhem (sxm) in my heart
and the new in me.
I know all the forms (xpr.w) at the moment of being alone.
I thought plans-sejer (sxr) in my heart
and I created other modes of existence and the modes of existence –kheper-
derive were crowd,
I modeled every being when I was one-wa (wa), I modeled living beings
like spirits.
Book of transformations of Re.
Bilolo, b. 63.

The traditional Egyptian cosmovision considers central the separation of

Atum, clear and fresh water, semen of primordial life (nww) [1- Faulkner, 93],
differentiating itself from Nun (nwn); -dark, inert and sterile water-, description
of the chaotic primordial ocean [2- Allen, 10]. They are both serpentine and
eternal, which leads us to the conclusion that Nun is their necessary
complementary counterpart. Nun, passive and amorphous mud, contains the
first “drowsy-lifeless” living being [TP 1146, 1- Allen / Nyedler, 54 and ss.],
which emerges actively from the opaque water, as active principle, “clear
water”, “fresh water”, equated to rain [TP 255, 2- Allen, 15 and Caron c. v].
Thus, this "primal living" (pAw.ty) [1- Faulkner, 76] is the receptacle
of fertility, life and all future cosmic and natural forms, guaranteed by its nature
as "giver of life" (di anx) and, therefore, supplier of the ka -“neheb-kau”- to the
cosmos (fig. 26).
Says Atum–Neheb-kau
I am the water that emerges from Nun (nw) the primordial flood,
I have sprung from the primordial waters.
i am neheb-kau-provider of life ka (nHb k3.w))
the many-ringed serpent.
PT 1146, 1-Allen.

37
 Figure. 1. Atum
The primordial serpent begins its transformations in the midst of Nun.
It attracts the "becoming" -kheper- towards itself
Naydler, 57.

This trait of the demiurge Atum becomes evident in one of his oldest names
in the Pyramid Texts -PT-, which describes his nature at the time of the
theogony, “provider of life” or ka, –neheb kau- (nHb-k3.w) , [Gardiner,
sig. D30], and by extension, protector of the vital force kau like the breath and
the neck that represents it [Quaegebeur, 95 ss.]. It also alludes to the
concentration, in Atum, of all possible existences in itself, due to its pre-cosmic
and androgynous nature, denoted by the semantic determinative: the ka sign
with a stem suggests that it emerges from the depths of the lower sky or,
directly, of the Nun. It reminds us of the equal arrangement and function of
the stem of the seshen (sSn) lotus flower [Gardiner, sig. M9].
The demiurge Atum is a primeval First-Existing Being as his corporeity is
made up of water nuu (nww) [2- Allen, 9 and Caron c. iv], its principle that is
life-giving power-active-sehem, so that: water -nuu- as a substance is understood as
the simplest thing that makes up the demiurge and the cosmos, not-another meaning. The
"pure water" is the physical support of its ba, personified pre-cosmic
consciousness and that in the cosmogony will become, by emanation, in
particularized ka life energy in everything created. It is the closest word in
meaning to the pre-Socratic physis, the teleological principle of life, power, and
engendering energy of the cosmos, with which the pharaoh identifies himself
[MacBride, part iii] (fig. 1).
This way of describing the nature of the original unit-form of Atum as
"provider of life = ka" -neheb kau- (nHb-k3.w) of the TP, will be replicated later,
and with variations, in the Coffins Texts –CT- and attributed to the demiurge
under the theologized form of Ptah. It is a didactic variant of the One-demiurge
derived from the verb “to form” (PtH) lit. “Former or creator” [1- Faulkner, 84]
of the universe, which manifests itself as neheb-kau, “giver of kas”. Ptah is

38
belatedly identified as a quality of Atum. So Ptah: "(56) It came to be like the
heart and became like the tongue in the form of Atum.” [Memphite Theology,
Wilson, 1]
Ptah
..neheb kau-giver of kas
that says-creates the ba (b3.w) and the appearances (xa.w)
and the kas (k3.w) of the beginnings (s3a.w)..

nHb k3.w Dd b3.w

xaw, k3.w s3a.w...
CT 647, 1. - Barguet.

The emergence of the demiurge can be defined as a process of dissociation

from the One-Atum: active and personal, from Nun: passive and impersonal,
to nest in the primordial mud and, from its serpentine interiority, conceive and
give birth to the cosmos. Both Nun and Atum as neheb-kau, also called “The
first (of the) aqueous” nuit (nwjt), in the PT [2-Allen, 9 infra / PT 132c] we find
them homologated by the primordial aqueous substance –nuu - that both share
in an infinite eternity: “what characterizes this system is that there is no cut between
the potential and the manifest. On the contrary, there is complete identity between
them. They are arguably the two sides of the same coin. The emergence of the cosmos
does not put an end to chaos but both coexist.” [1- Englund, 25]. The connatural
relationship of Atum and Nun, is a binary coupling that will never disappear,
two aspects of the hidden One, and warns us that both are homologous-
complementary, that they share the eternal moist substance in an indissoluble
unit, understanding humidity as the element that gives life, in the sense of the watery-plasma-
germinating corporeity of the demiurge, not-another meaning or thing.
Atum from the PT, in his role as neheb-kau, personifies the activated
androgynous creative power and the container of all potential existences in Nun
that as demiurge, in his self-activity, will generate the cosmos and all existences
in it contained. Method that will be repeated in other interpretations, which are
its theological variants, such as Ptah and Amun, from MK onwards:
Ptah
What your mouth created ((irj)
what your hands modeled-engendered (msj),
you have taken it out (sdj) of the primeval waters-Nun.
Frankfort, c. 14, 183.
Amun who emerged
of Nun, guide of humanity...
Frankfort, c. 14, 182.

39
 We can affirm that the nature of the primordial-One is homologous and
complementary to Nun, passive and sterile, since both share the aqueous substance
-nuu (nww)-, primordial [2- Allen, 9]. Nuu becomes sekhem, power or active-
power of Atum at the moment of its self-generation, constituting the archetypal
and eternal form or corporeality of the demiurge, who has become active. Thus:
Nun is conceived in its incipient state as on the verge of differentiation: at the dynamic
beginning of this process, "the latent" manifests itself, usually in the form of the first
hypostasis, Atum, "the hidden one", concomitant with this deity, the feminine, creative
principle to the extent that it is considered androgynous (4).…The theogony is thus
conceived as monad-dyad-triad, which marks the hypostatic moment of plurality for the
Egyptian theologian [MacBride, part iii, 182 ss.]
We designate this perception of the origins of the creator and the cosmos as
a substantial continuum, which will be replicated without interruption in a
hypostatic sequence of life, transferred to the cosmos, from the nuu-sechem
substance of Atum. They are fragments of his being that have become the kau
of the cosmos and ka of kas of all existence, in a metastatic succession without
ontological rupture. This cosmovision is the foundation of an ontological, cosmological and
anthropological monism, specific to the religiosity of ancient Egypt, and which will
dominate its religious experience until its disappearance. Atum as neheb-kau,
immersed in the dark and opaque water of the ocean-Nun, emerges as
primordial water that gives life and food, also, "pure and fresh water" [PT 138b
and 465 ab, 2- Allen, 7 / MacBride, part iii, 184], and therefore, it is connatural
with primordial Nun that can be seen in the following text:

The pharaoh as Atum

I was conceived at night-darkness keku (kkw)
and at night-darkness keku I was born…
I was conceived in the primordial water nuu (nww)
and in the primordial water nuu I was born.
Today I have brought you the bread-food/life
that I found there...
PT 132, 1-Allen.

At this point, it is worth asking the question: Is Atum One or, otherwise,
are we facing a double primordial entity?

The answer to this question is given, categorically, in the CT and reproduced,

with slight changes, in a teaching of c. XVII of the BD, where it is stated that
Nun and Atum-Re are not two separate entities, but that it is the demiurge in
two moments of his becoming active, or the mutation of one same life

40
sustaining substance [Macbride, c. 10] as we can see in the following fragment
of the Texts of the Coffins:

I am Re, I am Atum…
I am the Great God who created him-self.
-Who is the Great One who created him-self?
the Great God is Nun.

´Ink Ra ink Tm…

ink nTr a3 xpr Ds=f
ptr rf sw a3 xpr Ds=f
nTr a3 pw Nwn pw…
CT IV, sp, 1. - Barguet, 335.

In the PT, the concept of primordial creator attributed to Atum is expressed

as: neheb-kau, giver of ka and begetter of the cosmos, which he places between
his serpent rings [Landgráfová and Janák, 118, pl. 2 iv]. Said more specifically,
in his bodily intimacy an interior space expands, the cosmos, the result of his
first breath, charged with water of life, as of death. In the instant of self-
generation, cosmic time arises, which is becoming and the condition of the
duration and limit of the existence of the universe. Neheb-kau is the oldest
description of divine omnipotence understood as the coincidence between wanting and executing
and not-another thing or conception, a cosmovision that is projected to the CT and
also, later, we find it in texts of the Late Period.

Says Atum
I am the liquid-nuu that flows
I have sprung from the waters Nun
I am a serpent -neheb-kau- of many rings,
it says what it is and gives rise to what it is not.
PT 1146, 1-Allen, 150.
Says Atum
I curved over me,
I was wrapped in my rings,
I am the one who made a place for him-self
in the middle of the rings of it.
CT 321, Naydler, 56.

We can affirm that the unified Egyptian conception between the Creator and

41
the cosmos, is founded on a single living substance, visible in a fragment of
Hippolytus of Rome, which describes it brilliantly, and which serves to make
this interpretation explicit, without any presupposition: ‘Thales affirms that the
beginning and the end of everything that exists is Water. Because, in the first place, all
things come from water, as soon as they solidify, and end up becoming, again, water as
soon as they are diluted and liquefied, and, secondly, all things float on water... All things,
moreovermove and are in a constant flow, because coincide with the nature of the first
maker of their becoming. What has neither beginning nor end is divine… [Piulats, 243 to
259 and n. c. 5-30]. It is well known that the interpretation of the cosmos that
Hippolytus of Rome attributes to Thales of Miletus, who considered that the
cosmos was a bubble of life solidified inside the infinite Nun, brought into
existence by the will of the aqueous Atum, is Egyptian. It is also known that the
Ionian philosopher acquired it during his well-proven stay in Egypt.

§
One of the oldest descriptive forms of the First-Existing and its nature is: Atum
= ‘Everything’ (Tm), understanding this by ‘totality’ of a ‘living’, who possesses
the maximum active-power of life. Active-Power is power sekhem (sxm), more
properly, ‘liquid that flows’ [PT 1146, 1-Allen] of the demiurge; demiurgic
seminal water that enables the first drive of active life (photo 2). In other words,
and within the framework of a strictly monistic cosmovision, from philosophy:
‘What is Possest’ (Active-Power) is precisely the identity of Power and Act...Power is a
quantity. They are not quantities as we know them, they are not quantities with a simple
status. Power is not a quality. But it's not about the extensive calls either. He wanted to
say that the thing has more or less intensity. It would be the intensity of the thing that
replaces its essence (and) that we define the thing itself... Thus, the center of being is
intensity...’ [Deleuze, 76-77]. This definition of active-power that I propose for the
divine sekhem, describes the aqueous nature of the corporeality of the
demiurge, who eternally sub-exists in the cosmos as Bau, his plasmatic active-
power -nuu-sekhem- which, interpreted from a monistic cosmovision, delimits
the Egyptian ontology and approaches the foundations of the traditional
theology of all its times.
This interpretation allows us to have a closer perception of the Egyptian
cosmovision of the primordial living being, and its relationship with the cosmos,
so characteristically original. In a monist context, the aqueous sekhem as active-
power, composes the corporeality of the One-demiurge that, fractionated as kau
vital energy, constitutes all the ka forms of existences and that, ultimately, are
hypostatic derivations of it. Atum is cosmic totality, formalized in the Ennead,
emanated from his thought, by an act of conscious will. In its iconographic
aspect, it has been represented since ancient times as dominator of the

42
cosmos with the sign shenu (Snw), a tied rope and, sometimes, figured as a snake
that bites its tail surrounding ‘everything created’ -neb-er-djer-, whose inner
area represents the universe and, also, is a sign of possession and domain of
creation [Landráfová and Janák, 114 ss.].
The following] text is the description of the eternal ‘living’, who, in his state
of archeo-existence, decides to activate himself, to the extent that he possesses
the maximum active-power in the aqueous-chaos Nun, also perennial. It is
fullness of life that, as proto-being, becomes First-Existing: The One-Atum,
which is ‘Everything’ and, therefore, primordial and absolute, as the root of its
name indicates.
Atum
I am somnolent and very tired
My village is not formed yet.
If the earth was alive it would gladden my heart
and would cheer my chest.
Let my members gather - the Ennead - to form it
and may this great weariness dissipate for us.
CT 80, Naydler, 61.

But we must ask ourselves: What is the sekhem, specifically, in the nature
of the Creator?

Sekhem is one of the most repeated sacred words in the PT and it is:
‘primordial plasmatic element of the divine person and, by extension, of the real joint
with the ba’ [1.- Bongioanni and Tosi, p.40]. The word sekhem and its root, (sxm)
[1- Faulkner, 206/Gardiner, 213], represents a power or an active-power
without hesitation or limits, and as such, it is an active aqueous fluid -nuy- (nwy)
[Morentz, c 1 / 2- Allen, 8], motor of life that, in our opinion, is the most
archaic form of the primordial living being. Thus, Atum is the ‘great power’,
sekhem wer (sxm wr), in the Pyramid Texts.
Sekhem is definable as: ‘a brute, physical fact, devoid of subtleties, of which each
one, man or god, could be a victim or beneficiary’ [Trauneker, 55]. Sekhem is active-
power, more precisely, full primordial power, as a substance ‘water of life’ [PT
1146, 1-Allen],-support of the demiurge's ba-, which spills out and sub-lies active
as vital energy mutated in the particular ka of the entire universe. A force
without limits, subtle and impalpable, transnatural and not at all metaphysical.
This active-power, which is energy: ‘...is perceived with great intensity in ´orgé´ or
´anger´ and evokes symbolic expressions such as life, passion, affective essence, will,
force, movement, agitation, activity, impulse’ [Otto, 35 and ss] and also, in finitude as
death.

43
 Figure 2. Pharaoh Sekhemkhet identified with the demiurge.
He wields in his left hand the sekhem-aba staff-sceptre of divine domain,
symbol of life, energy and power [Hoffmeier, 14, 30 and 243 7 Gardiner,sig. S42].
He dominates the chaos represented by the sacrificed enemy
with the nejbet-djer ritual mace re
repairing and sustaining the cosmic order.

44
 Figure 3. Pharaoh Sesostris I -Kheperkare- offering to the One-demiurge,
under the aspect of Amun-Re, (Imn Ra nb sxm) ineffable and hidden mediated in the light.
He wields in his left hand the sekhem-aba cane scepter
[Gardiner, sig. S42] and the ceremonial mace.
Both signs synthesize his divine nature, power and domain
about Egypt and the cosmos.
[Hoffmeier, 24 ss., and Gardiner sig. T2 and D44].

45
 Atum
Your ba-consciousness belongs inside you
Your sekhem-power-active belongs to your surroundings.
PT 753, 1-Allen.

But, given the possible semantic ambiguity of the nature of sekhem, there is
another clarifying word: djeser (Dsr) [1- Faulkner, 275 / Gardiner, 194], which
is close to it in sacred meaning, encompasses it and is, perhaps, the most sacred
of all, reserved almost exclusively for royal names and sacred texts from the
Archaic to the Hellenic-Roman Epoch [Hoffmeier, c. 1-4]. This word describes
the nature of the demiurge and can be translated as ‘numinous’, ‘fascinating’,
‘holy’ or ‘divine’, with a terrifying content, which induces sacred panic in the
face of the divine [Daumas, 101]. It is not by chance that one of the monarchs
of the archaic era, Djeser, composed his name of Horus with this word of divine
power and that his successor, Sekhemjet, will form his name of Horus with the
name of the active-power, sekhem, of the demiurge. Atum [Hoffmeier, c. 1
point 1 and 2], with the clear intention of absorbing the sacredness of it
[Morentz, c. ii, 39-40]. The words ´sekhem´, ´ba´, ´ka´, are the key to access the
nature of the Atum as primordial, and to understand the divine nature of the
monarch and the monarchical institution in depth [1-Frankfort c. 3-5] (Fig. 2
and 3).

The universe and its multiplicity are perceived by ancient Egyptian culture as a
succession of hypostatic existences of the demiurge, homologous and
hierarchically compatible, arranged in complementary groups. They are always
treated in consubstantial unity with a ‘First Existence’, synthesized in a
theological or didactic name, which integrates them into a superior ontological
representation, but which is partitioned underlying the interiority of each
individual existence as ka. It is the -genius deus- [Frankfort, c. v 89] that makes
up any reality, concentrated in a name that grants identity and existence: ‘The
name, in a certain sense, appears linked to creation and, therefore, the demiurge is
sometimes indicated as ‘he who creates name’ [1.- Bongioanni and Tosi, c. vi 108]. These
groups of existences, arranged in regular patterns or prototypes, are
characteristic of theological formulations, with the aim of structuring
conceptual units around the creative entity, on which everything that exists
depends by origin and nature [2- Englund, 79].
In other words, they are models or prototypes of the personification of the
primordial demiurge, to indicate that what precedes or follows summarizes, in
short, the complexity of what he intends to explain. In some cases, the monarch
46
or the demiurge, the nature and future of him or, simply, the ineffable of the
divine.
As an example: the concept of Pesdet, (PsD.t), the Ennead, in Egyptian ‘the
nine’, however, can also be used as a ‘personified formalism’. Thus: ‘The Ennead
can be treated (only) as if it were a group of many deities, but also, as the name of a single
deity which then can appear alone or in groups of two or more Enneads…These are found
mainly in the The Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts and survive in the collection of later
texts of the Book of the Dead’ [Guglielmi in Troy, 60].
The integration of the homologues can start from two regular patterns, which
are synthesized in the One-demiurge, but there are also other formulas of
personification of the demiurge, which go from three to One. The most
emblematic reductions are from four to one; the protectors of the canopic
vessels (the four sons of Horus); of seven (the seven Hathor cows); eight (the
Ogdoad of Hermopolis); from nine to ten (the Enneads of Heliopolis) and from
16 to 19 (Enneads of Thebes), to be synthesized all in the One-demiurge. These
patterns or prototypes can appear combined with each other in a complex
synthesis, which is always integrated in the creative entity or in the monarch,
who is the one who replaces it [Troy, 59 ss.].
We will see some of them below, as an example of the richness of the
theological formulations of the Egyptian priesthood, when managing the
tension between the ‘One in the Multiple’. In the next example, the reduction
from two to one, the Ennead, is reduced to a one female personification who,
in turn, is identified with Shekhemet [Troy, 62], the female aspect of the Creator
who, in this text, gives birth to the monarch, tacitly son of Atum, the primeval
demiurge.
To the extent that Sekhemet (Sxm.t) [1- Faulkner, 207] is nothing more than
a mutation of the plasmatic sekhem of the demiurge, and the Ennead is a
hypostasis of her body, both -the Ennead and Sekhemet- are a synthesis of the
multifaceted complexity of the feminine in ancient Egyptian thought. Thus,
both are revealed to us as complementary consubstantial homologues, integrated
into one multiple female personification that gives birth to the One who, in this
case, is Unas. This text recalls the logical scheme of the dogma of Kamutef -
‘bull of his mother’ - of the theology of Amun, which will be widely developed
in the Imperial Age, in a Theban environment [Frankfort, c. 14]:
Says the king
Unas have come forward
from between the thighs of the Ennead,
Unas was conceived by the mighty-Sekhemet (Sxm.t)…
PT 262c, Troy 62.

47
 The reduction of two terms to the One shows us the substantial continuum
between the demiurge and the pharaoh, which we find profusely formulated in
the son-of-Re names of Ramesside rulers, among others, as ‘begotten or
conceived by Re.’ Also, especially, we can observe it in the laudatory hymns of
that time, where the consubstantiation between the Creator and the monarch is
affirmed, identified as: “the One undivided and multiple that dominates the
visible and hidden dimension of the cosmos, marking thus the existence of a
substantial continuum between the cosmos and the demiurge, mediated by the
monarch:
Praise to Ramses II
...we come to you,
lord of heaven, lord of earth,
Re living over the whole country.
Pillar of heaven, beam of earth...
The one who makes the great and the one who makes the poor...
the mouth through which Atum speaks…
7 -Assmann, 497-498.

But the most successful personification of the demiurge as One-multiple is

the ternary that is built around his aqueous substance, -the sekhem-, represented
by sputum, sweat and tears: foundation and transport of his life, motor and
order, which is its humid, formless and nurturing corporeity in the sterile Nun.
The formula three to one of the new solar theology of the Middle Kingdom, is
the re-elaboration of the cosmotheology of the PT, which introduces as a
novelty a third term: humanity, remetet, (rmw.t) [1- Faulkner, 130], modeled with
begetting tears, remut (rmw.yt) [1- Faulkner, 130 - Caron c. iii] of Atum,
theologically justified by the phonetic similarity of both terms [Caron, c. i]. This
profoundly social reform will never lose validity and will complete the
interpretation of the cosmogony of the two solar Enneads of the PT, with the
detail that we find humanity outside of them.

Middle Age Cosmotheology

Atum-Re
♂+♀

Sekhem-Sekhemet
potency-active germinating - androgynous

Neheb-kau
Ka-life distributor
Clear / fresh water
PT 1146 / CT 647

48
DEMIURGO =
ka-universal
------------------------------------------ ----------------
COSMOS

substance tears sweat expectoration -sneeze

ka without form CT vi 344 PT 1114 mucus
‘water of life’ vii 464 g and 465 b cosmic plasma
PT 1652

Metamorphosis humanity divinities - pharaoh Shu – Tefnut

Ka shaped ♂-♀ ♂-♀ ♂-♀

modes of existence natural beings transnatural beings cosmos

non-metaphysical

The ternary formula has multiple variants of the primordial Being articulating
the triform imagined cosmos. In the following text it is observed that the One
appears synthesized in a symbiosis of two complementary and homologous
didactic protocols: Atum (All = being now–not being now), and Amun (Hidden
= invisible and secret). Both are two complementary modes of existence of the
unknowable One-demiurge, indirectly perceived in the triform cosmos. This
text, a model of theological subtlety, describes the totalizing nature of The One,
with an elaborate play on words, indicating that Atum-Amun are two aspects
of the One, an unknown creative entity identified with the singular pronoun
‘That One’, which synthesizes them:
Three are all the Netjeru-powers
Amun [the occult], Ra [the morning light], Ptah [the land emerged from chaos],
There is no second there.
He who is Atum [All] is hidden, [Amun],
for his name is Ra [light] for his body is Ptah [earth emerged from chaos]
Morentz, c. VII 193.

It is striking that, in the following text, which is from the CT of MK and

prior to the preceding one of NK, the demiurge as Re makes a deliberate
inflection in: the negation of a second existing homologue of its same nature and function:

49
 I am the great one that exists by itself,
One (which) is without a second’

.. ..ink a3 xpr Ds=f,

wa iwti Snw=f...
CT, sp. 714 = VI, 343 j-1, B3L, 1. - Barguet.

These texts allow us to model Atum as: He = One, its is [He + She] none-second.
This constitutes a precise theistic definition of Atum. Summotheism for the
Egyptian case given the number of hypostases or Netjeru, its extensions or
forms of itself, that accompany it in its transformations. Also, it conveys a non-
metaphysical or abstract transcendent monistic cosmovision, where Amun is
concealment, Re is light, Ptah, land emerged from the primordial ocean. In
conclusion, they are simple neutral aspects of a tripartite cosmos, and not
protocols of divinities, in such a way that Atum as One, underlies hidden as:
The One, hypostatized in the sacred cosmos, and conceived as a metastatic part
of his own pre-cosmic body.
In short, Atum is a demiurge of non-metaphysical or abstract transcendence,
hidden in the Duat, a liminal place between the Nun and the cosmos. In other
words, a transnatural transcendence of the traditional cosmovision, meaning transcendence, in
its simplest sense: which is a permanent passage or change of state, metamorphosis, of the
transcended between the visible and hidden dimensions of the universe, which remains immersed
and surrounded by Nun. But these neutral parts can represent and describe this
primordial existence in other theologies, which leads us to conclude, in general
terms, that for Egyptian thought the creative entity and its didactic names, in
theological speculations, represent the heka capacity of the One in nature: that
is, it is the determination of power of an ineffable and mediated being in the
universe. This situation leads us to ask ourselves if the didactic names of the
various theologies are mere words of power that narrate and reaffirm different
facets of the Primeval One, possessor of an existence ‘unknown’ to humanity
and of a ‘hidden’ name, as raises bythe tale of Isis the magician and Re [Brunner-
Traut, 164].
We find formulas for the identification of four, to be synthesized in a One,
in the four sons of Horus. In this case, the monarch identified with Atum,
through the precise use of the inclusive preposition m. In the following text,
the king is shown integrating, in his person, the Bau spirits, the four sons of
Horus, simultaneously combining the binary model. This argument illustrates
the theological complexity reached to express the consubstantial integration

50
between the demiurge, the monarch and the multiplicity of the cosmos,
supported by the inclusive or predicative preposition m: in, within, as:

Says the king

Land me in the Fields of Reeds,
these four spirits that are in me,
they are Hapy, Duamutef, Amset, Kebesenuf
two on one side and two on the other.
PT 1092, 1-Allen.

It is significant that the two Heliopolitan Enneads, hypostases of the

demiurge, very frequently personify Isis and Nephthys, in the role of funerary
sisters of Osiris, in a game of reduction of pairs that, in fact, identifies the
deceased king with Osiris, to the extent that Nut is his mother, to whom he
returns for funerary rituals. This reminds us of the consubstantial and undivided
relationship: The son is in the father and the father is in the son, ka de ka, [Frankfort,
c. 10 and 11] explicit in the Pyramid Texts and frequently appearing in the
Ramesside hymns of enthronement. This relationship, which we find well
represented in the next passage of the PT, has a subtle play on words, which
implies tacit parental relationships, a method widely used in Egyptian
theological elaboration.

Says the king

Oh! My father [Geb],
Osiris [the king]
our brother comes to us,
say the two Enneads…
The firstborn of his mother say the two Enneads...
PT 1696 and 1698, 1-Allen.

But we must also emphasize that, at the same time as the textual formulas,
there are iconographic formulas of integration and: ‘whatever the combination...
They are nothing more than a hieroglyph, a way of writing... the nature of divinity’
[Hornung, c. iv - 111ss.] which, in our opinion, should be read as a text to the extent
that they are the delimitation of a divine entity by graphic means. They are
prototypes, according to Troy, that manifest themselves in iconography and
complete the panorama of the personification of the sacred One in nature and
the cosmos. In this case, we also find models of two, three and more iconic
signs, which refer to the primordial One, or to the monarchy indistinctly, whose
images usually appear combined, in a harmonic reduction that end up

51
describing the creative entity, or the monarch himself in the role of demiurge
and substituting ] him [Troy, 63 and 64].
In the next figure, the binary integration personifies ‘He, with two faces’, Heruy-
fy (Hr.wy=fy), where the dualized singular personal pronoun alludes, in our
opinion tacitly, to the nameless primordial demiurge hidden in the humanity.
He represents the superior unity of the universe as ‘ineffable totality’, identified
with the cosmic cycle of regeneration of nature (Fig.4). Thus, Horus and Seth
are shown united in a symbiotic way, not antithetically separated. They prefigure
the profound and substantial superior unity of nature in its cosmic evolution
which, together, they symbolize. Both merged also constitute a One, a
continuum without substantial rupture, which we can model as: the beginning in
the end, in temporal terms, but also, life in death, in natural terms and vice versa.
The two are complementary in an infinite and cyclical cosmic movement and
will be, in the BD, identified with Atum: ‘possesseur de deux visages’ [BD c. 64 int.,
Barguet, 129]. The cyclical is the negation of every beginning and every end and
the affirmation of the eternity of the One-All sub-existent living in the cosmos.

Fig. 4. Her.wy=fy
‘He, two-faced’
Eternity of the creative and ineffable unity.
Englund, 78.

In this cosmovision, ‘He, two-faced’, Horus-Seth, are simple hypostatic

forms of the unknown divine One, of hidden name, who becomes
cosmologically visible in the lunar cycle of nature that represents him [2-
Englund, 79 and 80]. The lunar cycle alludes to the constant, stable and
harmonic evolution of the almost eternal universe, but it also announces the
fragility of the existences that underlie the cyclical fluctuation, maximum-
minimum, of the lunar period, and the multiplicity of the cosmos it self
announces the inexorable extinction of everything created [BD c. 175].

52
 This iconography is a double personification, addressed to an ineffable
superior One, which transcends the traditional antithetical meaning they
possess, when both entities are represented separately. In this case, they
prefigure the cyclical evolution of an ordered universe and its unknowable
demiurge, immersed in the indeterminate lower sky, inside Nun itself: ‘En
Her.wy=fy the opposites are integrated into a higher unity. This figure occurs in the Am-
Duat (2nd hour of the upper register, No. 138), and in the Book of Doors (10th hour of
the upper register and 11th hour of the middle register) it seems to represent the
Mystery of the Totality of the other world’ [cf. Te Velde 1967, 79 / 2- Englund, 73]. The
symbiosis of both entities tells us that, in this case, they are the image of two
complementary homologues, integrated into an encompassing superior unit,
consubstantial and indissoluble. That entity is definable as: The Unity without
a second, ineffable, which underlies the cosmos, which denies, of itself, the
existence and possibility of an ontological and cosmological dualism between
them.
The same interpretation of the previous case can be made of the classic image
of Ra-Osiris that, here, represents the One, ineffable demiurge that, as a unit
integrates in itself, the mutations of the universe, which is hypostatic to it: ‘This
union of Re and Osiris in one is the synthesis of the theological speculations of the New
Kingdom on the unity of the divine, on the integration of two aspects that are, it seems,
for us the opposites... They are, however, not opposites, but function as two
complementary poles of one whole” [2- Englund, 81] (fig. 5).

1. Osiris is at peace with Re 2. Re is the one who is at

with Wsir Htp m Ra Osiris. Ra pw Htp m Wsir.

1 2
Figure 5. Osiris-Re
Formula of two that refers to the ineffable One.
2- Englund, 80.

The next case is the ‘Union of the two Lands’ -Sematauy- (sm3-t3.wy), the
well-known representation of the monarch's enthronement ceremony, which
corroborates the previous analysis. It corresponds to the unit formula of three

53
to join the One that, beyond its already known, political and religious
significance, deserves a broader cosmological-ontological interpretation. In
accordance with our previous comment, Horus and Seth are two of the three
complementary terms that represent the cosmic cycle, to which corresponds
the time –neheh- of transformations (fig. 6 and 7). Both are complementary
homologues and not antithetical; proof of this is that they are often replaced, very
often, by two Nilos-Hapi, androgynous twin entities that represent celestial and
terrestrial water, and refer to everything primordial of a moist nature [1 Allen,
PT 465]. Another variant is the substitution of Horus and Seth for two Thoth,
with the same intention of making explicit the homologous complementarity of
both entities to symbolically represent the perpetual evolution, the stability and
unity of the terrestrial and stellar cosmos around an existence ineffable. They
are iconographic metaphors of The One-hidden, beyond the partialities that
compose it.

Figure 6 and 7. The Union of the two Lands–sematauy (sm3-t3.wy)

Formula of three that refers to one.
2- Englund, 64 and 78.

The third term in the two images shown above is represented by the sign
sema (sm3) ‘to unite’, [Gardiner, sig. F36] a trachea and, on certain occasions,
with the lungs well represented, alludes to ‘breathing’ (Sw). It is the breathing of
the demiurge that marks the beginning of the cosmogony that, by replicating
itself daily, sustains the cosmos and Egypt, which represents the organized
world, personalized in this scheme by the aforementioned dual entities. The
third term, sema, corresponds to the djet time, which is that of the stability of
the universe until its completion, in fact, it is quasi-eternal.

54
Breathing -Shu-, as a sign of life and of the air of the cosmos, is also identifiable
with the sema sign, the lungs, from which the first seminal and germinating
moist breath expectorated by the Creator comes out. It is what sustains the
integrity of the cosmos with its continuous breathing, separating heaven from
earth. These three terms synthetically describe the complexity of the perpetual
evolution of the Egyptian cosmos, which is reduced to the original One,
personification of the demiurge. We find this One represented, metaphorically,
in his fleshly son, -Pharaoh Sesostris I° Kheperkare-, whose real name located
on the sema sign ‘to unite’, is inscribed within the senu, ‘totality’ cartouche. Here
Kheperkare is a metaphor for Atum and actually replaces his father, Atum-Re,
in the function of First-Existing.
It is necessary to emphasize that the integrations of the multiple in a superior
unit are the easiest to recognize in the images of the divine, since they allow the
image to be read as a text. Indeed, in the following image, the demiurge, The
One, in his aspect of Ptah (PtH) ‘potter’, emerged from the magmatic water Nun,
‘with the form of Atum’ [Wilson, p. 1, l. (56)], he is recognized as the ruler of
the cosmos. Here he deciphers himself by the scepters and crooks, symbols of
power that he grasps with his hands as a sign of domination: – Was (w3s) =
‘cosmic support’ [Gardiner, sig. S40]; Djed (Dd) = ‘cosmic stability’ [Gardiner,
sig. R11], Senu (Snw) = ‘domain of the cosmos’ [Gardiner, sig. V9]. This is how
he manifests his nature as an original demiurge, prior to the universe, absolute,
totalizing and transcendence non-metaphysical or abstract (fig. 8).

Figura 8. Image of Ptah.

Fórmula of threede symbols of power in the One
Wilkinson, p. 142.

In the context of what has been explained up to this point, the multiplicity of
existences in the universe is united by the consubstantial nature of the

55
particular ka with the One-demiurge. In other words, they are complementary
homologues, simple modes of existence, unfolded parts of the First-Existing,
produced by engendering or modeled with fragments of its corporeality: ‘There
is no dichotomy between the ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’, or ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’
objects (11). There is no essential break between matter and spirit, body and soul,
although they are not conceptually the same. (12)’ [Finnestad, 31], in an ordered
succession of hypostatic generations.
These entities shape the cosmos from the substance of life - sekhem of the
demiurge, ‘transparent water’ or ‘fresh water’ nuy (nwy) [1 Allen, PT 841]
emerged from Nun and mutated into kau force or energy, dispersed like ka of
kas. Interpreting the meaning of the Egyptian cosmovision in a Deleuzian
monist context refers directly to the modes of existence of the human person.
It would be to interpret the anthropological elements: the ka, the body, the
shadow, as extensive forms derived from the Creator and the ba, the name, the
character-ked, as the intensive and distinctive aspects between people. All these
parts were re-united in the Osirian judgment, like an Aj, and this new personal
unity was sustained by the funeral liturgy and the offerings. Thus, human
transcendence by metamorphosis was ‘complete.’
The hypostatic parts of the demiurge, which we will outline below, indicate
the transformation process of the One in the multiplicity of the cosmos, in a
sequence that constitutes a defined monistic cosmotheism:

Transformation of power active–sekhem

in force-ka energy

ATUM
skheper.djesef

THEOGONY

becoming Neheb-kau
‘ka supplier’
(life)

NATURE: ♂+♀
concentrate
consubstantial homologus

substance: sekhem-Sekhemet
primordial energy’

56
 NUY
‘germinating water’

Creative Center: DIVINE HEART

[double]
haty-ib
bodily - awareness

sejem + hekau
=
KAU

‘water of life’
‘consubstantial plasma to the cosmos’

KA of KAS

COSMOGONY

outer cosmos inner cosmos

-direct emanation- - hypostasis-

SHU TEFNUT NETJERU HUMANITY

Saliva → (kas) ← phlegm sweat → (kas) ← tears

‘water of life’´

NATURE consubstantial and hypostatic,

(circulation of complementary homologues)

The Egyptian cosmovision establishes, between the universe and the

Creator, a relationship of substantial correspondence without ontological leap,
by conceiving that everything that exists is the result of modeling or
engendering with part of the watery and seminal person of the demiurge (photo
2). In the Egyptian interpretation of the cosmos, the Netjeru are nothing more
than the complex multiplicity of divinized nature, its consubstantial synthesis,
founded on the energy of life, the divine ka, as the only articulator that
57
composes the natural-visible and the hidden, which was what the transnatural-
invisible. Thus, in the physical sky -Pet-, underlies Nut its hidden ba, and the
same happens with Geb, the invisible ba that underlies -Ta- the concrete earth,
turning the cosmos into a single multiform existence of two dimensions endowed
with life, hypostasis of the ineffable primal in the first instant of his cosmogonic
act. This unitary perception of reality allows us to conclude that this cosmovision, in fact,
supports a single ontology, given that all existences are made up of a single kind of substance
derived from their corporeality. The sekhem, germinating active-power; in Egyptian
terms, ‘pure’ and ‘fresh’ water –nuy-, is connatural with the dark and inert water
of the primordial ocean, and the latter contrasts with the former, being sterile
or without order [2- Frankfort, c. xiii 175 ss.].

Figure 9. Geb and Nut

The passive masculine and the active feminine.
The manifested cosmos separated by Shu according to the theology of the PT.
Pedermann Sorensen, 32.

The cosmos and all the existences or beings that inhabit it, have incorporated
something of the kind of its complements, because they are consubstantial. This
bionatural complementarity is also shared with the demiurge, due to its
androgynous and eternal nature, from which they emanate. We can appreciate
this conception of nature in Geb and Nut, metastatic ontogenesis of the Creator
and genesis of the manifested world of the PT and: ‘although they are represented
as male and female, both are androgynous. Geb (Gb) is a man of D.t character lying
indolent…pre-creation inertia, even though he is sometimes depicted ithyphallic. Nut is a
woman with a predominant nHH character due to her dynamic movements…although
they are separated and differentiated they work as a unit…This unit is the D.t envelope
for the Shu (Sw) separator…All simultaneous’ [Englund, 13] (fig. 9).

58
 4

The inclusive conception of the universe and bionature in the demiurge can
be synthesized as: the feminine in the masculine and the masculine in the feminine. All
existences contain part of the nature of their bionatural complement -including
humanity-, which make them compatible to engender and, also, integrable with
a larger unit: the demiurge. This unity between the Creator and the cosmos is
articulated by the neutral nature of the original Primordial Existent, with whom
they substantially correspond. This is observable in the medical papyri, which
interpret and describe the nature of life and procreation [Sauneron and Yoyotte,
17-92 / Sauneron, 61-62].
Another example of integration based on the androgyny of the demiurge
[MacBride, pte. iii], we find it in the name of the Ennead of Heliopolis and its
variants; Pesdet-Wert- (psD.t–wr.t) ‘the great Ennead’ and Pesdet–Nedest (psD.t–
nDs.t), ‘the little Ennead’-; which are written with a feminine ending: -t. This
implies that, as a collective, the Ennead is feminine, even though it contains
masculine entities within it [Troy, 62-63]. This approach projects divine
androgyny to the cosmic dimension, to the extent that the Enneads are a form
of representation of the universe and, also, emanation and corporeality of the
primordial Being. Because of this correspondence, the Enneads sometimes also
operate as a personalized female counterpart to the demiurge or pharaoh,
endorsing the self-engendered origin of the first existence, based on their
androgynous nature. This reminds us of the inclusive binary principle, in the
First-Existing of the Kamutef dogma of Theban theology, of Imperial Age –
NK- whose origin we find well prefigured and explicit in the PT [Frankfort, c.
xiv].
Summoning of the Pharaoh
Oh!, bull of the Ennead!
clear my path,
make my room spacious
at the head of the Netjeru…
PT 1239, 1-Allen.

In the Egyptian interpretation of the sacred, the world is a direct emanation

of the primordial living being or, rather, consubstantial forms derived from his
androgynous person. In any case, and without alluding to theological subtleties,
in the eyes of the Egyptian, everything that exists participates and depends,
directly, on the nature of the Primeval-One, since there is no ontological or
substantial leap between the two.

59
 In other words, the multiplicity of the world are only modes of
transformation -jepru- of the demiurge, which assume diversity of forms -
kheper- both in the ´visible´ dimension and in the invisible -´hidden´- of the
cosmos, fused together, product of its constant metamorphosis. The circulation
of ka energy is the transformation of the active-power sekhem, bodily seminal
plasma of the Creator, Atum-Neheb kau, (figure 2), in a process of hypostatic
emanation of the aqueous germ of life: nuu → sekhem → kau → Shu → ka,
schematic sequence of progressive and harmonic transformations, which we
can model in a more complex scheme like the one below:

Metamorphosis of the power sekhem

reconverted into force ka formative of the cosmos

Theogony ATUM-RE or AMUN-RE

Divine nature androgynous
♂+♀

SEKHEM
Mode of existence visible = Re - hidden = Amun

Neheb-kau
ka dispenser
(life)

Creational center DIVINE HEART

haty + ib
(substance-nuy) + (creative words)
♂ + ♀

Temporality neheh djet

=
at
instant
eternal present

Forms of the occult Re / Aten / Re-Horakhty/ Ptah

♂+♀

60
Cosmogony

♂ Shu Tefnut ♀
(♂) active – [neheh] [djet] - passive (♀)
Air/vital breath air/moist breath

♂ Geb Nut ♀
(♀) passive - [djet] [neheh] - active (♂)
the earth the sky

♂ Osiris ♀ Isis ♂ Set ♀ Nephthys

(♀) passive (♂) active (♂) active (♀) passive
[djet] [neheh] [neheh] [djet]

water of life fruitful womb desert barren womb

suffocating grain of life

LIFE DEATH
start end

Ennead – [Pesdet – Wer] - Cosmos

transient duration [neheh + djet]

ATUM-RE or AMUN-RE
perennial duration - eternal present
[sep/at (neheh + djet)]

We define this cosmovision as a religion that supports a transparent

ontological and cosmological monism, the foundation of the religiosity of
Ancient Egypt. It is organized within the framework of the logic of integration
of the varied multiplicity of the universe, conceived as ‘homologous’ because
they are consubstantial, a multiplicity emanating from the interiority of the
Creator to form the cosmos, and to which they will return at the end of time by
the determined [BD c. 175/ 2-Faulkner]. This inclusive conception of the
demiurge in creation can be modeled in a first approximation as:

Atum = The One, [He + She] not-another [egyptian: without –second], living being

61
that engenders everything without ceasing to be One, that remains in everything without ceasing
to be one, that will destroy everything and continue to be One, that is Everything = eternal
not created.
The monistic cosmovision necessarily implies the regeneration and
permanent circulation of the cosmos, which is clearly outlined when we observe
the Egyptian vision of death, which emerges with diffuse limits, as a continuous
rebirth of the deceased, in the invisible-hidden dimension of the universe, from
the dawn of Egyptian history:

Renaissance - transfiguration
O Great Nut! That you came into existence as heaven (P.t)…
You have filled all places with your beauty...
and you have placed this king in yourself as an imperishable star.
PT 782, 1-Allen.

Personal existence, in a non-metaphysical transnatural Beyond, is thought of

as a continuous life in movement and circulation after death and, at the same
time, an extension of it in the visible dimension of the cosmos and in children,
by transmitting the ka at conception [1- Frankfort c. 5]. The deceased also
continues to exist as a ba, his funerary personality, [1. - Bongioanni and Tosi,
37 ss.] and in natural elements such as the stars, personal property and mortuary
accessories, the images that are his own, the texts rituals and biographies that
bear his name. All are extensions of the deceased and authentic promoters of
life in the Hereafter [Morentz, c. ix].

Nut as coffin and tomb

…You have been given to your mother Nut
in her name on the sarcophagus lid
she has embraced you in her name of coffin
and you have been brought to her in her name from her tomb.
PT 616, 1-Allen.

The Egyptian conceives life in such a way that: “There is no dichotomy between
the 'animate' and 'inanimate', or 'personal' and 'impersonal' objects (11). There is no
essential break between: matter and spirit, body and soul, although they are not
conceptually the same. (12)” [Finnestad, 31]. It is a perception of the cosmos, of
finitude and transcendence, of ambiguous and blurred limits, characteristic of a
hard and invasive theism; a conception of non-metaphysical transnatural
transcendence in the invisible of the cosmos, significantly different
ontologically and cosmologically from that of our Western world [Piulats, c. 3].

62
 The Egyptian monist cosmovision perceives the mummified deceased body
with passive life, which Morentz calls the “living corpse doctrine”: [“In general,
less is thought and written about death in Egyptian thought than about the dead,
funerary rites and the conceptions of the afterlife… The natural transition between a
study of the Egyptian consciousness of death and that of the funeral customs of Egypt, it
is a reflection on the notion, the essence, obstinately preserved of the living corpse. …the
awareness of death (in the Beyond) and the massive continuity of terrestrial existence
counterbalanced each other… Even great civilizations… like that of Israel with the Sheol
stranger to God (ex. Psalm 6, 6) and Greece with the Hades (Odyssey 11)” [Morentz, c. ix-
258-259].
The mummified deceased are passive living supports of the living and active
non-metaphysical etheric aspects of people. Mainly, the -ba, akh, ka, suit, ren-
among others [1. - Bongioanni and Tosi]. Embalmed bodies are still alive in
some way, and people are also perpetuated, in the real world, in their children
and successors through the transfer of ka, at the moment of conception, an act
of engendering that momentarily recreates divine androgyny [Sauneron and
Yoyotte, 17-92]. The latent life of the ka in the body of the deceased is revived,
in the funerary ritual, by the deceased father's son, in his role as funeral priest
[Goyon, 2° part - 108 and ss.].

Invocation to Anubis
Anubis…command that your spirit-ka
be behind you
your power-sehem within you,
being you established
at the head of the powers-Sekhemu (NTr.w)
PT 1364, 1-Allen.

Renaissance
Get up!
Throw out your dust,
remove the mask that is on your face,
untie your ligatures because they are not ligatures
They are the braids of Nephthys!
PT 1363, 1-Allen.

Androgyny is not the only aspect of the totalizing nature of the One, which
is definable as the ability to integrate the diversity of the cosmos, considering

63
them substantially homologous and, therefore, complementary. This
cosmovision includes, in total, three dimensions of inclusion of reality in the
One, which describe the First-Existing as an absolute existence, Atum =
Everything = Totality. These three simultaneous modes of existence of the
engendered self-and primordial existent, Sekheper djesef, (sxpr Ds=f), are: the
bionatural –androgyny; the spatial –multilocation and concealment-; the temporal -
eternity and infinity-.
The cosmos and its multiplicity can be expressed, in the Egyptian cosmovision,
with the numeral three - xntw - used as the relative plural .w / .tyw, “many” which
can also be a collective: “all”. By derivation, it is also an abstract and universal
adjective: “totality”, central nature of the demiurge. The ductility of the
Egyptian language allowed theologians to affirm, through puns, that all things
and beings are consubstantial and indissoluble parts of the Creator,
paradoxically, without losing their autonomy in the face of the cosmos, given
that number, in its universal function-totality or everything-, simultaneously
maintains the plural meaning "many", as we have seen previously [Bergman,
point a]. Thus, it can be defined as:

The One [He + She] = All [Egyptian: no-second]; living as: not-another that generates,
orders and extinguishes the multiplicity of everything that exists, both visible and hidden,
without ceasing to exist as One = All = Atum.

This prerogative installs him as the unconditional administrator of time, space,

nature and its biodiversity. The Egyptian demiurge is an absolute totalizer on
whom converges the multiplicity of modes of transformation -jepru-, "visible"
and "hidden" forms in the world, substantially homologous and
complementary, reducible to his own sejem plasmatic unit, the one that
transports his substantivity to the cosmos and makes it possible [Fernández
Beites, 201 ss.]. In this context: substantivity is the underlying neutral, active and
androgynous consciousness -Bau- of the eternal Creator-One in the interiority of the
engendering plasma: nuu-sekhem-kau. This divine consciousness is expressed in the
texts as his reflexive and dispositive capacity on his multiple states and
engendering acts, in which his desires are: action-speaker-creator.
This existence is a primordial absolute, which sub-exists as Totality-Atum,
living in its sekhem aqueous substance, primary source of its omnipotence and
ingredient of cosmogony. The main attribute of this divine consciousness, sub-existent in
the aqueous plasma sekhem, is the ability to remain-sine die-primigenial and identical to itself
and multiple -Ba/u- simultaneously in Nun and the cosmos.

64
 Nature of Atum
Your ba-consciousness belongs inside you
Your [active] sekhem-power belongs to your surroundings.
PT 753, 1-Allen.

The substantivity of the demiurge as sub-existence, exemplified above, is the

ability to remain itself, that is, to eternally sub-exist as Bau, in the nuu-sekhem
substance, fluid, mobile and changing active-power of the demiurge, to the
rhythm of its creative vitality, transferred to the cosmos as ka of ka. This life
energy is recovered in the form of offerings and liturgies in a constant
circulation, until the end of the universe. The nature of the demiurge is
observed in the next example, where to persevere is the will and the ability to remain
One, self-multiple, as an archetypal existent, doubly, both in the interiority of the Nun-ocean
and in the perpetual cyclical movement of the cosmos, which is part of his person:

Heaven-Pet is open, Earth-Ta is open...,

the movements of the abyss-Nun are revealed,
the movements of the sun-Ra are in circulation,
by That-Atum who perseveres every day.
PT 1078, 1-Allen.

This cosmovision, pondered from a theological perspective, forms a classical

theism framed in a transcendence transnatural and non-metaphysical, monistic
universe, for the Egyptian case, summoteism, given the number of hypostases
that, as extensions of itself, accompany it in its future. Summotheism -in its simplest
definition-, is the belief in an Existence that is absolute self-awareness, in which desire and
"willing coincide with execution", no-another thing or meaning [Cusa. De
Mente, h V. n 77 (7-9) in Núñez, 107 and n. 19 in fine],

The transformations of Re - Atum

I did everything, I wanted Being One (wa),
I conceive projects-sejer in my heart,
I created another kheper-mode (xpr) of existence,
and the derived modes (xpr.w) of existence
of the Existing xpri) were multitudes...
Great Hymn of Re.
3- Bilolo, 2 n.5.

We are in the presence of a very original cosmotheistic-monistic religion,

which can be modeled as:

65
The One, [He + She]: “He who generates himself (and) he who transforms himself”: his
substance and his rules of existence are found in all existences and things, with substantivity
and transcendence of his own, as well as donated with conditions to a kind of existences,
humanity, engendered or emanated from itself.

The traditional Egyptian cosmovision implies a space of autonomy - free will

- granted to a special kind of existence, humanity, within the framework of
Maat, its legality of natural order [2- Assmann, c. 2 and 3]. The traditional
Egyptian conception of the world is perceived as a hypostatic emanation, which
is metamorphosis and movement of the demiurge, which invades with his
presence the totality of each thing or existence. Ultimately, a single gender of
plasmatic and primordial life substance -sekhem-, emanated from Nun as nuu, fresh water,
is transformed into cosmos and bio-nature, in a sequence of transformations that can
be schematized as: nuu → sekhem → kau → ka of ka.This last term composes
everything living and all existing forms, both visible and hidden.
We can assert that all existences are integrated into an ontological-
cosmological-anthropological continuum without essential rupture: “the ancient
Egyptians conceived the Being as an integrated whole of biological affinities; a tissue that
undergoes continual metamorphoses…The entire world is seen as a living and changing
organism in Egyptian ontology…Thus, the biological category is important in Egyptian
thought about Being.” [Finnestad, 32]. This cosmovision prevents the possibility of
a dualism, both substantial and ontological, in Egyptian religious thought, since
it is far from dualistic conceptions, typical of Indo-European thought, as we
have seen before [Cervelló, int. and c. one]. What has been stated up to this
point leads us to the question:

What specific role does the Ka play in the Egyptian cosmos? A question
that offers us the possibility of delving a little deeper into the nature of
this life force-energy, in the Egyptian cosmovision.

The ka, from a monistic hermeneutics, is a limited life force or energy, a

fragment of the universal sejem, which grants existence to both the cosmos, in
general, and to each thing and being in particular [2- Assmann, c. ii and iv / 5-
Assmann]. The divine Ka articulates the universe in a substantial continuum in
movement without ontological hiatus, between this energy-power of life of the
Creator, particularized in things and in the existences of the cosmos. In the
Egyptian cosmovision, one is what the intensity of the amount of personal ka possessed can
encompass; that is, to the extent that the vitality of its ka allows its possessor to develop the
capacity -heka- of mastery over himself and his environment. In other words: “...it means,
exactly, that the existing ones are not defined by their essence but by their power... The

66
way of being will be, precisely, that kind of existence quantified according to the power,
according to the degree of power that defines it.” [Deleuze, 87].
With the framework of Deleuze's definition, we can affirm that the greater
or less amount of ka energy (k3) constitutes an authentic scale of differential
order, under the modality of an unrevealed natural law that, being additive,
marks the intensity of life energy in beings and things. Consequently, the ka is
the foundation of a bionatural hierarchy among all existences, transnatural and terrestrial,
where the monarch is the most important due to his concentration of ka. Thus, the
monarch, due to his ka complex, is seen as an earthly netjer among the Netjeru
that structure the cosmic order, marking a deep separation with humanity, by
possessing in his person the greatest amount of ka force in the visible cosmic
dimension and, therefore: there is no dichotomy between animate and inanimate or
personal and impersonal objects [Guglielmi in Finnestad, 39 n. 11].

Egyptian cosmotheism
transformation of the active-power sekhem in cosmos.

1st Nuu/Atum
2nd ↓↑Sekhem
3rd ↓↑Kau
4th ↓↑Shu
5th ↓↑Ka of ka
6th ↓↑everything that exists

There is another differentiation between existences -people or things-, which

perfects the previous quantitative scale, completing it. It is the variant originated
in the solar theology reformed in the Middle Kingdom, which completes the
previous hypostatic hierarchy: ka of ka of ancient times, which highlights the
ways and the particular type of life of each existence, its position and the quality
it will have in the cosmos, as an individual entity. This distinction establishes
the place of the Creator, through which they are emanated at the moment of
existing. Thus, the demiurge, begets or models from his “sweat”, isheded (iSdd)
[1- Faulkner, p. 26] the Netjeru, including the monarch [PT 1114, 1-Allen]; from
his “sputum”, as ka germinating plasma, the cosmos will emerge [PT 1652, 1-
Allen] and from his “tears”, transformed into ka, they will generate humanity
[CT vi 344, vii 464 and 465b / Caron, c . ii, 2. 3 and ss.].
The entire cosmos is fashioned or engendered from the bodily substance of
the demiurge, the watery nuu-sekhem, mutated into ka of individual ka. Thus,
the entire universe shares a single kind of life-giving substance, transformed
into ka energy in the interiority of creation by the primordial existent [see

67
graphic p. fifty]. It is not in vain that One-Atum is called, from the PT onwards,
with the didactic and metaphorical name of “distributor of ka” -neheb-kau-,
which is life. In other words, the ka is an explosion of individual life, derived
directly from the universal sekhem, from which the individual kas comes.
The sekhem is an active-power, overwhelming and without limit, that
transports the will and the order of the demiurge to the cosmos, in the
substance kau mutated in ka of ka. It is the personified divine energy, giver of
life and limit of all existence that, also, manifests itself present in the cadence
of the sound of the sistrum, sesheshet (sSSt) [1- Faulkner, 212]. This power
induces the mystical fury of the sacred dancers, as can be seen in the hymn to
the seven Hathor:

Hymn to Hathor
For your Ka we mark the cadence...
We exalt you to the elevation of heaven!
you are the lady of the sistros sekhem.
Mistress of the menit necklace and of the sekhem sistrum.
Lady of the music that is made for your Ka…
We make the music for your Ka.
Our hearts are exultant!
Piulats, 54-55.

In this text we observe that the dancers of Hathor were induced to a state of
ecstasy by means of the sound –sekhem-, that is, the presence of the divinity
itself, inherent in the cadence of the sistrum, which harmonized the sacred
dance (fig. 10).

Fig. 10. Ankhesenamun with the seseset-sekhem sistrum.

Its sound considered promoter of the engendering fertility of the demiurge.
Golden Chapel of Tutankhamun.

68
In conclusion, everything that exists is sustained by a single active-power in the
cosmos, the sekhem corporeality of the One mutated in the ka life force or
energy that is inherent in everything that exists, which operates as a substratum
of both the visible and hidden dimensions of the cosmos. Therefore: “to
characterize the system of thought in Ancient Egypt, the most appropriate term would
be monism. Existence itself forms a unity in everything with the primordial state.
Existence is the manifest Being itself, manifestation of the divinity” [1- Englund, 25-26].

It is necessary to insist again that the ka, in the Egyptian cosmovision, is not
an abstract or metaphysical "in-itself". On the contrary the ka force is a limited and
concentrated amount of ethereal life energy, which can decrease causing death, or increase in
certain cases, as in the Heb-Sed ritual of regeneration of the monarch. Therefore, if we
relate it to the ultimate goal of human existence, the ka, it constitutes a reality
of movement and projection to the hidden and non-metaphysical transnatural
of the cosmos. So that the ka of the beings installed in the terrestrial and visible
dimension of the universe, expresses a specifically natural reality, which is not
only the intensity of life energy, but also a relationship of multipolar tension
between the intensity of quantities of ka force possessed by people, things and
diverse existences, in relation to the demiurge, because he is their giver of life
and administrator.
Thus, in this context: the personal ka is neheh transitivity, which marks a quantitative-
intensive differential relationship with other ka, founding, in fact, a bio-transnatural hierarchy
between humanity, the ruler and the demiurge. For the Egyptian mentality, terrestrial
transitivity enabled the passage of the ka from the visible to the hidden
dimension of the cosmos. This movement towards the occult of the cosmos
constitutes the ideal of fullness of human existence in Egyptian religiosity. Life
presupposed a continuous mutation of ka energy, restored after death, by the
funerary liturgy, directed together with the ba towards its origin, the Creator, to
coexist with him in the Beyond, after the posthumous judgment.
We observe this conception in the Egyptian metaphor of dying: “passing to
the ka”, which reveals to us a movement and a march that goes from the
human-ka in transit to the universal-ka of the demiurge, with the meaning of
heading towards the fullness of whoever possesses the domain of all kau, the
demiurge [1- Frankfort, c. 5, 87]. This relation of movement and passage has a
modal distinction in the monarch, due to his origin in the sweat of the Creator,
already from the PT. The metaphor referring to the king's death changes: it is
said that "he goes with his ka", tacitly affirming that he is a primordial ba in the

69
terrestrial dimension of the cosmos and, therefore, the ka he possesses is his
and not a second-order hypostatic derivation.
The monarch's possession of a ba of the demiurge allows him to assume
signs of divinity, and this implies usufruct: “The variety of meaning (which) includes,
consequently, on the one hand, the divine capacity to remain in itself, which is the
characteristic of divinity, to such an extent that Ba can often be translated as “God” or
“deity”, and, on the other hand, (assume) its concrete form, which can be completely
mutable or variable from case to case.” [Bergman, 15]. This affirmation justifies the
finality of the PT and of the later real funerary liturgies; namely, to enable the
assumption of the capacities and functions of the divine and, as far as possible,
merge with the demiurge or replace it. It must be remembered that, since the
Archaic Period, the ruler was considered a mode of existence -ba- direct from
the Creator and pre-existing the universe since the TP and also before [Zabkar,
c. 2]:

Origin and divine beginning of the king

The king was formed by his father from him Atum,
before heaven existed
before the earth existed...
before death existed.
PT 1466, 1-Allen.

§
The nature of the First-Existing, centered on the inclusion of the universe in
its corporeity, was the immovable ontological principle, which organized the
Egyptian cosmovision and the basic model of theological elaboration of the
priesthood, to describe and justify the underlying unity in the multiplicity of the
cosmos and, thus, reduce diversity to a homogeneous format, consubstantial
with the demiurge. In other words, the personifications of the divine -images,
signs and texts- were organized in homologous "prototypes", according to a
strict hierarchical order among them: "...for example, the states of Chaos as
complementary to Creation, located at the level of the highest hierarchy, have
counterparts as night and day within the created world. Thus, the prototype concept can
be used to help analyze the categorizing function of Egyptian thought” [Troy, 61]. East
method of associating and integrating, in a consubstantial way, the multiplicity
of the cosmos and creation itself into the One, is characteristic of Egyptian
theological thought, as we see in the following table:

70
 Kau circulation in the cosmos
-visible -hidden-

upper sky ⇆ land ⇆ lower sky

DEMIURGO ATUM or AMUN

♂+♀

sekhem wer
substance – primordial - energy

Neheb-kau
provider of life (ka)

Sekhem + heka

Kau

ka of kas

COSMOS MAAT
Shu ♂ ♀ Tefnut
Breath - vital air Breath - fertile air
Ka = Life Kat = Fertility

binary splitting of complementary homologues

Consubstantial Consubstantial

Correspondence
Maat Sekhmet
Numinous Power Order

Divinity King

71
 Consubstantial
Cosmic terrestrial

Divine Human

Male Female

Likeness

MAATY

Judgment of the living Judgment of the dead

Pharaoh GIVER OF LIFE Sun

Terrestrial Horus Re–Aten

Land Divine Epiphany Celestial Divine Epiphany

Horus the great

(Hor–Wer)
(Earthly divine kingship)

ATUM or AMUN
[Hidden from the Netjeru and humanity]

It is necessary to note that the Egyptian religion, interpreted from a non-

metaphysical transcendent monistic cosmovision, necessarily implies a
cosmovision that supposes a single kind of substance as the only element, with
which the Creator models the universe and "humanity", with his watery-sekhem
emanated from himself as kau energy and spilled out into the cosmos as
individual ka.
The nature and origin of humanity, remetjet (rmT.t) [1- Faulkner, 130], is a
clear example of Egyptian monism. It is presented, in traditional theology,
modeled by the tears of the demiurge, his ka energy, transmuted into
engendering remut “tears” (rmw.t), humanity [1- Faulkner, 130]. This theology
is based on the quasi-homophony between both words, humanity and tears,
and both words use the same semantic determiner: “water from the eyes”=

72
fertilizing tears, which become the Ka of each person [Gardiner, sig. D9]. In
this case, the crying of the demiurge corroborates our interpretation.
We can affirm that, for Egyptian thought, a single substance or attribute
constitutes everything created, present in all existences as sub-existent universal
kau in the cosmos, and in all living things divided as ka / kat [1.- Bongioanni
and Tosi. c. 1]. Expressing this principle in our terms, it allows us to interpret
it from modernity, following Deleuze, when he affirms that: "there is only one
absolutely infinite substance that is, possessing all attributes, and what we call ´creatures´
are but modes or manners of being of this substance" [Deleuze, c. 1, 27]. The sekhem
substantial plasma is metastatically underextended as an attribute or ka energy
in cosmic reality [2- Assmann, c. 4], both visible and hidden, which guarantees
the presence of the demiurge as a dominant and seamless personal existence in
creation.
Despite the well-defined nature of the demiurge and the all-encompassing
scope of his active-power, which is his main attribute as begetter, ordainer and
absolute administrator of the cosmos, we observe that the limits between the
demiurge and creation become imprecise in the face of his overwhelming
presence, and, also, as we have observed, in the diffuse limits between life and
death. So, in Egyptian monism, the demarcation between life and death, the
visible and the hidden world, survival and immortality, among other realities
that make up the human condition, become ambiguous, despite the notorious
precision, at the moment of defining theologically the nature of the demiurge,
as well as the transnatural transcendence, alien to any metaphysical conception,
reserved for humanity and its ethical, moral and ritual conditions for its
achievements.
This reality should not attract attention, since in the cosmovision of Egyptian
monism, the limits or contours of things and beings are not significant since
they are integrated into the divine Totality-One. The identification, since
ancient times, of the real mummified body with cult imagery is notorious
[Wengrow, c. 10]. This thought about reality contrasts with the cosmo-
anthropological and religious conceptions, both dualistic and pluralistic, of the
ancient world, integrally different from the Egyptian cosmovision [Ferrater
Mora, 331]. Indeed, “limit” is a central concept for Greek philosophy, in ancient
Greek, "peras" [Antón Pacheco, 17], which refers to the external forms, textures
and external contours of existences, typical of the dualistic Platonic-Aristotelian
cosmovision, which has its visible expression in the art of classical Greek
statuary, which founds an aesthetic of shapes and contours that we inherit from
the Hellenistic-Roman world [Deleuze, 374-378].

73
 The Egyptian perception of the cosmos, beings and things, is focused on the
amount-intensity of life-ka energy that each existence receives from the Creator,
and does not pay attention to the contours and forms of the beings brought to
life by the ka. Thus, the limit of each existence focuses on the power or capacity –heka- of
its ka to expand as far as the life action of its bearer could. The ka force is variable: it
can increase or decrease until extinction, and this conception is the principle
that justified the need for periodic renewal of the monarch, through the Heb-
Sed ritual, in order to regenerate the vigor of his ka, and therefore, his rule over
Egypt [1- Frankfort, c. 6].
The funerary ritual restored to the deceased the mastery of the capacities of
his ka, essential for transnatural and temporal survival in a hidden Beyond in
the cosmos, and made it possible to enable funerary imagery as supports for the
personal ka, to guarantee the survival of its ba, in the event of the disappearance
of the mummy [Goyon, part 2 c. 2]. All rituals have a practical purpose, which
consists of regenerating - mastering - intensifying - weakening the force of the ka
through heka, which is neither more nor less than the ability to administer the
transformations -jepru- of the cosmos and its existences, in order to be inserted
into the movement of the demiurge (Fig. 27). This ability was transferred to the
ruler by the Creator, as his direct ba, who enabled him to regenerate, protect
and sustain terrestrial life and articulate it with heavenly life in his capacity as
master of rituals and, especially, of funerary liturgies. [Morentz, c. x, 280].

§
The monistic cosmotheological framework allows a better understanding of
the Egyptian conception of nature, both of things and of living beings. For
them, the extent of ka possessed was highly significant, as was the heka capacity
of the bearer over his own ka, that is, being "equipped" in Egyptian terms
[Morentz, c. x]. The mastery of it gave him the possibility of reaching a
transnatural transcendence, through the "beginning of transformations", which
was nothing more than "going towards his ka". The funeral liturgy empowered
people to pass from the neheh time to the temporal duration djet, or from the
visible terrestrial dimension to the hidden celestial dimension, in an endless
circulation between the heavens -superior and inferior- of the universe and thus
evade the second death [PT 249b; 1275b; 1456b, 1-Allen/BD c. 44, 2-Faukner].

74
Figure 11. The Ba next to its shadow Figure 12. Amenhotep III and his ka
Tomb of Iry-Nefer - Thebes - dyn. XIX presented to Amun – Luxor Temple
2 - Bongioanni and Tosi, 129. Wilkinson, 22.

The beginning of the transformations of the BD, observed in depth, is

nothing other than: the doctrine of the justification of the distinctive personal ba, which is
the reflective consciousness of the deceased with the capacity to remain itself, after the Osirian
judgment [3- Assmann, c. iii]. To achieve transcendence, it was imperious the
recomposition of the fullness of the ka life energy and, also, of its “shadow”,
shut (Sw.t) [Gardiner, 225] which was his bodily and sexual vigor, related to the
diffuse tekenu, a Griffiths hypothesis that we accept [Rampez Toraño,-471 et
ss.]. Both, ka and shut, overlapping the ba, gave it the ability to live in the Duat,
the Egyptian Beyond, and adopt other modes and forms -jepru- of existences of
the deceased and circulate throughout the entire cosmos, equating to the
Netjeru or to the demiurge himself [BD c. 92, and 83, 85, 86].
The recovery of the ka force, through mummification and funerary liturgy
[3-Assmann, c. ii] justified the belief in the latent life of the mummy, which
Morentz designated the "living corpse doctrine" [Morentz, c. ix] (fig. 12). The
path of transfiguration implied possessing the capacity and full control -heka- over one's own
ka to enable its ba to pass from the earthly neheh time to the celestial djet, and then dwell
cyclically in the Duat and in the tomb, representing the lower Egyptian sky, a
continuation of the upper one [BD c. 149, 2-Faukner]. What has been exposed
above illustrates the conception of the continuous movement of the ka energy
together with the ba, and its shadow between the visible and hidden dimensions
of the Egyptian universe.
In other words, they conceived a total immanence and substantial identity,
between both aspects of a single cosmic reality, and a non-metaphysical
transnatural transcendence of existences, ´justified´ after the judgment, justified
after the judgment, subjected to a continuous passage from the space ´visible´
75
to the ´hidden´, bordering the same bordering the same chaos, primordial
ocean, to the extent that the universe is in the middle of it and the Duat is the
threshold of the primordial ocean [PT 1938c, 1- Allen].
The oldest documented example that illustrates the restoration of the power
of life of the demiurge and, by extension, also of the monarch, identified with
Atum, is found in the Cannibal Hymn of the PT of Unas and Teti. It is given
by ritual anthropophagy of the substance of life represented, in this case, by: ka
– ba - aju- sekhem and suit, of various transnatural entities Netjeru and that,
below, we illustrate with some fragments of it:

The King as Atum

He is the bull from heaven (k3 p.t)
Who lives in the form-khper (xpr) of each god-netjer
that eats the entrails of him (zm.w = sn) ...
of their bodies full of power-hekau (Hk3w)
PT 397, 1-Allen.
He is the one who eats-wnem (wnm) men
and vive-ankh (anx) of the Netjeru…
PT 400, 1-Allen.

Khonsu is the one who kills-meds (mdś) the lords...

and extracts for him what is in their bellies (xsf.w).
PT 402, 1-Allen.

The king is the one who eats-wenem his power-hekau (HqAw)

and devours their spirits-aju (3x.w)...
PT 403, 1-Allen.

He has broken the vertebrae

and has taken the hearts of the Netjeru
PT 409, 1-Allen.

He has eaten (am) the red-crown (dSr.t),

he has swallowed (am) the green-crown (w3D.t)
and he feeds-wesheb (wSb) on the lungs-sema (sm3.w) of the wise
satisfied-hetep (Htp) of hearts and their powers-hekau (sm3.w)
PT 410, 1-Allen.

He has swallowed the thought-sia (si3) of all the Netjeru

PT 411, 1-Allen.

Look!..their bau (b3.w) are on the king!

the aju-spirits of them (3x.w) stand before the king...
their shadows-suitu (swit) are snatched away!..
PT 413, 1-Allen.

76
 The process of restoring the mastery of the ka life energy of the deceased,
gives him the possibility to assume other modes of existence, which equates
him to the Netjeru. A thousand years later, this regenerative process is observed,
with more elaborate literary forms, in the titles and contents of the formulas of
the Book of the Dead, among other sacred texts, as we can see below:
To transform from a golden falcon
BD c 77 2-Faulkner.

To transform into a lotus

BD c. 81 A and B 2-Faulkner.

To transform into a Phoenix

BD c-83 2-Faulkner.

The most characteristic example of concentration of vital energy ka, we have

it in the ruler bearer of his various divine kas, [1- Frankfort, c. v 85 and ss.],
which placed him at the pinnacle of earthly power and was the greatest
possessor of sekhem power, transformed into ka energy, which gave him
mastery of the individual ka, for being the support of a ka of the demiurge and,
therefore, its direct and permanent manifestation in the visible dimension of
the cosmos. In fact, the monarch was considered as the same Creator made
visible, with a physical clothing that was updated in each reigning pharaoh:

The king as netjer

Messages from your Ka arrive for you,
messages from your father arrive for you,
messages from Re arrive for you
PT 136, 1-Allen.

The result of this cosmovision was to conceive that the contours and shapes
of things, and in particular of existences, are not significant. Yes, they are the
ka life force -among other anthropological elements-, which resides inside
people, fragments of the expansive divine sekhem, and this is very significant.
One of these anthropological elements is the “shadow”, which is intangible,
subtle and central as: “part of the personality of a man… spirit of a god… sacred figure,
image of the god” [1- Faulkner, 225 / 1. - Bongioanni and Tosi, c. 5].
The word used to denote both the divine and the human “shadow” is shut
(Sw.t) [1- Faulkner, 225]. The vocalization is the same for both cases, but written
with different hieroglyphs to mark their differences in origin and hierarchy, but
it is important to note that the divine shadow Sw.t is written with the

77
phonogram Sw [1- Faulkner, 225 / Gardiner sig. H6]; phonetic sign, which is
a feather that refers to the ethereal of the divine breath, identified with the life-
giving spirit-air. Instead, the human shadow Sw.t is written with the
character [1- Faulkner, 225 / Gardiner, sig. S35 and S36], a parasol that
alludes to the opacity or, directly, the darkness of the blackness of the Duat or
the Nun. The human shadow was represented with a sexualized black image -
spectrum-, considered the continuity of the corporal sexual vigor of the deceased
in the Duat. The shadow is intimately related to the personal ka, with which it
is confused, it is the support of the ba, which it accompanies, from MK, in its
positive or negative destiny in the Beyond [BD c. 91, 2- Faulkner / LM c. 91
parallel of CT 496 Barguet / Naydler, 230-233].
This anthropology, based on the divine vital power ka donated by the
demiurge, added to the shadow -suit-, as personal sexual vigor, both within the
person, denote the anthropological ambiguity of this cosmovision. The
consequence is that ´life´ and ´death´, the ´visible world and the ´hidden´,
´survival´ or ´immortality, among other realities that make up the human
condition, are imprecise in their limits, despite the notorious temporal,
transnatural and hidden transcendence in the cosmos of man. Said with
contemporary words, for the Egyptians, beings and: “the thing has no other limit
than that of its power or action. The thing is, then, power and not form. The forest is not
defined by a form, it is defined by a power: power to make trees proliferate until the
moment when it can no longer.” [Deleuze, 380]. In the Egyptian cosmovision, ka
forces matter more, as life energy, than external physical forms and textures,
and this ambiguity enabled theologians to quickly slide traditional Egyptian
summotheism to extreme positions; theological variations that we often find
embodied in the same religious or liturgical text.

§
There are two very frequent derivations of Egyptian theism. The first
consists of the invasive over abundance of the divine ba in things and beings,
where the demiurge, without abandoning his absolute omnipresent centrality,
converts existences and things into an almost passive extension of his own
reality, and reduces the autonomy of humanity at the discretion of its natural
presence. The result is a panantheism-summotheism with an accentuated ritualism
that compensates for a limited personal independence that, traditionally, was
based on free will, granted to humanity by the divinity within the framework of
the Maat, a strict salvific ethic [Morentz, c. iv]. This system was based on the
Osirian doctrine of human transcendence under the Maat, a complex regulation
of the "justification" of the ba [3- Assmann, c. 3-c.].

78
 This cosmotheology definable as: The-One, sub-existent in the cosmos and
totalizer of all forms of existence, is the classic pantheism of the official
theology of the Ramesside Period. It is the ontotheology of an ineffable
demiurge: hidden Ba = Amun, which is not only transnatural but also veiled
from humanity and without appreciable difference with the cosmos. It is a post-
Amarnian redefinition of compromise, in which it is speculated that the Ba of
the demiurge lies-hidden and eternal in the cosmos and is also a numinous and
resplendent presence in the star sehed-en-nebu, (sHd n nbw) [Jacq, § 273, 169-70
/ PT 889d], and a power -sekhemu (sxm.w)-, present and active in nature and
humanity. This reinterpretation recovers the hidden dimension of the cosmos,
the Duat, the Netjeru and the Osiriac imagery of the traditional religion of the
PT, but it preserves the Amarna interpretation of generation, the maintenance
of the cosmos and of life through light and solar glare, a theology that can be
seen in the following text (fig. 13):

Hymn to Amun
Amun-Ra, the lord of the throne of the world,
the sacred Ba-soul that was born in the beginning…
One of One [no second], the creator of things...
He is the Ba-soul that-shines through the [two] eyes of him.
He is the unknowable Existent and the most hidden-Amun of the Netjeru.
He makes the disk-Aten his vicar and he cannot be known,
he hiddes-amun from his own manifestations…mighty (sxm.w) of radiances,
what is in it cannot be understood.
Piulats, p. 179.

Figure 13. Ramesside cosmotheology.

The demiurge “soul of the world” -Atum-Re or Amun-Re hidden in the solar disk
it manifests itself, khepru, as creative luminosity.
Baken-mut papyrus. Din. XXI [Wilkinson, 130]

79
 In the preceding image, Amun is the Bau-soul of the universe and everything
created, he is nothing more than a dynamic and direct modality of the divine
nature or, more properly, his corporal prolongation, for being the same cosmos
in its entirety, and the sunlight just its neutral look. It is an archaic doctrine that
was outlined in the PT, in the image of non-solarized Atum [8-Assmann].
The second derivation is an extreme naturalism, where the totalizing
presence of the fragmented demiurge in the cosmos reduces the divinity to an
exclusively immanent existence in the multiplicity of nature, which could be
interpreted as the same demiurge, partitioned and manifested directly, in each
thing or existence. This theological thought can be defined as a diffuse deism,
markedly naturalistic, consisting of the belief in a primordial, neutral or
indefinite entity, reducible to an impersonal force or energy; a cosmo-
philosophy dressed in theological clothing, characteristic of the Amarna reform
[3- Allen, 99-100 / Navarro–Reverter, c. xi]. This theology, seen from our
interpretation of the traditional Egyptian religion, is an extreme naturalism with
deistic features, which Assmann defined as the "new anti-constellation solar
theology" [5- Assmann, - 146].
This cosmovision proposes a closed system, where there is nothing
transnatural, by denying the hidden dimension of the universe of the traditional
religion, and maintaining that there is only one engendering light energy -diffuse
and universal-, immersed in a process of constant convertibility. In the Amarna
naturalistic cosmotheology there is no personal transnatural survival, in the
invisible space typical of traditional Egyptian theology. The place of justification
and metamorphosis is not the sky in the bosom of Nut, the hidden dimension
of the cosmos, but in the depths of the necropolis, as can be seen in the funerary
inscription of Aj-Iker, which reminds us of the archaic cycle Sokar Memphite,
such that the deceased is:

...capable spirit in heaven,

strong on earth,
justified in the necropolis...
1. - Bongioanni and Tosi, 88.

There is only the most concrete reality and it is what you see. Survival is the
subsistence of the personal consciousness as a "living spirit", Aju ankh (3xw
anx),), sustained only by the daily cyclical vivification of the light of the Aten.
This is radiated as a reverberating divine “shadow”, Shut Re (Sw.t Ra) [1-
Faulkner, 225], where the solar determinative gives meaning of revivifying
luminosity to the divine light-shadow, given daily to the universe by a diffuse
demiurge and mediated by the monarch [1.- Bongioanni and Tosi, 85]. The

80
amarnian demiurge is a counter-image of the darkness of Nun and the
concealment of Amun; it is an impersonal, diffuse and totalizing life energy,
which is reduced to the germinating light of the Solar Disc Aton, itn (w)
[1- Faulkner, 28]. The Amarna cosmos is exclusive visibility and total
immanence, where there is only one dimension: the luminous visibility that daily
generates and sustains life–not another thing or meaning.
We understand the revolutionary phenomenon of Amarna as the discovery
of light as a generator of space and, therefore, the emergence of a new
understanding of the cosmos and time. We can define the Amarna experience
in our terms with the following description, which fits well: “The discovery of a
pure light, of the sufficiency of light to constitute a world, supposes that, under space,
spatialization has been discovered. That is not a platonic idea, not even of the Timaeus.
This is a very strange idea that, in my opinion, would be incomprehensible to a classical
Greek. The (idea) that light is spatializing, that it is not light that is in space, but that it
constitutes space, is an idea that comes from the East, not a Greek idea”. [Deleuze, 382].
In other words, the solar theology of Amarna is the extreme reduction of the
universe to the one-dimensional; to a spatializing luminescent monism, limited
to the immanence of the solar reverberation: spatializing, fertilizing, and to an
exacerbated causal naturalism [5- Assmann, 147-152].
The diffuse naturalistic deism of the Amarna theologians reduces reality to
the luminous, evident fertilizing energy, in such a way that: “In this system, the
importance of the concept ´One´ is not theological, but physical: the ´One´ is the source
of cosmic existence. There is no other source besides this One and everything can be
reduced and related to it”, [5- Assmann, 161]. We are in a position to affirm that the
counterpart of life-giving light is nothing more than darkness and death, not-
another-thing. In other words, it was the discovery of light as an almost physical
fact, very close to its modern meaning. This conception could also be described
in terms of Deleuze, paraphrasing Plotinus: “Light explores shadows. Is the shadow
part of the light? Yes, it is part of the light. And it will have a light-shadow gradation that
will develop the space.” [Deleuze, 382].
The rupture of the theologians of Amarna with the traditional solar
cosmotheology, canonized during the V° Din in the PT, it was consummated
with the suppression of Shu -the breath of the traditional solar demiurge [fig.
13]-, from the first didactic protocol of the Aten. They replaced the saliva-
moisture-Shu as the active-power of life of the demiurge and spatializing
element of the traditional cosmogony, by a word almost homophonous with
the previous one: the light perceived as "enveloping shadow", emanating from

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the solar disk, the only element that generates the cosmic space and natural life
With the introduction of this exclusive and innovative doctrine, they suppressed
a thousand years of Heliopolitan theological development, founded on the
aqueous corporeal plasma of the Primeval-One, as a means of engendering the
cosmos -moist breath, sputum, tears-, figured in the Pyramids Texts- PT-, and
matured in the Coffin Texts –CT- with the introduction of humanity into the
solar cosmogony.
From the deep break with its traditional cosmovision, Egypt will never be
the same, despite the partial restoration of cosmotheology traditional in the
Ramesside Period. The deep modification of the understanding of the cosmos
in the New Kingdom, led the Amarna priesthood to theologically annul the
name and function of Shu, Ba of Atum-Re of traditional theology, executed in
the second dogmatic protocol of the Aten.
The profound consequence of this step was the suppression of their
traditional emanations in particular the Netjeru and Enneads, as intermediary
entities between the Creator and the world. From this change, the presence of
the giver of life is direct and totally immanent. The abysmal change caused by
the priesthood that supported Akhenaten is eloquent, as we see in the variation
of the two didactic protocols of the Aten, the official religious doctrine
canonized theologically and implemented politically:

1st Didactic Protocol: Lives Re-Horus…he who rejoices in the

Horizon; in its name of Shu [breath-begetting-shadow]... (m rn=f m Sw) who is in the
Aten [light], who is the giver of life. [5-Assmann, 164].

2nd Didactic Protocol: Lives Re… Ruler of the Horizon, he who

rejoices in the Horizon, in its name of jiw [light-begetting-shadow of the disk] the
father, who has returned [visible] as Aton… (m rn=f <…> jjw m Itn) [5- Assmann, 164].

In the IX year of Akhenaten, the king proclaims the second didactic protocol
of the Aten, marking the total break with the Egyptian religious past, and the
solar theology of the light of the Aten becomes the only and sublime element
of generation of the cosmos, engendering of natural life and support of the
cosmos. This radical change allowed the Amarna theologians to detach
themselves from the "constellationist" doctrine of the generation of cosmic
space, from the traditional theology inherited from the PT, a universe founded
on the moist Shu (Sw) breath of Atum, emerged from the darkness of the
Nun [1-Faulkner, 225].

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 In order to substitute the cosmotheology of the breath, Shu ( Sw), of Atum-
Re of the PT, for the light Sw [1- Faulkner, 225] of the Aten, the priesthood
will impose a new theology. In this new creed, the demiurge is, exclusively, the
solar disk Aten and his engendering light-brightness is also his encircling body
as a shadow that gives life to the cosmos. To identify light as shadow, they used
the phonological closeness and the iconographic synonymy between one of the
various spellings from the word “divine shadow” Sw(i)t,, quasi-homologous
to the spelling for “light” Sw of the Aten protocol [1- Faulkner, 225],
interpreted with an almost substantial meaning, expanding the traditional
theological meaning of solar light of the PT -corporeality of Atum-, taken to an
almost materiality that facilitated the change to the Amarna solar dogma [1-
Bongioanni and Tosi, 57.8].
But we must also highlight that the spelling already seen for the light-Sw of
the Aten is similar to that of Shu- Sw, breath of Atum of the TP [1- Faulkner,
225]. To bring about the change in theological meaning, they only needed to
replace the traditional semantic determinative of divinity from the word Shu
[1- Faulkner, 225/Gardiner, sig. A40] by the solar disk as a semantic
determinative of the brilliant light as enveloping and engendering shadow of
the Aten [1- Faulkner, 225/ Gardiner sig. N5], without any traditional
transnatural meaning. Thus, the traditional meaning of the word “begetting
breath” - Sw - of Atum was reconverted into “begetting light-shadow” of
the solar disk –Aten [1- Faulkner, 225 / Assmann, 164] (fig. - 25).
This linguistic and iconographic quasi-synonym will allow them to substitute
a transnatural meaning for an exclusively natural one and prepare for the change
in cosmology and theology that, without half measures, becomes visible in the
second protocol of the Aten. From the second didactic protocol of the Aten,
light will be, simply, engendering "physis" and the only creational element
admitted in the cosmos, which will have a diffuse existence divided into things
and existences on which it acts without any mediation.
The novel interpretation of the demiurge as an entity, luminous and
indefinite, aniconic and very especially non-personal, will allow the emergence
of the first naturalistic cosmo-philosophy of humanity, covered with a deistic
theological language, within the framework of a centered, temporality,
exclusively, in the immanent and visible [Assmann, 5 and 8 / Simpson, 1-5
Assmann, note 7144].The Aten is the only thing that “exists” or “persists” -
wenen (wnn), intransitive to itself and, as such, is djet (D.t) and neferu (nfrw)

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divine (nfrw) “beauty”. As it is the "complete one”, it corresponds to the old
Osirian didactic protocol, resignified and solarized: Unen-Nefer (Wnn-Nfr), an
existence possessing an eternal present without past or future, verifiable
reinterpretation in the "Osiríaca"

Figure 14. Amarnian cosmotheology.

The demiurge -Aten- manifests directly
in the cosmos by his light as a germinating shut-Ra “shadow”.
Tomb of Ay, El-Amarna- XVIII Din.
[Wilkinson, 130]

statuary of Akhenaten, represented without the traditional mummified shroud,

representations that deny all hidden life of traditional solar cosmotheology. The
Amarna images, called “osiríacas”, are a deliberate opposite-iconographic-image of
the traditional funerary Osiris, centrally nocturnal and hidden from the second
to the sixth day of the rituals of the Haker Festival of Abydos; that we know
well from the testimonies of the treasurer of Sesostris III, Ikernofret [10-
Assmann, 226-229 / Simpson, 425-427].
Amarna theology uses -to describe and represent the nature of the Aten and
suppress the iconography of Osiris replaced by the figure of Akhenaten-, a novel
correspondence of the monarch with the solarized Osiriac theology of the MK
that shows us Osiris where, in addition to its traditional meaning of AK
[Sarmiento, 304 ss.], is defined: "as Re" daily triumphant over death on the
eighth day of the Haker Festival of Abydos [Casford, 171 and 178 ss.],

84
according to Ikernofret [Casford, 88 ss.]. In that segment of the MK liturgy, his
effulgent image, "as Re", was presented adorned with "golden garments" and
"precious stones" that symbolize his luminous "final form" [Casford, 90-92],
which, in that day is fullness of solar brilliance: “Adoration to Osiris, lord of
eternity. Horus-of-the-(two)-horizons (Re-Horajty), generous in forms, great in
manifestations, Ptah-Sokar-Atum in Heliopolis..." [Cashford, 179]. This solar
formula, adapted to Osiris, is theologically consistent with the first didactic
protocol of the Aten (Re-Horakhty) [Bonanno, p. 20 ss.] and [supra. 81]. Also,
the image of Osiris solarized as Re and reborn on the eighth day of Haker, gives
its "stability" (Dd) to the terrestrial cosmos identified with the rise of the Djed
Pillar and the hymns to the Nile [Rundle Clark, 133]. Akhenaten will assume an
analogous role of "holder" and “ordainer” of the terrestrial cosmos.
The Amarna theologians condensed the traditional solar conceptions about
the visibility and luminosity of Re in a new solar theology and related it to the
monarch: Neferkheprura-Ajnaten (Nfr khprwra - Ax n Itn),), "Beautiful are the
transformations of Re" "Manifestation (terrestrial) of the Aten”. It is an
exclusive theology of the Aten, centered on the divinity of the light of the solar
disk and of the monarch as his image and sole terrestrial mediator. The light
was dogmatized as the first and authentic hierophanic manifestation of the
Aten, appreciable in its two didactic protocols [see supra. page 81] and in his
orthodox name: Nefer-neferu-Aten (Nfr nfrw Itn), denying all concealment and
darkness of the demiurge in the cosmos. It is essential to remember that this
protocol is parallel in construction and also a theological opposite-image of the name
of the funerary temple of Queen Hatshepsut, named as: "Holy is the Holiness
of Amun", Djeser-djeseru-Amun (Dsr DsrwImn). It is worth remembering that
the enclosure of Amun in the third courtyard of that ceremonial center, was the
place where the rituals of the annual festival of Opet of Thebes culminated
during the New Kingdom.
Thus, it is possible to propose that the sacral complex of temples of Amarna,
delimited by their foundation stelae, are also a deliberate opposite-image-spatial-
sacred and a new axis-mundi competitor of the Theban temples and their
festivals that they intended to replace. We note that the Great Temple and the
Lesser Temple of the Aten at Amarna have an east-west solar orientation,
analogous to the alignment of the temple of Opet at Karnak, as well as that of
Hatshepsut's Amun at Deir el Bahari, [Kemp, figs. 71, 88 and 89].
It is important to distinguish, in the Amarna cosmotheology, that the scorching
radiance of the Aten's light rays carries a different temporality to the cosmos,
the conception of an eternal cyclicity, of recurrent natural order -neheh- (nHH),
which is repeated in the transformations -kheperu- (xpr.w), caused by the

85
luminosity of the disc to reproduce an endless cosmos. Amarna cosmotheology
proposes an extreme monistic vision of the world, where the two aspects -
visible and hidden- of the traditional cosmos, dissolve without leaving space for
the transnatural, invisible and transcendent, typical of traditional religiosity and
theology.
The Amarna dogmatics posits a monist-immanentist cosmovision radically
different from the traditional “constellationist” cosmovision [2- Assmann, c. 1
and 4], differentiating the second from the first, because constellationism
focuses the theological work on the processual cosmic temporality –neheh- of
the demiurge. Consequently, it makes an inflection in the pre-cosmic, its
beginnings and its end [BD c. 17 and 125] within the framework of a natural
and ethical order, synthesized in the word Maat, where the persistence of Atum
is due to Maat, part of his person [5- Assmann, 156 ss.].
The proposal of Akhenaten and the priestly college that accompanies him
begins with a structural religious reform of traditional cosmological

Figure. 24. The demiurge as Re-Horakhty sustains the cyclicity of the cosmos.
In front of the creator Maat-its intrinsic legality of him-of him, it is non-chaos and order of the
cosmos. Below there are three entities on banners: the closest one represents the temporality djet,
“duration of transformations” -neb-er-djer-; it is followed by an entity with the sign heh, a "million"
of years, the quasi-eternal but limited "duration" of the mutations of the cosmic circuit; then a third
entity with the sign “years” -renpet- on his head and “life” ankh on his arm, confirming this
interpretation. Behind Re-Horakhty, an entity bears the sign of Tekenu, its engendering vitality,
which guarantees the stability and continuity of creation represented by the ankh cross and the
“was” scepter that accompanies it. This vignette implicitly carries the term of the cosmos from c.
175 of the BD., but not the end of the demiurge.
Papyrus of Khonsumes B - D. XXI [Wilkinson, 130]

86
 Figure 25. Dogmatic Protocol of the Aten
The word-Sui-Re- appears on the left cartouche.
The light as engendering shadow of the Aten.
It comes from Karnak – c.a. 1350 B.C. - Egyptian Museum of Turin.

87
Summotheism, which soon becomes a natural philosophy with deistic features.
The Second Protocol of the Aten abolishes Shu and all mediating hypostatic
hierarchy between the One-demiurge and the universe. Only one level or
dimension of reality will survive which is the light as a spacializing and
engendering plasma-shadow of the cosmos and of natural life, without the
mediation of intermediate cosmic entities (fig.14).
In the Amarna cosmos, the Ennead ceases to exist, and creation will not be
a hierarchical sequence of beings and objects ordered according to the amount
of ka energy of life, granted to each being or thing by the demiurge, and
conditioned by the modes of generation and transformation of the world by
emanation, attributed: 1) to sputum = cosmos and nature; 2) to sweat =
Netjeru, everything transnatural and hidden, after the theogony.
They are traditional religious principles that are already present in the PT, to
describe the universe and justify the existence of entities in a hidden dimension
and of the same nature as that of the monarch, in the visible cosmos. This
cosmotheology was completed in the CT, by including humanity = tears of the
demiurge, in the reform of the solar theology of the Amenemhat and Sesostris
of the Middle Ages, which extended to the Egyptian people the political-
religious proposal of Osirian transcendence, previously reserved for the ruling
elite.
Amarna is disruptive theology brings light to the fore, without the mediation
of a hidden dimension of the cosmos, and the visible becomes everything that
is real. There is only one cosmic dimension and hierarchy, the engendering light of the Aten,
and its expansion is the fullness of life, of immanence and of an explicit and unambiguously
causal monism. Amarna's theological speculation, fully executed in the Second
Didactic Protocol of the Aten, will become a natural philosophy, by liberating
the universe in all its aspects: cosmic-biological-temporal, from the hypostatic
sequence; hidden–visible; of the transnatural monism of traditional religion,
replaced by a causal sequence that unfolds exclusively at the level of light
visibility, an interpretation never seen before in Egyptian theology.
The cosmos, for the theologians of the Amarna reform, takes place in an
endless present, in the strict level of the immanent, which is simultaneous
spatializing light and space, framed in an eternity of repetitions of a temporality
close to the material [5 –Assmann, 155 ss.]. The beliefs of Amarna constitute
the first theologized natural philosophy of humanity, with definitely deistic features,
covered in religious language that does not contemplate a space for human
transcendence, traditionally centered on the survival of the deceased, in a
hidden Beyond [Piulats, 108 - 110].

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 6

The traditional Egyptian cosmo-religion distinguishes and affirms a difference

between the demiurge and the world: his hypostasis, which he generates-models-
dominates-extinguishes. He perceives the nature of the universe as a substantial
continuum, centered on the transformations of an engendering breath -Shu-,
which surrounds and permeates the entire cosmos and makes it real (Fig. 15).
This conception unfolds and expands in a movement of life from the invisible
or hidden to the visible or physical of the cosmos and its multiplicity. It is an

Figure 15. Traditional Heliopolitan cosmotheology.

Shu moist breath of the demiurge engenders and sustains the cosmos.
[Naydler, 64]

interpretation of the world definable, in our words, as a theistic-monistic

cosmovision of non-metaphysical transcendence.
On the human plane or level, survival in the Beyond is a divine donation and a
constant regeneration movement of the central immaterial elements of the deceased,
ba – ka – shuit - ren, a necessary condition for their transfiguration and passage
to the Duat -double heaven or cave-, in the hidden dimension of the cosmos
reserved for the divine and the transnatural [PT 132c 551 / 2- Allen, 8 n. 67 /
Naydler, c. 2]. For the traditional Egyptian, this complex cosmovision, distant
to ours, was a reality that guaranteed a transnatural transcendence in the hidden

89
Duat, the core of traditional Egyptian religiosity of all its historical epochs.In
traditional religion, the generation of the cosmos by engendering, engendering
modeling or emanation from the sekhem watery substance of the primordial
living being -The One [He + She] not-another [egyptian: without a second]-, empowered
theologians to attribute the totality of existences to the Creator, based on the
recognition of the total consubstantiality between the demiurge and his
creation.
This cosmovision allowed them to argue, theologically, a solid unity and
seamless interdependence between the demiurge and everything created: "then,
behind the Egyptians there is the lack of interest in absolute ontological separations... life
generating and manifesting itself in a diversity of forms. The interest of the Egyptians
focuses on the biological aspect of being. His their ontological categories are of a
biological kind. Referring to these structures -basically biological- they are the ones that
guided the Egyptians towards an ontological monism.” [Finnestad, 33]. In this
context, the cosmos is nothing other than part of the corporeality of the creator
demiurge from his self-engendering, mediating his watery person in the multiple
modes of existence and forms of life of the world derived from himself,
eloquently described in the story “Isis the magician and Re”:

The cunning of Isis

… Her senility made her mouth numb
and she let her saliva drip on to the ground.
Her saliva fell to the ground,
Isis picked it up with her hand along with the earth
with it she made-modeled a snake...
It did not move although there was life in it...
Brunner Traut, 162.

The water, nuu, as humidity or saliva, shu, of the Creator, is constituted, in

fact, in a summa-active-power-generator, -sekhem-wer, expressed in the ancient
epithet of Atum of the TP as neheb-kau "distributor of (ka) life”, a concept
homologous to the “giver of life-ka” di-Ankh (di-anx) of funerary offerings, at
least since the Archaic Period, before the PT, which will be replicated until the
Hellenic-Roman Period. The biologized cosmos personifies the watery and
germinating breath, Shu-Tefnut, as part of the body of the creator Atum, which
is expressed in the deliberate use of the inclusive preposition "in", as we see in
the following example:

Pre-existence of Atum
Atum, [when] I was alone in Nun,

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 when engendering (ms) did not exist yet,
Shu and his sister Tefnut were in me.
CT. 31/c or 330/34f
Morentz, c. VII/ VIII.

§
Traditional Egyptian thought speculates on natural and cosmic diversity as the
result of the will of the demiurge, to model the cosmos, generating a hollowness
of life, movement and dilation in the midst of the non-differentiation of Nun,
the primordial ocean. Expressed in another way: “The space is the result of an
expansion…then there are two types of limits… there is a space-limit and a spatialization-
limit” [Deleuze, 382 -384.]. Thus, the cosmos in the traditional religion is breath-
Shu transformed into simultaneous spatializing air and space. The air is Atum
itself unfolding, in its cosmogonic act, its androgynous nature in Shu-masculine
and Tefnut-feminine.
In this teleologically ordered universe, part of the corporeality and
consciousness of the Creator, sekhem-Bau, retains an exclusive sphere of
activity, the Duat, which he shares with transnatural entities. We can state it
claiming, in current terms, that: “There is nothing outside of God, nothing outside the
system, because the creatures will continue to be in Him: ‘We live and are in God’ (37).
Since things arise from God, they continue to be in Him in some way. However, for
Schelling this does not mean that it is A=Aa, because even if things are in God,
‘dependence does not annul subsistence’ (38), that is to say, things are in Him, but they
are self-subsistent... it can never be the emanation either, in that what is emanated is the
same [dasselbe] as that from which it has emanated and, therefore [it is] nothing of its
own or autonomous (39).” [Carrasco Conde, 99 and ss.].
The universe, in this context, is a hollow for the germination of life that is
always variable at the rhythm of the respiratory drive, which gives life to the
demiurge, within the cosmos surrounded by Nun. From this perception of
reality, we can conclude that the Egyptian cosmovision emphatically denies the
void, because the primordial living being expands -from the interior of Nun-, as
far as its active-power sekhem reaches, constituting and "flooding" the universe
with its engendering aqueous corporeity and, consequently, denies nothingness as
a cosmo-ontological possibility.

Atum as Absolute Creator

I am life
owner of the years, eternal living.
Atum the oldest, who begot-mesy by the power-sekhem of him,

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 produced Shu and Tefnut in Heliopolis,
I was One, I became in three.
Morentz, c. VII 196.

The universe, full of life, appears to Egyptian eyes as a unit -living ternary-, as
we have just seen in the previous example, articulated in two dimensions of the
cosmos: consubstantial, supportive and complementary; the visible and the
invisible or “hidden” [1- Englund, 25] noticeable in the following TP:

Heaven is at peace-hetep, earth is joyful,

they have heard that the king
will put the truth-Maat (mAa.t) instead of the falsehood-Isfet (Isf.t).
PT 1775, 1-Allen.

Oh King!
that you can put your power-sekhem
at the head of the two Enneads
like the two snakes
that are on your forehead, may they lift you up!
PT 902 a-c, 1-Allen.

For the Egyptian, in the interiority of the Creator, infinite possible existences
pre-exist in unity and without duplication. They are his inner thoughts, the neny
– “the inert ones” of the TPs that float in the “heart” -haty / ib- [3- Bilolo] of
the demiurge, in a state of inertia. They are authentic archetypal sub-existences
that were also the center of priestly theological reflection : “What the sages of
Heliopolis were particularly interested in was how the potential male-female duality
contained in the meta-state was hypostatized. As has been said, the origin is neutral” [1-
Englund, 11].
We can define these virtual existences as: "possible things and beings not-
now existing". They are naturally neutral virtualities, understanding by neutral
the original meaning inherited from Latin: "neuter", "neither one nor the
other", that is, androgynous pre-existences, in the non-manifested demiurge
and, also, existing after his manifestation as primordial in cosmogenesis.
Paradoxically, the “inert”, nenyu (nny.w) [1- Faulkner, 117] are also pre-existent
to the cosmos, situated in the heart of the Creator, even after his manifestation
in the theogony. They continue their archeo-existence, sleepy and androgynous
in their interiority, with their undifferentiated modes of pre-cosmic pre-
existence, beyond the existence of the universe and its natural and temporal
states.

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 Figure 16. The inert..
From the book of the Doors “2nd hour”.
[1-Englund, 12]

Virtual existences, nenyu [PT 318b, 319b-c; 1166; especially 2147 in 1-Allen],
when created, are thrown out of the interiority of the primordial, unfolding into
dual complementary counterparts (fig. 16). In the world they are hypostases of
the demiurge, without the latter experiencing substantial loss or weakening of
his nature by the creation process, given that the universe is consubstantial to
him and part of his aqueous corporeity -nuu-sekhem-. It is the same cosmos in
a direct or mediated way, observable in the following text:

Heliopolitan cosmogony
Atum spat me out of his mouth,
also my sister Tefnut.
She came out after me.
I was enveloped by the breath
that makes the throats live...
CT 344c-356b Bilolo,
Cosmotheology, 77.

As we have already seen, one of the methods used by Egyptian theology to

standardize the multiplicity of the cosmos is to reduce it to a synthesis of
complementary counterparts, considered naturally compatible, which refer to
the One. The cosmos, surrounded and immersed in Nun, sustains its existence
in a dynamic of cyclical mutations, of almost eternal duration, to rejoin the
demiurge at the end of time, [BD c. 175]. Thus: “what characterizes this system is
that there is no cut between the potential and the manifest. On the contrary, there is
complete identity between them. They are, one could say, the two sides of the same coin.
The emergence of the cosmos does not put an end to chaos but both coexist” [1- Englund,

93
25]. We appreciate such a conception in the following example of great
antiquity:

Life as movement
The sky is open, the earth is open...,
the movements of the abyss-Nun are revealed,
the movements of the sun-Re (Ra) are in circulation,
for That [Atum] that perseveres every day.
PT 1078, 1-Allen.

In this cosmological interpretation, the Creator engender, desing or sculp, and

models the universe with its aqueous and germinating substance: "pure water"
giving it "life", ka, and order, Tefnut-Maat, which ultimately are "divine breath",
Shu, of the Atum himself [PT 1039-40b, 1-Allen]. The demiurge extends sub-
existent, in the varied multiplicity of existences, dilating the cosmos -both visible
and hidden-, within the framework of legality and natural order -Maat- [2 -
Assmann, c. 1-4] established in the “first time” sep tepy (zp tpy) [Morentz c viii
220 and ss.] of creation, that differentiates it from the inert primordial ocean:
Self-generation of the demiurge
I am Shu
creature of Atum-Re,
when he came into existence.
I have not been modeled in a womb
nor was I formed by conception.
CT, 3f-40th Bilolo, 79.

The cosmos created as water of life

The waters of life that are in heaven come,
The waters that are on the earth come...
PT 2063. 1- Allen.

§
The origins of Atum -generator of the universe and life in Egyptian
cosmotheology-, are found in a consubstantial, dynamic and cyclical
interrelation that encompasses everything. The formula "first time", sep tepy
(zp tpy), has an emphatic meaning of cosmogonic beginning. It marks an original
moment of creational simultaneity of Atum, like: “All” and “at the same time”
[1- Faulkner, 190 / Gardiner, § 255.3], founder of the universe and the

94
beginning of a cycle of repetitions, which will only stop with the dissolution of
the cosmos itself [BD c. 175], a concept as old as Egyptian civilization [Morentz,
c. viii 220]. We find it, with this meaning, in archaic times, identifying the foreign
with the chaos that must be mastered, and it reminds us of the ritual of
sacrificing the enemy, with the precise meaning of an original action that must
be repeated periodically to avert chaos and cosmic mess:

Cosmogony and its repetition

First time-sep tepy (zp tpy),) hitting East.
Annals of Udimu - Morentz, 220.

The word: “first time”, Sep (zp), [1- Faulkner, 190] has the meaning of an
original, absolute beginning, with a sense of movement and continuous
repetitions [1- Englund, 25-27], which can be seen in the decree of restoration
of the temples of the traditional religion, promulgated by Tutankhamun, who
presents himself identified with the Creator and, therefore, substitutes him in
the role of orderer of the disturbed cosmos. In this case, Egypt's social and
political disorder of his time, assimilated with the evil to be mastered,
traditionally identified with foreign peoples [Morentz, c. vii. 157 / Wilson, 166
et ss]. In general terms, too, with humanity's rebellion against the Creator and,
by extension, against the ruler, the earthly image of him [Morentz, c. viii 158,
Note 18].

Restoration stele of Tutankhamun,

he has expelled
the evil-isfet of the two countries,
the truth-Maat is restored
and the lie-gereg (grg) that is abominable,
the country is like the first time-sep tepy.
Morentz, c. vii 158 n. 18.

This passage reminds us again of the ritual of the sacrifice of the enemy,
which has a precise sense of the original cosmogonic beginning of the “first
time”. That is, memory of a founding action that must be repeated periodically.
Therefore: “Everything that is experienced as similar or homologous to the sep-tepy
event is related and connected to the prototype, and not only to the prototype itself, but
also to any other reiteration of the same prototype” [1- Englund, 26]. Following this
principle, Tutankhamun assimilates his governmental act, restorer of traditional
temples, to the action of the demiurge in his first cosmogonic theogonic act, to

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the "first time" that describes the action of divine power founding the universe,
its order and cyclical regularity in Maat, and it is with whom Tutankhamun
identifies. In addition, the Maat is the principle that justifies identifying his
ruling acts with the Creator, since he is the repository of the earthly Maat and,
therefore, its earthly administrator, to the extent that it is the support of the
divine ka [Broadie and Macdonald, 124 and ss.]
It should be noted that Maat (m3a.t) [1- Faulkner, 89] is a polysemic word
[Romero, 23 ss.], center of a very difficult ontology-theology, which constitutes
the core of the Egyptian religious cosmovision in all its epochs and which, by
itself, poses a complex theodicy [2- Assmann, 29]. Primarily, Maat as "truth"
and "order", is the female aspect of Atum, pre-existent to the universe and also,
in cosmogony, manifests herself as part of it, from the first instant of creation
[Tobin, c. x]. Intrinsically, it represents the order established by the primordial
existent in the cosmos and nature, in society and the hidden dimension of
creation, an order that must be sustained and periodically restored as in its “first
time” [Morentz, c. vi, 159 n. 21]:

Maat order around the demiurge

Great is the Maat! durable and effective,
She has not been destroyed since the time of Osiris.
Morentz, c vi 159 n. 21.

We have to underline that Maat, Tefnut and Sekhmet are nothing more than
facets or transformations of the indivisible feminine aspect of the demiurge,
which exists before the formation of the cosmos. We see that Tefnut, too, is
called truth, meaning Maat itself:

The feminine of the demiurge

“Tefnut” is my living daughter
She is with her brother “Shu”.
He is called life (anx)
She is called truth (M3a.t)…
the one near my back,
the other near my belly…
2- Assmann, 54 b. 103.

Maat is always presented as the active, creative and organizing thought of the
cosmos of the primordial being. Maat is part of his persona, she is Atum
himself, or rather the eternal feminine aspect of his androgynous persona. She
is homologous and substantially complementary to Shu-life, the eternal
masculine aspect of the demiurge of hidden name, begetter of the universe.

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 The oldest word used to name and describe the demiurge in Heliopolis is
Atum ´Itmw [1- Faulkner, 18] whose root tem (tm) means “everything”
or also, “totality” [1- Faulkner, 225]. It derives from the verb “to be complete”
and, by extension, “universal totality”, “creator of everything” (km3 tm) or “Lord
of everything” (nb tm). Or simply, "All" [1- Faulkner, 255] with a meaning of
simultaneity, so that Atum-All (tm) is also "all at once" Sep (zp) or tem-sep. So
Atum is: “All at once”. Expressed in another way and in Egyptian terms:
“Everything” at the same “moment” = At (3.t) [Gardiner, 210]. At alludes
to the modes of existence of a Being, indefinitely and formless, which is
necessarily: One = He + She, or neutral = neither one, nor the other = androgynous. It
is the necessary ontological condition to fulfill the generation of the universe
and replicate it until its completion. Lately is the Kmeph, eg. Kematef (km 3.t=f)
“He complete with time or eternal moment” of Iamblichus that will equate a
“nous”, that who which thinks of itself, in the context of a neoplatonic dualistic
cosmovision [9- Assmann, 66].
In the creation, Maat establishes the differentiation of the demiurge with
primordial Nun, by her own presence and existence as feminine thought and
active order; truth and natural law of Atum, against the sterile and asexual inertia
of Nun [2- Assmann, 54 infra]. Atum-All personifies the capacity-heka to
modify, by itself, its state of rest and latency of eternal life, immersed in Nun, a
nature that we model below:

1. - In the theogony: Atum All–The One = He+She, that not-being is Everything ↔

that is-being Everything, simultaneously = Sep “at the same time” vg. At (3.t)
“moment” or All simultaneous at the same instant. Tefnut shows her ordaining and
beneficent female aspect [of her no va] as Maat, mutable to her violent version
as Sekhemet, female aspect of the active-potential sekhem of the demiurge,
necessary for the initiation of the transformations of her self-generation and
that of the universe. Sekhemet will then mutate into Maat, the benevolent
aspect of her; that is the natural law of the cosmos already organized... without
ceasing to be the first. We can conclude that Shu and Tefnut are the masculine-
feminine aspect that shows, in the cosmos, the androgynous nature of Atum.
They are pre-existing to creation and eternal as part of their archetypal
interiority, as seen in the following text:
Atum, when I was alone in Nun,
when creation was not yet,
Shu and his sister Tefnut were in me.
CT 31c or 330/34f, Morentz c vii.

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2.- In cosmogony: Atum All–The One = He + She, which is-being All ↔ that not-
being is All, simultaneously, or All = sep, “at the same time repeatedly simultaneous”, eg.
At (3.t), “moment”, or Everything at the same instant, initiator of the “beginning
of terrestrial times” (pAw.t tA) [1- Faulkner, 76]. The feminine, Maat,
provides order to the vital and active cosmic hollowness, which expands to the
rhythm of the fertile breath of the demiurge. Shu and Tefnut, which precede
the visible cosmos. Both coexist with Atum in the Duat, his “cavern”, the hiding
place in the cosmos of the One-All = Atum, primordial existent. Both, aspects
of the original, contain the germ of the engendering of heaven and earth, which
will be the visible universe, the second moment of the creative process
represented by the light of the daily cycle of each sunrise. Thus, Tefnut, the
active feminine of Atum, metamorphoses into “her” nonviolent active aspect
of the cosmos that is Maat, and that mutates into Tefnut, in the traditional
theogonic ternary, as we will see in the following text:

Says Atum
Life-Shu sleeps with Truth-Maat, my daughter,
the one inside me, the other around me.
I have placed myself among them,
his arms are around me...
2- Assmann, 54, b. 13.

Maat as "truth" and "natural legality", according to Egyptian thought, it existed

before creation as a virtual germ of order in Nun, and it is: non-chaos in chaos.
Or, more properly, it is: no-Nun in Nun, together with Shu, "life" and seminal
breath of life inside the demiurge, before the theogony and in the generation of
the physical universe. We can affirm that both are the description of the neutral
or androgynous aqueous sekhem, turned into the cosmogony, in fertilizing and
spacializing moist respiration of Atum. The divine breath is "life giver", neheb-
kau, and archetypal substantial corporeality of the demiurge with which it will
form, by pneumatic dilation, the hollowness of the cosmic bubble in his first
creative act. At this point, it becomes necessary to try to limit more the elusive
entity of the original Being.

What is Atum-demiurge inside him and how is his nature transmitted to

the cosmos in traditional religion?

It is important to mention that we use the indefinite pronoun, “It or The” -

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(in Spanish, the indefinite pronoun “Lo” derives from Latin “Quod”)-, to mean:
“neither one thing nor the other”, or “neither the one (masculine) nor the other
(fem.)”. Also “not-one (masc.) not-another (fem.)”, that is, neuter or androgynous.
The pronoun -It-, third person singular, in this case, denotes a particular
existential function of the subject, assuming the attribute of the existential verb,
in this case "neither/nor" which, associated with the genders, indicates that
both have an inclusive nature or consubstantial and non-disjunctive.
“It” is also neutral and it is appropriate to remember that neutral -Latin
"neuter"- originally means "the one who does not choose" or "he one of the two",
so it has an inclusive meaning, even in our language. Therefore, “It” will indicate
in this essay that the masculine and feminine genders are integrated into "The",
and that it will be used in an "androgynous or neutral" sense, to refer to this
characteristic of the demiurge as primordial what: The One: [He + She]. Thus, the
indeterminacy of the Egyptian Creator embodied in “his”/“its” integrating nature is pointed
out, manifested by the possession and dominance of the masculine-feminine as complementary
substantially homologous in the universe as in “his”/”its” ambiguous person.
In other words, the Creator is ambiguous, since he possesses both genders
simultaneously, which is characteristic of his archetypal nature, and he does not
change even though he/she sub-exists actively in creation. The ambiguity
reinforces its uniqueness, in such a way that “The One = Atum” or “The One
= Amun”, among other didactic protocols attributed to the hidden and
ineffable demiurge, alludes to the fact that it concentrates all kinds of forms of
life and things, nnyw, in its substantial interiority, nuu-skhm-wt, which is the nucleus
where his personal, ambiguous and indeterminate nature is manifested, in his
theo-cosmogonic act, appreciable in the following text:

Ambiguity and indeterminacy of the demiurge

“I am the disordered one that comes out of your his horizon,
I am the one who comes out with my power-sekhem,
I am the lord of the white crown, the triple Neheb kau…”
BD c. 179, 2-Faulkner.

Expressed in another way, the article “The” includes both genders. Thus,
"The One" = androgynous is Atum or Amun, which corresponds to: "... what
Spinoza calls ´substances that have only one single attribute´ or conversely: “the same
forms, or if you prefer, the same attributes (taking attribute in the simplest sense of "what
is attributed") are said of God and things”. [Deleuze, 484 and 485 Spinoza Ethics, book I
prop. XX]. Translated the "It", neutral and inclusive, to the theology of the

99
demiurge, described as Amun, we have, in the "spatialization" of the cosmos,
his natural attribute, included in his enigmatic didactic protocol as creator:
"Amun= [hidden < > ubiquitous] = its is indeterminate, eternal and ineffable existence”.
Thus, in this essay we use the pronoun: “The”, as indeterminate, in the non-
philosophical sense of an ineffable existence that transcends the cosmos, non-
metaphysically, and that has no other limit than its active-power, sekhem-ut,
and in eschatology it persists sine-die as Bau, vital, passive, eternal and
demiurgic consciousness, submerged and substantive inside the Nun-ocean.
The demiurge, like Atum or Amun, is a non-form, that is, multiform or more
properly indefinite, as it does not have clear and precise characteristics or
defined limits. He exists everywhere in the cosmos, simultaneously: “at the same
time”, eg. “Sep”, because he has the Heka-u ability to engender or model things
and existences, to destroy them and sub-exist, independently of the cosmos in
Nun [BD c. 175]. Amun (aImn) [1- Faulkner, 18] is definable as: “The
hidden”, revealed by its root, “to hide”, which also means “conceal” and as a noun:
“secret” (imnw) [1- Faulkner, 18]. Finally, Amun alludes to his transnatural nature
and, in particular, to his “secret-hidden-invisible” role, whose meaning dates back
to ancient times, since that is how it appears in the PT [PT 399, Allen, 73 / 1-
Faulkner, 18].
Amun, given his demiurgic activity, leads us to interpret that, due to his
original non-solar nature, he is a homologous representation of Atum, prior to
his heliopolitan solarization. In conclusion, Amun = “hidden”, indicates that
his nature is: to “exist” temporarily synchronously and simultaneously
everywhere in the cosmos, without being perceived. This determine its nature
of being "complete" which is the fullness of the domain of the kas -hekau-,
which is exclusive to it by its primordial nature. This theological conception
denies is all causality spatial and temporal for is the nature of a "complete",
"hidden" and "ineffable" demiurge in the cosmos, which is its extension
exclusive by primordial nature. It means his “completeness”, fullness of
possession of hekau. This theological conception denies all causality in the
nature of a "complete" demiurge, ´hidden´ in the cosmos, which is its extension.
The demiurge, Atum or Amun, in traditional theology, can be modeled what:

“The One: [He + She] = All non-other [eg. no-second], living in all beings and things, with
active substantivity in the cosmos, which does not cease to be One = “All” [Atum]-“Hidden”
[Amun], simultaneously, at all times and spaces”.

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 In the next example, the self-begotten Amun, having emerged from Nun, is
not only Atum himself, but also father-progenitor of the divinities Netjeru and
mother-progenitor of Re, who, in this case, is only the neutral and visible aspect of
itself, but his person hidden in the cosmos. He describes his self-begetting
without substantial loss or variation of his nature: he is "the whole" perfect.

The One self-begotten androgynous

Amun who emerged from Nun...
the progenitor of the Netjeru-divinities who gave birth to Re,
he completed himself as Atum.
1- Frankfort, 182, note 52.

The ineffable Creator under the aspect of Amun or Atum and manifested as
Re-Aten is: The One [He + She] not-other, in Egyptian terms, is without-second. It is
indeterminate because it includes in itself the masculine-feminine genders,
simultaneously, and thereby indicates his archetypal androgynous nature, the
foundation of his consubstantiality with the universe. In the Theban theological
speculation of the demiurge, this concept is systematized in the dogma of the
Kamutef: "Bull of his mother" [1- Frankfort, book I, part 1 - 2], which exposes
its indeterminacy, typical of a monistic cosmovision inherited from the PT,
thus: "The same forms (that) are said in the same sense, are attributed under the same
form to God and to things" [Deleuze, 486].
Amun is repeatedly the father-mother of the ruler and, by extension, of the
entire cosmos. In the next case, Ramses II recognizes Amun as his mother-father,
which is clearly seen in the following text, excerpted from the poem by the
scribe Pentaur, who recounts the battle of Kadesh, which reminds us of the
androgynous nature of Neith [Broze, 63-72].

Amun as father - mother

…Amun came when I called him.
He exclaimed very close to me
Go ahead! I am with you, I am your mother,
my hand is on you
…Amun my father was next to me,
all foreign countries are..
like straw before me...
Posener, c. vii.

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 7

The presence of Maat gives meaning to everything that exists, by introducing

the permanent and eternal order of divinity in each thing and existence of the
cosmos. Maat is, in this context, the necessary feminine component of the
eternal temporality of the demiurge. In our terms, she means that she enjoys
duration "without beginning and without end". Thus: “Maat, as that which brings
together the ordered whole from disorder, imbues the entire Egyptian cosmovision, and
by tracing its genealogy back to its starting point, we note that Order is implicit in any
possibility of theogonic extension from the Primary Source. …Order is always limited by
Disorder and it is interesting that, in Egyptian myth, it makes no sense that Disorder can
ultimately be overcome” [MacBride, part III, 182]. For these reasons, Maat is eternal
-At and djet- both intransitive, ordering foundation and legality of the transitive
cosmos -neheh- which, by its sole presence, substantively differentiates Atum -
“fresh water”- [1- Allen PT 841], which is eternal and transcendent personalized
self-awareness, connatural to the impersonal Nun, which is "dark water", dense
and without light. In other words, the magma Nun is the inert “no-order”,
spatially infinite and also temporally eternal, like the demiurge [MacBride, part
iii 182 ss.].
Maat is also the same primordial sechem of the demiurge Atum which, under
the feminine aspect of Sekhemet (sxm.t), is complementary to the masculine
seminal water. She is the benenet “seed” (bnn.t), feminine of the Creator,
manifesting the primordial androgynous nature of the demiurge. Maat is
interchangeable with Sekhemet, Tefnut and Hathor, maintaining an intimate
and simultaneous relationship with the pharaoh as -mother, sister, and wife- in
all times. This relationship should not attract our attention, since the monarch
is a ba of the demiurge, his son, and also his earthly masculine benen (bnn) seed
[1- Faulkner, 72]. Maat, as the feminine aspect of the Creator, is one of his pre-
cosmic Bau and, as such, transcends all neheh transformation and temporality
of the universe [Bergman, part 5]. She is the personification of the permanence of
the will and the desire of the demiurge to sustain the existence of the universe
and its self-generation.
“Evil amasses treasures,
it has never taken anything
when the end comes the Maat remains.”
Morentz c. vi, 159, n. 21.

Masculine - feminine nature of Atum

Life-Shu sleeps with Truth-Maat, my daughter.
The one inside me, the other around me,

102
 I have placed myself among them,
their arms are around me.
2- Assmann, 54.

If we look at the Maat (m3a.t) [1- Faulkner, 39], with a broader meaning than
the current one, its meaning is social “order” and, also, personal guidance:
“truth”, principles that act as a general social norm, directed to the common
good. It alludes to political-social rectitude [2- Assmann c. 2 and 5 / 2-
Englund], own interpretation of the Middle Kingdom [Morentz, c. iv 91/4-
Assmann, c. 3]. This theological disquisition is completed in the Imperial Age
and acquires a subtle personal and intimate meaning, bordering on subjectivity.
Maat becomes the private moral “virtue” par excellence that, in Egyptian terms
of that time, is expressed metaphorically as “inner beauty”: neferu (nfrw) of
those who follow and practice it [1- Faulkner, 115]. Said in Egyptian words,
virtue is: “living in Maat” [2-Assmann, 68–70 / Armijo Navarro-Reverte, 187].
The complex and polysemic resignification of Maat mentioned above acquires
importance, starting with the Amarna reform and, in the Ramesid Period and
later, it will increase [Karenga, c. 3].
The next text illustrates the center of an anthropological and theological
revolution that shows us the emergence of the personal private, -ka of ka-,
which goes from the heart of each man to the heart of the demiurge. Perhaps
it is the first documented example of subjectivity of humanity, which will be
transferred to all social classes in Egypt,

Oh King! begetter of Maat.

Place Maat within my heart.
That can make it rise (sar) towards your ka,
I know that you live from it.
2- Assmann, 111.

The intimate relationship between the One-demiurge, under the aspect of

Amon, "protector of the poor", Netjer nedj (nDs(w) [Gardiner, 136 /1- Faulkner,
125], with the common man, is paradigmatic and is clearly manifested in the
following pious invocation [Morentz, cv n. 124]:

"There is no refuge for the heart outside of Amun"

Morentz, c. V, 146 n. 121.

“…He is father and mother to those who put him in his heart…
He whom he leads does not err.”
4- Assmann, 55.

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 Belatedly, theology will conceive the thought of the Creator installed in the
heart of each person as an individual guide, sai (sai/w), with such force, that, in
the Low Period, this word will replace the traditional word ka [Queberguer,
Shai, c. 1, 44-66 / 6- Assmann part 3 c. 3], to form a synthesis that integrates
the life-giving active-energy of the personal ka, plus the guiding divine thought.
Thus, the sai will act as an inner guard in each person [Morentz c. ii, 98-106].
Since the Middle Ages, the ruler assumes the ordering function of Maat and,
in fact, substitutes it by taking the aspect of Atum [6.- Assmann, part. iii, c. 4].
This situation is justified, theologically, by considering the pharaoh the tangible
bodily support of Maat and the earthly container of the greatest extension and
concentration of divine ka, a situation that consecrates the monarch as the
earthly administrator of Maat [Romero, 33 and ss] and destroyer of evil isfet
(isf.t) [Gardiner, 209].

Amenemhat II as Atum
expel clutter (isf.t)
when he appears with the features of Atum himself.
Morentz, c. 6, 158 n. 17.

The function of Maat is also interchangeable, complementary and

consubstantial with concepts such as "food" and "life", which make it concrete
in social and moral terms [Morentz, c. vi]. These two notions describe the deep
nature of the primordial demiurge, as "food and offering of life", which he
offers himself as a gift. It is the substance of life that emanates from his
interiority, to provide humanity with its daily “sustenance”, as a “giver of life”
neheb-kau (fig. 17). Maat is the germ and sustainer of life, and it is what every
living being receives as food at the moment of its birth, to be placed, later, in
the celestial or terrestrial dimension of the cosmos, according to its kind of
existence: Netjeru or humanity to which it will belong according to its origin [1-
Frankfort, c 5].
In a restricted theological context, these attributes refer directly to the white
bread and beer or red wine that the living receive as food, distributed by the
ruler to the people and, also, donated to the deceased in the funerary ritual, as
an offering. Food of life to sustain the ka together with funerary and
maintenance rites [3- Assmann, part iv 81-92]. Food enables the deceased to
pass to the invisible and transnatural dimension of the universe, guaranteeing
their survival in the Duat and perpetual transit through celestial geography and

104
the underworld [Goyon, scene LXX – Proskynema 171 / 2- Assmann, 54], after
the judgment of justification, as can be seen in the following text:
102
Invocation of Hatshepsut
Amun, what you eat is Maat,
Your drink is Maat, your loaves are Maat
Your drink is Maat.
Morentz, c. vi 165 n. 40

Figure 17. Obelisks with grains inside, a symbol of the divine engendering and nourishing
light.Sen-nefer accompanied by the Tekenu – partially visible to his right-
The life potency of the deceased – Sennefer, 30.

We clearly verify the logic of the consubstantiality between foods in general

and liquids in particular. There is an evident homologous correspondence -in
Egyptian thought- between blood, red wine and water (fig. 18). Red wine or
beer is the sacred fluid with which the deceased was purified during
mummification, assimilated to the blood of Osiris sacrificed by Seth and, in
turn, both equated to the internal humors of the deceased:

Wake up, oh! My father...

I am your son Horus who loves you.
Has he drunk blood from you?

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 Has Seth drunk blood from you in the presence
of your two sisters?
PT 2127, 1-Allen.

Figure 18. Offerings of bread and beer . Figure 19. Lustral water for purification
[Moret, p. 23] and rebirth. [Sen-nefer, p. 30]

Red wine and red beer are homologous between them and, also, with the
creational "cold water", fertile corporeity of Atum, because it is water of
purification, refreshing and regenerating life after death. In addition, both are
homologous to the aroma of the deceased's mortuary bodily fluids, setj st(y)) [1-
Faulkner, 218 / Gardiner, 183], assimilated to the germinating water of the
Creator, essential for the transfiguration of the deceased (fig. 19). The Egyptian
cosmovision justified their interchangeability, due to their natural common
function of sustaining life in the Hereafter [Goyon, 162]:

Take this cold water of yours,

Have freshness with Horus!:
“He who comes from cold water”,
takes the emanation that comes from you.
PT 24, 1-Allen.

Proskynema of the deceased

Your water is within you!
Your water with which it floods you in within you!
your humors belong to you and what comes out of you,
it remains when you have washed-purified yourself...
Goyon, II 172.

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 The homology is so strong that we verify it in examples related to the
funerary and the divine, the most sacred of the Egyptian cosmovision. Thus,
the word “perfume”, setj (st(y)) [Gardiner, vol. ii, 212], is the same that
designates the divine presence, in the doctrine of the divine begetting of the
monarch in the royal wife.
The scents of myrrh and incense are also identified with the divine presence,
purification water, and the aromatic pungent, sweet smell of the embalmed
corpse [Morentz, c. ix]. Both use the same word and are equated with the divine
presence in a certain place or in something. By the sacred aroma, the divine
presence, invisible to people, can be identified, as can be seen in the passage
referring to the divine begetting of Hatshepsut by Amun in the person of the
royal wife, his mother:

Came Amun,
lord of the thrones of both countries…,
he found the queen resting in the palace.
She woke up because of the aroma-setj st(y)) of the Netjer
and she smiled at his majesty...
Brunner-Traut, 122.

§
Maat emanates from the very interiority of the divinity, representing the
natural, social and ethical order as truth and its activity unfolds -expands-, in
the interiority of the cosmos, underlying each created thing. It presents itself as
a substance of life, [Morentz, c. vi, 160 and ss. / 2- Assmann, c. 4], numinous
and sacred energy, which resides in the pharaoh, endowing him with a
supplementary power -sekhem-, supplementary transformed into multiple ka
that build the cosmos [Frankfort, c. 5 and 6].
The large amount of ka possessed by the ruler sustains him in his role as
chief and guide of the people, provider of food, moral guide and guarantor of
the non-metaphysical transcendence of each person. His office a teacher of life
and giver of funerary liturgies was based on the capacity -heka- that resided in
his person, received from the Creator to govern and administer Maat in earthly
reality [2- Assmann, c. 5 / Piulats, 57 ss.].

Ramses II
Hu is in your mouth,
Sia is in your heart,
your tongue is the jewel box of Maat,
on your lips a god-Netjer is seated.
Morentz c. vi 165.

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 Maat is a beginning and a presence of life that is experienced. It does not
refer, exclusively, to a legal body that must be respected by external coercion
and therefore, also, to the sacred hierarchy that governs Egypt. Maat is a way
of life and the ideal of a just state between the cosmos, the society and the
humanity. In other words, “to live correctly”, anj em maau (anx m m3aw) [1-
Faulkner, 89], is to reach a state of subjective, virtuous “beauty” [2- Englund,
82-83]. In Egyptian words: neferu (nfrw) [1- Faulkner, 115] is intimacy with
the demiurge for the one who practices Maat. This intimate relationship marks
the beginning of Egyptian subjectivity [2- Assmann, Maat, 68-72].

Exhortation
"I make you know the Maat in your heart,
May you do what is right in you!”
Morentz, c. vi 168.

I pray to Ra
“May you give the Maat to my heart (ib.j)
to make her climb towards your ka...”
Morentz, c. vi, 168.

The internalization of the divinity in the common man, which occurred in

the Imperial Age, raises the possibility of the existence of the divine order -
Maat- in the heart of each person. Then, it will be the same demiurge as Sia, -
wisdom and numinous knowledge-, [2.- Assmann, 52-55] who will guide the
faithful from his heart and, later, as sai -the divine will reside in the heart-
[Queberguer c. iii / Morentz, c. iv 103-106] will compete with the pharaoh as
mediator between man and the divine. From the beginning of Egyptian
subjectivity, beliefs about the divine function of royalty will gradually enter in
crisis, which will be defined at the end of the New Kingdom, with the brief
government of the oracle of Amun, which replaces for about twenty years the
monarchical institution.
After this traumatic political and religious experience, the monarchy
fragments, and its attributes, are divided between the rulers of Tanis and the
high priests of Amun of Thebes, who assume fragments of their divine powers
in the local Theban sphere. This new theological anthropology marks the
beginning of a religious revolution, which will question the divine monarchy, in
a process that will not stop until the Roman Age. The radical nature of this
thought made the Maat the ritual offering par excellence of the monarch to the
Creator, par excellence:

108
 Hatsheptsut
I offered Maat that Re loves.
I know that he lives from her, he is my bread and I drink the dew from him.
am I not one with him?
Morentz, c. vi 165 n. 40.

We find the demiurge as absolute power, clearly expressed, in the locutions:

“the first time” (m sp tpj), “after the first time” (m sp tpj),), “like the first time” (Dr sp tpj),)
they serve for each of the states and events that concern creation and origins” [Morentz,
c viii, 220], among other theological forms, confer a total pre-eminence on the
universe and consecrate it as: The One, "endowed with life," hence "life-giver"
through the ruler. To the living, through crops and food given as gifts from the
king, and to the dead, through rites and funerary offerings since ancient times
[Gardiner, Excursus B].
The all-encompassing and omnipresent nature of the Creator is multifaceted.
One of the most significant is that the universe is part of its aqueous corporality,
which is permeated in everything that exists, mutated as: ka energy or vital plasma,
understanding by this, the living that underlies particularized in the “physis”, lifelike, of the
cosmos, and not-another meaning or thing. This substance of life ka, when separated
from the interiority of the demiurge as Ennead or Ogdoad, generates a space
of order and life that is cosmos in the interiority of Nun. This vital space, after
solidifying as heaven /earth [1- Frankfort, c. 2], makes all existences emerge,
the demiurge maintains his presence in the ka that constitute them, emanating
from his corporeality in a sequence of hypostatic mutations without substantial
and nor ontological rupture [Piulats, 82 and ss.].

Theogony - Cosmogony
Amun - Re, he who begat-benen (bnn) a place-ben (bn)
in the primordial Nun-ocean,
when the seed-benet (bnn.t) grew in the first time,
he grew-benben (bnbn) in his name of “seed-Benenet” (Bnn.t)
Frankfort, c. 13 note. 26, 27 and 28.

This theogonic-cosmic process is expressed in a very original play on words

where the resource of homophony is used between words such as “beget”
benen (Bnn) [1- Faulkner, 72] and “seed” benenet (bnn.t), to denote the sense of
fertile seminality of the androgynous demiurge, comparable to the pure and

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refreshing water of the PT (fig. 2). We verify this conception in an archaic
Theban text, -the precedent and parallel of the PT-, where Atum is replaced by
Amon, whose uranic natures, in this particular case, are homologous and
interchangeable [1- Frankfort, c. 13, note 26, 27 and 28].
The nature of the divine presence in Nun is characterized by its eternal
“latency” in Nun, and in the cosmos it is an underlying existence in the
multiplicity of life inserted in the world [3- Bilolo, points 2 and 3]. It is visualized
by the Egyptians in the cycles of nature, recognized as signs of the plenitude of
power of a hidden omnipotent Creator and of totalizing presence. In this
context, the demiurge as First-Existing -sep tepy- [Morentz, c. viii 237 ss.], is
the one who sustains and regenerates, with its vital super abundance, the
articulation of the two complementary ambits of the Egyptian universe: the
"visible" and the "hidden" or, if you want in our terms, the natural and the non-
metaphysical transnatural.

Hymn to Ptah
Hail to you, great and ancient,
Ta-Tenen, Great God of the first time-sep tepy,
that you have formed-begotten mankind
and modeled the gods-netjeru.
First that moved creation,
from whom was born all that has become,
that made heaven from his heart raising Shu
who founded the earth, surrounded it with Nun and the sea
that you have made the lower heaven and given rest to the dead
and Re to comfort them.
lord of mutations-neheh, lord of duration-djet
lord of life that makes throats breathe,
that you support each one with your food
subjected to the duration of life by your order.
Lord of mutations-neheh
to whom the djet-duration is subject to him.
Morentz, c. viii, 237-238.

The universe, for the Egyptian, is a unit that has two inseparable
complementary aspects, because they are consubstantial: the visible and the
hidden. Also, the terrestrial and the celestial or, more precisely, the cosmos as
a double watery sky, already documented from the PT [2-Allen, 10-12]. This
cosmovision is nothing more than the perception of the universe as a substantial-
continuum without ontological rupture. The universe, for this culture, is in a

110
permanent movement of a teleological nature, due to the circulation of its
constitutive aqueous substance, which constantly metamorphoses into ka of ka,
assuming "multitude of forms" that re-construct and update the cosmos daily.
These modes and forms of existence go from the substantially ethereal-hidden
to the physical-visible, in a continuous transit of kau energy, transformed into
millions of ka contained in beings and created things, according to a previous
plan, sejer (sxr), [1- Faulkner, 207] of the demiurge, similar to Genesis 1° and
ss.

Hymn of the transformations of Re

..I did everything I wanted being One,
I conceive projects-sejeru in my heart,
I created another mode of existence,
and the modes of existence derived
of the Existing were multitudes...
3- Bilolo, 2 n. 5.

The ontological and cosmological unity founded on a single kind of

substance is attributed to the fertile creative activity of the primordial existent.
It can be modeled in a synthetic sequence of gradual mutations, expressed
metaphorically in the PT as "life-giving water", "life-giver" or "Great Flood",
schematizable in the aqueous sequence: nuu → sekhemu → kau → individual
kas, present in all existences and things in the cosmos, and also because it is
part of their nature [2- Allen, 11].

Summoning Atum
May you become an aju-spirit in the Duat…
(and) the Great Flood that is in the sky.
Who has done this for you?
Say the netjeru who serve Atum.
PT 1172-73, 1-Allen.

The primordial water of the demiurge, seminal plasma of life, transformed

into life force-kau (fig. 26), moves to the terrestrial sphere in a permanent
circulation of life-giving food resources, distributed as gifts by the pharaoh to
the living and deceased. [1- Frankfort, part. iv]. This ontological, cosmological
and anthropological conception forms an authentic consubstantial relationship
between the demiurge, the cosmos and the pharaoh: the latter being the physical
support of the divine ka force, and the receptacle of the ka of the royal ancestors

111
in the terrestrial sphere [Giedeon, 342-356]. This affirmation is observed in a
laudatory hymn to Ramses II, an authentic cosmogony that attributes to the
ruler the role of Creator incarnate, where he assumes a position that far exceeds
being a simple carnal support of the demiurge [7- Assmann, 497-498].

Praise to Ramses II
We have come to you
lord of heaven, lord of earth,
Lord of the duration of life […]
[…] that gives the breath [of life] to each nose.
Pillar of heaven, beam of earth.
The judge who maintains order on both shores,
lord of foods rich in cereals.
When you step on the earth the harvests appear.
He who makes the great, who makes the poor,
whose words create food.
7 – Assmann, Praise to Ramses II.

In this context, the pharaoh was the most important among the various
earthly manifestations of the ineffable demiurge. From Archaic times, his body
was also the physical support of a ba of the demiurge [Zabkar, c. ii / PT 1205,
1 -Allen] lodged in his person. Therefore, he endowed it with a supplementary
"nature and numinous consciousness" [Otto, c. 1], which complemented the
abundant life energy multiplied by the accumulation of kas, which clearly
differentiated it from humanity.
For the Egyptians, the greater possession of ka as the presence of a ba of the
demiurge, in the person of the ruler, gave him a special sacredness -djeseryt-
[Hoffmeier, intro.]; heka power [Piulats, 61 and ss.] and divine wisdom -sia- [1-
Frankfort, c. 1]; supplementary to his human nature. These divine elements
granted him the dominion of the divine sekhem [Gardiner, sign S42], with
which he governs Egypt and who will accompany him along with his ba, in the
Hereafter.
These three principles establish the profound anthropological difference
between the monarch and humanity, [Bergman, part 2] equating it to the
Netjeru, differentiation made visible by the use of the sekhem scepter as ruler
(fig. 20):

The pharaoh as Atum

I strike with my scepter sekhem,

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 I rule with my stick...
Pour cold water! Oh earth!...
You two enneads,
I am a Ba who will pass among you Netjeru.
PT 1204 and 1205, 1-Allen.

The ruler was the most important earthly epiphany of the demiurge. In
Egyptian words, he was a “creation repeater,” ujem-nysut (wxm-nyswt) [1-
Faulkner, 57 / Gardiner sec. F25] of the demiurge in the visible dimension of
the cosmos. This existential position gave him the authority to mediate between
the hidden divine realm and humanity, thus justifying his status as divine ruler
on earth and master of cosmic rites and liturgies of passage to the Beyond.
The centrality of the divine sekhem and its dominance as an instrument of
supremacy over the natural and social cosmos is transparently observed in the
priestly ritual of the Middle Ages that we present below:

The divine sekhem in the monarch

…My power-sechem is behind me,
the ka.ut [feminine] are at my feet,
The Netjeru are above my head,
and my Ba has seen by the flame of him…
I am the one who is equipped with Aj ((Ax)…
I have appeared as Netjer among the others [Netjeru]
I judge with the one whose name is Hidden [Amun]…
CT, Piulats, 66.

The pharaoh was the earthly steward of the divine sechem, thus conceived
as the tangible epiphany of the demiurge, eg. Pharaoh Sekhemkhet (Sxm-X.t) "the
divine power in his body." Also as the son of him begotten by Ra, eg. Ramses
II (Ramssw) “Ra begot him” or, with a more complex theological language,
Tutankhamun with the meaning of “cult image” or “living support” tut (tw.t))
[1- Faulkner, 252], who was seen as the “Living Image of Amun”, the hidden
demiurge, begetter of the cosmos, installed in the body of the pharaoh, among
other particular theological forms, constantly reaffirmed in royal titles.
Theology gave an account of the special and intimate relationship of the
monarch with the primordial One, hidden from the eyes of humanity, but
indirectly made visible in the ruler [Aufère].

113
 Figure 20. Sekhem sceptres.
Thutmose III with ruler's scepter and Tutankhamun's scepter.
[Wilkinson, 184]

The divinity of the monarch and his relationship with the sacred were
expressed in texts of all kinds, with the name: "his body" or "body of the god",
hem.ef (Hm=f) that we commonly translate as "his majesty”, blurring its sacred
significance [Morentz, c. ii, 63]. The intermediate nature, divine and human of
the ruler, made him an indispensable mediator between the two dimensions of
the universe, since his privileged position equates him to the superhuman
Netjeru engendered, like the monarch himself, from the sweat of the demiurge.
In this sacred context, the monarch was considered, according to theological
variants, "flesh of flesh", "breath of breath", "mirror image" of the demiurge
and, due to this prominent position, receives his breath of life, Shu, directly
from the Creator himself, rightly defined by Plutarch, as Pneuma Theon [1-
Frankfort, 182 note 56]:

Proclamation of the deceased pharaoh

My sweat is the sweat of Horus,
my scent is the scent of Horus.
To heaven! To heaven! among the Netjeru...
I am destined for heaven among the Netjeru…
PT 1113-14, 1-Allen.

Amun to Amenophis III

my beloved son,
receive my likeness [breath-Shu] on your nose…
1- Frankfort, 182 no. 53.

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 For all the above, we observe that the ineffable Creator appears, at least since
the Archaic Era, mediated in the cosmos as Atum: The One [He + She] =
Everything [without-second]. It is the existence of an elusive being to show himself
to the living and, sometimes, also to the Netjeru, and who remains hidden in
his cave in the Duat. His nature corresponds to a Living-Eternal: transnatural,
universal, absolute; distinctively ineffable and specifically not-other [1-
Frankfort, c. xiii in fine]. His person is never fully exposed: only partially with
images or words. He can be known by his indirect appearances, ways or
qualities, like the ones we have seen so far and like the ones the following text
shows us:

Summoning Atum
Your name is "lord of all"-neb-er-djer,
your father's name, "You are great",
your mother's name, "Peace",
what you give birth is “the path of dawn”.
PT 1434, 1-Allen.

Faced with this theologically personalized power, limitless and ineffable

active-power -sekhem wer-, dominator of nature, space and time, man's response
is the unconditional willingness to following and serene contemplation of Maat,
intimate aspect of the demiurge. Maat will progressively replace the monarch as
mediator between humanity and the hidden cosmos, as we will see in two texts
with more than a thousand years of difference between them, the first of the
monarch and the second, extended to the common man:

Says the monarch

I have come to you… O Lord of all!-neb-er-djer,
I will row you, I will escort you,
I will love you with my body
I will love you with my heart.
PT 1442, 1-Allen.

I have put the today and tomorrow

in the hands of Amun,
I have been found safe, I fulfilled my plans-sejer.
Beautiful is my permanence
until my time is up,
So I made myself entirely his
He is my post to which I tie my boat…
I have become from Amun and found the good.
4- Assmann, 64.

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 The totalizing nature of the demiurge is not exhausted in the bio-natural
aspects that we have seen. The absolute, as an ineffable entity, also "expands"
to the rhythm of its breath, generating cosmic space with its own forms and
appearances in nature. One of them is the ability to "multilocation", which is
the ability to exist and manifest in several places simultaneously. The ineffable
demiurge under the theological aspect of Amun, "The hidden", indicates his
invisibility and, furthermore, that he is everywhere simultaneously, but can be
perceived indirectly in certain natural phenomena, such as the life-giving air and
the hurricane wind:

Amun
He lives by what he breathes -Shu builds
...until the end of the sky circuit.
he penetrates all the trees and shakes their branches…
he provokes the fury of the sky and the turmoil of the sea,
They calm down when he calms down.
One hears his voice [wind] but does not see him,
he makes all throats breathe…
1- Frankfort, 183 no. 58.

§
The domain of time is the maximum expression of power of the demiurge,
in a monistic context. This power is actively manifested in the will of
permanence of the universe, which is its own [Ferrater Mora, 125]: Thus, the
duration of the cosmos as the persistence of the precarious cosmogony, transports within itself
the temporality and finitude that underlies in everything created. This necessarily implies
the capacity of the demiurge to dispose of all the existences of the universe,
from its creation to its mode of extinction, including the cosmos.
In Egyptian religious thought, the capacity of the demiurge to grant ka,
existence to the cosmos and to humanity, implies by derivation the capacity and
the decision of the beginning, modification and extinction of all types of
existence at will, which is expressed with the word hekau (Hk3.w) [1-Faulkner,
154]. This word written with the sign ka, life force or energy plus a twisted rope
[Gardiner, sec. V28], refers to hekau in its primary meaning: “to knot the kas”,
which is the domain of reality and its duration [Piulats, 57-70].
Atum in Heliopolitan theology, as neheb-kau "distributor of ka-life", is the
one who possesses the fullness of heka [Gardiner, 172], which is the capacity-
hekau to grant or knot the life of each thing and each living being and is the
one who suppresses or lengthens at will the duration of the time of the cosmos
and of everything that exists in it [BD, c. 175, 2-Faulkner]. The ability

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to generate life and suppress it represents the permanent will of the primordial
Being to sustain creation, according to the state of perfection in its first moment
of existence.

Figure 21. Divine breath as Shu-tekenu sustaining creation.

The demiurge Atum intervening in creation.
[Naydler, 72]

In some cases Shu is associated with the enigmatic tekenu of the archaic
funerary ritual [1- Frankfort, c. 5, no. 51, 53,55]. In the previous vignette, the
tekenu is integrated into Shu, the breath of Atum, as its "double", represented
by the shedshed "bulge" (SdSd) [1- Faulkner, 234 and ZÄS 47, 88] (fig. 21) of
the archaic divinity banners, placed on his head , and is the figure of the
divine breath, re-generating, luminous and sustainer of the world.
The shedshed is associated with the divine radiance figured in the speed of
light or lightning. It is translated by Caminos and others as: “move swiftly
upwards” [Jacq, p. 355, note 2880]. His association with the creator, his breath
–shu- and the monarch from the PT is more than eloquent, noticeable in the
following texts, referring to the king: “…you shine (SdSd=k) as a single star in
the center of the sky…” [1 –Allen, PT 1048] and also, more precisely: “You
move (SdSd=k) with the speed of lightning and cast a blazing flash…”, identified
with a gold star and the celestial The One-All [Jacq, 292 § 179 and note 2881-
85]. The tekenu was associated, since ancient time, with the monarch's placenta
as its transnatural double, in a scheme that replicates, in parallel, the previously
interpreted relationship of the demiurge with Shu-tekenu-shedshed, and
reaffirms his filial relationship and his specular nature with the demiurge and
therefore his celestial destiny [PT 800 and 1036, 1-Allen].

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 Cosmogony implies the beginning of transformations (xpr.w). This is,
basically, moving. It implies the exit from the passivity of the demiurge to
initiate the movement that originates time -neheh-, which is, strictly speaking:
the duration of all individualities, beings or things, and the permanence -djet-
of the universe until its end [Ferrater Mora, 126 and ss.]. This complex
temporality, not at all abstract, established by the demiurge, is transitive and
naturally imperfect, introducing finitude into the cosmos and the limit to the
duration of everything created, installing transience within creation. The
Creator introduces into the cosmos a quota of duration -neheh-, which is the
inherent temporality of all creation, becoming an authentic global destiny -sai-
(s3(i/w), [Queberguer, c. iii, 122-130] unavoidable for all created things,
existences and also the universe. In the Late Period, sai will be an epithet and a
synonym for neheb-kau, [Quaegebeur, 95].

...Atum,
…before heaven existed
before the earth existed,
before humanity existed,
before the Netjeru were born,
before death existed...
PT 1466, 1-Allen.

In other words, the traditional Egyptian perception of destiny refers to a

transitive amount of time or, rather, a restricted span of “duration” [Ferrater
Mora, 125] of existence-life, in Egyptian sai (s3(i/w)) [1- Faulkner, 223], donated
by the demiurge to everything created. This temporality does not necessarily
imply a determinism about human decisions or actions [Morentz, c iv].
In this context, humanity is destined, from its birth, and a death to: a “pass
into the ka”, at the moment of completing the duration [Ferrater Mora, 125] of
time assigned to each person or thing, which cannot know the moment of its
culmination. This existential dependency is shown to us, in depth, by religious
and wisdom literature:
Great Hymn of Amun of Leiden
Amon saves from fate (sai.t) every time he wishes...
Morentz, c. IV 104.

Voyage from Uenamun to Byblos

I have sent my messengers to Egypt to ask
to Amun fifty years of supplement to my destiny - time (sai.t)
Morentz, c. IV 105.

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 Faced with the negative of the ineluctable finitude of life, sai, which is
quantity-duration of life time destined for each person, for the Egyptian, a
positive personal substantivity arises: the ba, which enables hope in
transcendence, as post-mortem survival. The Egyptian transcendence,
immersed in a monistic cosmovision, is a-metaphysical and consists of the
passage from the terrestrial temporality neheh, to the transnatural djet and not-
another thing. It is post-mortem permanence through the transformations of
the ba, justified in the cosmic dimension: upper-celestial and lower-chthonic,
preceded in life by a path of perfection: “living in Maat”, [2- Englund, point 2
/ 2- Assmann, c. 3].
Maat as a way of life
“I was glad to say Maat
because, I knew that it is useful to those who practice it”.
Morentz, c.VI 168.

It is important to note that, in a monistic cosmovision, the principles of

individuation are the name [Bongioanni and Tosi, c. iv] and, mainly, the
differentiation centered on the “character”, ked (qd) [1- Faulkner, 240], or the
“determination” of oneself. By extension, it is the "disposition" and, in
particular, the “reputation” as a “virtuous person”, neb ked (nb qd). Since
Ancient Times, the ked constitutes the foundation of a "successful" social path
on earth and the guarantee of the passage to the hidden dimension of the
cosmos. This thought underlies the literature of wisdom, and justifies the
confrontation of the wise or silent person with the foolish or impetuous. [2-
Englund, 81 and ss.].
The word ked is a very specific concept of Egyptian anthropology that shows
the personal disposition, "firm of heart", that, translated into social terms,
indicates their position of prestige won or lost by their own will, choice or social
behavior [Romero, 44 and ss.]. Also -ked- is the component that differentiates
men from each other by the "way of being", which shapes the personality by
individualizing it, and forming a "reputation" that will be a guarantee of passage
to the Beyond, in the Osirian judgment.
In short, sai and ked are the anthropological qualities that mark the human
condition in the Egyptian cosmovision: it is the free will between Maat and
Isfet, and man is obliged to choose one of them as a way of life. Both are
represented, in the Egyptian wisdom literature of all times, by the two modes of
behavior in life: "One serene and the other irritable, in the last of the instructions, papyrus
Insinger, there are two new denominations of this duality, the wise and the fool or the

119
man of God and the Fool.” [2-Englund, 81]. Choosing one of these paths leads to
justification [3- Assmann, iii. 3] in the Double Hall of Maat, to be proclaimed
“justified”, maa-jeru, (ma3 – xrw) [1- Faulkner, 89] and thus avoid the second
death, obtain the crown of victory over death and achieve survival with the
Creator, in the hidden dimension of the cosmos [BD c 19 and 64] (cover fig.).

Victory Crown Formula

Your father Atum girded your forehead
with this beautiful Crown of Victory,
He lives forever! as live the souls-bau
of the Netjeru…
BD c. 19, 2- Barguet, 67.

§
The temporality of the universe and its existence, quasi-eternal, is expressed
with the word djet (D.t) [1- Faulkner, 270] “permanence of mutations”.
Egyptian thought defines it as: neb-er-djer "lord of all" [1- Faulkner, 112], with
the sense of "domain-permanence until the end [of creation]", and with the
precise meaning of "final limit of something”, djer-a (Dr-a(wy)) [1- Faulkner,
274].
This phrase points out the aspect of temporary, quasi-eternal but finite
“duration” of the mutations –hepru- of the cosmos originated and sustained by
the demiurge. Thus, its complement neheh (nHH) [1- Faulkner, 119], is -
"permanence of mutations in cyclic movement"- that transports and expands both past and
future, and djet its complement is -"permanence of the completed cyclic" - which contains
a recursive present perfect that concentrates all preterity and all futurity and therefore finalized
even without having happened, both temporal aspects emanating from Atum,
the "complete" (tm).
Atum, the eternal living being as active-demiurge, possesses all the phases
that make up temporality: -past-present-future- simultaneously. The space-time
synchronicity of it is the deep meaning of the name Atum: “All”-Tm-, indicating
that it is "completeness" and, therefore, the totality itself.
Neheh and djet are “the times of the universe” and the result of the first
breath of the demiurge when conceiving the cosmos, they are the “primitive
times of the cosmos” in devoloping (pAw.ty tp.t) [1- Faulkner, 76]. We can
clearly observe these two aspects of cosmic time, consubstantially assembled, in
the following text:

Life-ankh in motion/metamorphosis-neheh
120
 consummated (hep /hj) upon completion-djet.

anx r nHH
xp / h(i) r D.t
Gardiner, p. 149 /Sethe, 80, sec. 95c.

Both temporary forms are articulators of the universe and also limited in their
duration for being part of the same cosmos, announcing with their presence the
end of creation, evident in the term hep o h(j), which has a sense of "closed
duration" [ Westendorf, 136-46].
Says Atum
I will suppress the ancients and destroy all that I have made,
and the earth will be the wave again, in its original state...
BD c. 175, 2- Faulkner.

The interpretation of neheh and djet as facets of divine time and articulator
of the cosmos is so firm that, in traditional Heliopolitan theology, they often
appear integrated into a third term that synthesizes them: “many” or, better,
“million” heh (HH) of the PT [1- Faulkner, 149 / Gardiner, sig. C11]; quasi-
eternal but finite amount of time. It is a homophonous variant of neheh that
appears granting temporal duration and life to the cosmos, since heh is the same
Shu, engendering breath of Atum, sometimes represented iconographically as
Shu-Heh (fig. 22 and 23).

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Figure 22. Heliopolitan cosmic temporality Figure 23. Amarnian cosmic temporality
Heh like Shu breath -kau- of Atum. Heh as engendering and excluding light-sun
Holds and replicates creation. Holds and replicates creation.
Tomb of Seti I° - Western Thebes. Ceremonial chair of Tutankhamun – D.
Din. XIX Din. XVIII.
[Wilkinson, 40]

The main attribute of djet temporality and, by extension, neheh, consists in

being the temporal limit of the cosmos and its multiplicity, arising from the
mutations of the Creator, to which he imprints transitivity, duration, and finitude
with his creational act [fig. 24]. Consequently, the Netjeru will also become
extinct, for the simple fact that they are part and result of the multiplicity of the
cosmogony and its transitivity; they have foundation outside of them, in the
Creator. In other words, they are not prior to creation, but they are cosmic
multiplicity, a desired derivation of Atum-The-One, their begetter, and this is
what differentiates them from the time-instant-eternity at (3.t) of the demiurge.
Such was the awareness that the Egyptians had of the finitude of the universe
and the cosmic nature of the Netjeru, the cosmos itself, that eschatology was
represented with cenotaphs dedicated to the Enneads, Theban in Medinet
Habu and Heliopolitan in Edfu [Morentz, c. ii 49 / Hornung, 196].
From an ontological perspective, the creation and its duration are a lapse of
the proto-time of the demiurge who, in the cosmogony, shows his omnipotence
and infinity. Then, the duration of the universe is only a fragment of that proto-
time, or "moment-eternity" (3.t) of the demiurge, which originates the cosmos
with its corporeal substance, and imprints limited duration expressed by neheh
and djet on it. Hornung defines the duration of the universe with an eloquent
phrase:... “.the universe is a [momentary] episode between two abysses” [Hornung in
Bilolo, n. 322]. Assmann gives it a particular bias by stating that the universe, for
the Egyptian vision of the world, is: "...an interval of multiplicity, of differentiation,
between the One and the One" of the eternity of the hidden and ineffable Creator
[Assmann in Bilolo, b. 323].
The concept of “duration” of the universe as a fragment or “instant” of an
“eternal-moment”, or an “interval” of time, also eternal, referred to by Hornung
and Assmann, in Egyptian, is expressed with the word -at- “moment- eternity”,
which establishes the difference between the a-natural reality of the eternity of
the One-demiurge-All and that of the created transitive world, for the Egyptians
“millions of years” expressed in the pair neheh–djet.

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 Eternity as temporality in this cosmovision is the infinite "permanence" of
an ineffable living being that underlies the universe, in things and beings
understood as cosmos, emanating from itself, which it dominates and
encompasses because of its non-finitude. The duration of the demiurge is of an
existence-that-is without beginning or end, so that eternity would be its very duration, in the
sense of a persistence of its nature and of its archetypal state without natural conditioning, -
past-future- , inside the Nun-ocean and the cosmos simultaneously.
In this context, the cyclical is also the negation of every beginning and every
end of the One-All-Atum, and it is the affirmation of the eternity of an active
living demiurge, even before his becoming, as sub-existent in the cosmos and
also, to its subsequent substantive existence in Nun, upon returning to its
ground state. Atum is a model of absolute and eternal divinity in the primordial
Nun-ocean, which defines itself as: “he who remains” himself [MacBride, c. 15]
with a meaning analogous to the biblical definition of God in Exodus, c. iii, 14.

Self Definition of Atum

Look! I am the one who began in the waters-Nun,
the tide recedes from me.
Behold!, I am the one who remains [itself]...
CT 714, Piulats, 83.

The temporality of creation is only a fragment of “moment” –at (3.t), or

“eternal-moment” of the demiurge, viewed from the finitude of creation. But
from the perspective of the demiurge -at- (3.t) “moment” [Gardiner, s. F 3 210]
is intransitive because it is simultaneous, eg. “at the same time”, zep. It is the
nature of a living being that is, "Always" or "Everything" = The One [He + She] =
Atum, possessor of a perfect and perennial present, without past or future, which we can define
as: Atum = Everything > [at a time (zep) = moment (at) > [neheh + djet]]. This
existential reality of the Creator is expressed, synthetically, in Egyptian terms,
in the following text: Look! I am the one who remains (himself) [CT 714 Piulats,
83] marking the limit of the life energy of the kas in the world, of the world
itself and its end, as they all belong to a moment after the self-generation of the
eternal living being and that, according to Egyptian thought, exists by its sole
desire and will.
Primordial time, sub-existent in the One–demiurge, can be seen as the nucleus
of an eternal and ineffable living being, submerged in the Nun: The absolute
One, “Secondless”, which remains (itself). This Existing One, in his sleepy
solitude, expresses the perfection of unity and: “...says that he himself existed
before creation and invariably uses the expression “not-yet” when speaking of that time,
which characterizes chaos and the formless, “neither heaven nor earth were (not) yet”
[Morentz, c ii, 49].

123
 Figure 26. Amun-Min.
The ineffable demiurge begetter of the cosmos and of the Kas
represented as seminality and water of life of everything that exists.
Engraving of the Royal Ka Temple. Luxor - 1350 BC

124
 Figure 27.
Section of the funeral shroud of Queen Ahmose.
It bears the text of c. 64 of the BD, which identifies the deceased-justified with the
Creator, absolute and ineffable as indicated by one of her Rubrics:
“He Allows to go out to the day and not to be rejected on the path of the Duat neither at
the entrance nor at the exit. To transform himself into whatever he may desire and so that
the Ba (soul) of a man does not die. This formula was found in the foundations of the Imy-
Henu, (Sanctuary of Sokaris – Sakkara... in the time of the majesty... Semty...” (Udimu –
Din. I°). End of Din. XVII – Valley of the Queens. Thebes, ca. 1540 BC.
Egyptian Museum of Turin. [Donadoni Roveri]

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The particles nor is the negation of both natural aspects that make up the
cosmos: -heaven/earth- assigning, by default, the monopoly of life to a
shapeless power in pre-cosmic terms, “the demiurge-indeterminate” and
ordered in inclusive ontological terms, prior to its auto-generation.
The domain of the heka capacity, in Heliopolitan theology, is the power of
Atum over the origin and order of natural life and the cosmos, as well as its
finitude and duration. Heka is necessarily included in the eternal archetypal
temporality of the demiurge. Saying this from a transcendent monistic
cosmovision like the Egyptian, we can define the demiurge as: Atum = The One
[He + She] = Everything [Always] = Not-Other [egyptian not-second], inclusive living
totality, non-metaphysical transnatural, maker, dominator, destroyer of the
duration of life, of the cosmos, of natural time, with the capacity -heka- of
remaining itself as The One without interruption.
From this perspective, the cosmos and humanity are the clay of a potter who
makes and unmakes at will [Derchain, c. 2, 107 ss.]; a small thing in the hands
of the hidden Creator, as we see in the following texts:

Rogation of Ramses I
May he prolong my years in millions,
and may he not shorten my destiny-sai [time slot]...
Quaegebeur, c. III 125.

Time Ruler Amun

Amun presides over the duration of life and shortens it,
gives supplement to destiny-sai [time quota]
to the one who has taken affection...
Morentz, c. IV 104.

Later in Roman times, and under a neoplatonic dualistic cosmology, neheh

and djet will lose their original cosmotheological meaning and will cease to be
homologous, that is, naturally inclusive, to be interpreted from a negative
cosmotheology, opposed and markedly disjunctive. Thus, neheh will be the
natural and negative time of the demiurge, and djet the serene and unlimited
transnatural time -Sophia-, of the pleroma of the Gnostics; transnatural time
that will be considered as eternity itself, expressed in some Coptic or Greek
word [Macbride, c. 5 and 6]. We can affirm, without fear of being wrong, that
ancient Egyptian temporality is structurally different from ours, progressive and
linear, heir to the Western philosophical cosmos.

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 9. Some reflections by way of synthesis

Before closing these reflections, inspired by a Gertzean hermeneutics, on the

nature of the ancient Egyptian cosmo-religion, with a recapitulation by way of
closing, it is important to insist on the need to center the Egyptian perception
of the Creator on the complex notion of: nuu↔sekhem -overlapping, reciprocal
and mutually conditional-, as the specific manifestation of its corporeality,
primal and formless. The aqueous is the vehicle of the Bau-consciousness of
Atum: before, during and after creation, which justifies its nature as an absolute
living being, possessor of power, eternity and infinity.
The sekhem is the active-potentiality of Atum, which manifests itself as his
power, which is the support of his substantive sub-existent Bau-consciousness
in Nun-ocean and also, in the interiority of the cosmos [Žabkar, c. 1, 11 ss.].
Atum, in the following text, is the reflective and dispositive creative Bau-
consciousness emerging from Nun, which sub-exists in the cosmos, with the
capacity to remain itself sine-die, without limitations of any kind. Consciousness
is the self-knowledge of the demiurge to be eternal existence, administrator of
his acts and states, -passive and active-, which is noticed at the very moment of
his self-generation:

Emerge from Atum

Look! I am the one who began in the waters-Nun,
The tide recedes from me.
Behold, I am the one who remains [itself]
CT 714 in Piulats, 83.

The demiurge also announces his permanence after the end of creation, by
withdrawing his life-giving breath, Osiris-Shu from the cosmos, as can be seen
in c. 175 of the Book of the Dead -BD-, and in parallel texts from the Low
Period that we can see below:

He [Osiris] is the breath-shu (his ba) that will rest in Ra,

then the earth will be Nun... as in his its primordial state...
there will be no Netjeru and no Netjeryt
who can transform into a snake...
Otto, in Bilolo, b. 317.

Said with current words: “The independent entity that structures reality is not then
substance then, but it is substantivity, and this means “everything”, everything that is not
being part, that is, “every end”. The independence of the real is not primarily of the
substance...

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but of the substantiveness (Every end -made up of parts-)” [Fernández Beites, 201 ss.].
In our case, Atum is: Every “end formed by parts” = Bau that sub-exists noun-active
in the sekhem-kau substance that constitutes the cosmos. The demiurge as consciousness
of the cosmos is Bau, the distinctive aspect of him and the sekhem-u is his
intensive extension transformed into ka-ut of the world. These elements, plus
their transformations, basically make up the personified archeo-entity of the
Egyptian demiurge. Theologically, Atum is the oldest non-solar demiurge
speculation of the PT, as seen in the following Middle Ages CT:… Tm rn.w=sn
m HHw m Nww … “All-Atum, their names in eternal duration in the infinite
primordial water” [CT sp 79 b1 C, 1.- Barguet, 470].
The demiurge Atum will not finish assuming an anthropomorphic format and
will remain primordial, serpentine and ineffable to the perception of humanity
and, sometimes, to the Netjeru observable in the BD: “Oh! You who are sitting
on your rings (your coils) before Him whose ba is strong” [BD c. 65, 2-1-
Faulkner]. Atum-All-serpent-shaped will say: “I emerged from the waters, I am
a serpent with many rings” [PT 1146, 1-Allen]. From Old Kingdom it will be a
model of concealment and expression of his under-existence in the cosmos,
and transnatural non-metaphysical transcendence in the Nun-Ocean, replicated
in other later theologies.

Metamorphosis of the Demiurge

sub-existent eternal consciousness

Proto-Being Nun - Tum

full = all = always
Primal Living – (PAw.ty)
"All-Atum, their names in eternal duration
within the infinite primordial water-magma”
Tm rn.w=sn m HHw m Nww “
moment” as “eternity”
(3.t=f)

-Emergent-

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1° of Being Atum – Tum
“It is not being - Being is not”

“he who generates himself”

(sxpr Ds=f)
"Starting Moment of the Primeval"
pauty tepy (PAw.ty-tpy)

Atum-Khepri
“Being is not” - “Not being is”
(xpr Ds=f)
"The one who is at the head of everything."
zep tepy

-Existing-

2° of Being Atum - Re or Amun - Re

"He-remains-himself / "Bull-of-his-mother"
(km 3.t=f / k3 mw.t=f)
"Lord of All"
Neb-er-djer

khepru < [neheh] <> [djet] > Unen

Heh > Shu < Tekenu

Cosmos as Enneads
Pesdjet-wer / Pesdjet-nesdjet.
"Primeval sub-existent in the cosmos".
Pauty ta (PAw.ty-tA)

-Eschatology-
Reimmersion in Nun

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 Tum - Nun
Proto-existence renewed.
LM c. 175
Primal Living – (PAw.ty).
"Atum, their names in eternal duration
In/inside the infinite primordial water-magma”.
(Tm rn.w=sn m HHw m Nww)

§
The sekhem, as the aqueous corporeity of Atum, shares features with other
aspects of the divinity, which overlap ambiguously between them and with the
cosmos, due to its consubstantial nature, typical of the Egyptian monistic
cosmovision, where reality is constituted by a single substance, Hypostatically
diversified life-giver. Thus: “In this monistic thought, everything in life is interrelated
in a great all-encompassing network. Everything that is experienced as homologous, to
the event sp tpy is considered to be related and connected to the prototype itself... This
thinking by means of homologies is the logic of the system” [1- Englund, 26]. For us, this
cosmovision can be confusing, given our attachment to the disjunctive logic
inherited from classical philosophy.
We are not surprised to find: the sekhem-u, the ba-u, the aj-u, the ka-u and
the heka-u; overlapped with each other very early in the PT, and that this
overlap continues in later theologies, in particular, in the funerary ritual. This
first theological speculation around Atum occurs without solar traces, it is about
visible fragments of the first Heliopolitan theology, which, in our opinion,
prospered in the Archaic Period and the beginning of the Ancient Kingdom
[Bergman, part. 3 point 1.- Bongioanni and Tosi, c. 2 and 3].
The divine corporeal plasma, sekhem, concentrates the active-power of a
Bau, which is the eternal pre-cosmic consciousness of an ineffable demiurge,
who sub-exists substantively in the cosmos and is, at the same time, a passive
living being submerged in Nun. , primordial magma that is connatural to it, since
always:

“This Great God (is) Nun (primordial water-magma),

(Atum) created their names, lord of the Ennead...”

NTr a3 pw Nww pw
Qm3 rn.w=f nb psD.t…
CT. IV, sp. 335 1.- Barguet. 127

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 The demiurge, in creation, manifests himself in the cosmic diversity definable
as: “The One = All, not-another” that, in Egyptian terms is, "without-second"
and "dispenser of life",-neheb-kau-, to the universe and as First-Existing is
skheper djesef (sxpr Ds=f), "the one who generates himself". This existence, in
the Egyptian cosmovision, remains sub-existent as Bau-consciousness within
created beings and things and, also at the end of the universe, will remain living,
complete and substantively lying in Nun-ocean.
For the Egyptian theologian, the Being is The-One-Absolute whose nature
is that of not-possessing a "beyond" itself, to the extent that Nun-ocean is
connatural to it. The First-Existing is the "Beyond" itself and the ground of all
existence and possibility of existing, not-another-thing or meaning. In the
Egyptian thought, the aspect of "non-being" of Atum alludes, exclusively, to
the state of lack of dynamic manifestation -sleepiness and passivity- of the
demiurge as All in Nun. In other words, it means the absence of activation of
the eternal Existent, and in no way its non-existence. Here, Atum is Bau-
consciousness, sub-existent substantive in the cosmos and, also, eternally
persisting within Nun-ocean, at the same time.
This observation returns us to the old definition of the demiurge of the CT,
already seen, and which is later reaffirmed in c. xvii of the Book of the Dead.
This theological principle will be sustained in all its subsequent versions until
its abandonment as a sacred text in Roman times, and which, due to its
importance, we transcribe again:

Nature of the creative principle

I am Re, I am Atum…
I am the Great God who created himself.
-Who is the Great One who created himself?
the Great God, is Nun-ocean…

´Ink Ra ink Tm…

ink nTr a3 xpr Ds=f
ptr rf sw a3 xpr Ds=f
nTr a3 pw Nwn pw…
CT IV, sp, 1- Barguet, 335.

Nature of Atum as Demiurge

I was Totality-Atum
When I was alone in Nun-ocean.
I am Re in his glorious appearance...
I am the Great God-Netjer who has come into existence of himself.
-What is the Great God come into existence of himself

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 The water, the Nun-ocean, the father of the Ennead (cosmos).
BD c. 17, 2- Barguet, 57.

It is noteworthy that this conception of the nature of The Divine, totalizing

and consubstantial with the universe, is also found, since ancient times, in other
didactic protocols referring to secondary entities, emanating from the demiurge,
as in the following example: nTr.w m D.t=sn, “the netjeru-gods (enter) in their
bodies (cult images)” where the inclusive preposition makes this clear [Morentz,
c. viii, 205].
The Egyptian demiurge was seen as the Existence-First-Last. The best
description of it is that of being absolute and especially ineffable for humanity
and, sometimes, for everything created, described with multiple didactic
protocols by different priestly colleges, throughout its long political and
religious history. In traditional Egyptian theology, the Existent-Primordial as:
Atum-en-Nun and vice versa, was possible because they were considered
connatural. For this reason, they are tacitly reciprocal and inseparable, forming,
in fact: the-hidden-multiple-unity. This vision of the divine emerges hinted at
in the Pyramid Text.
Atum does not differ so much from Nun, by its nature, but from a
perspective of cosmological-theological interpretation. Theologians
emphasized in Nun the external, passive and opaque nature of the aqueous, as
the periphery of the vital cosmos. Instead, they saw in Atum the clear and
aqueous interiority of the living One-One: the Active-Potency and nucleus-giver
of life, immersed and substantive in the cosmos and in the Nun-ocean, eternal
connaturals.
Both terms: Nun↔Atum, interact reciprocally constituting two “faces” or
consubstantial planes of: The-One, perennial and ineffable, that synthesizes
them and, in some way, transcends them. Late and in Hellenistic and Roman
times, this transcendence of the Ineffable will encompass Nun-Atum and will
be designated as Kmeph, eg. Kematef ((km 3.t=f), “He complete ouner of time or
eternal moment”, which Iamblichus equates to nous, which thinks of itself [9-
Assmann, 66].
Nun and Atum could not be thought of as theologically separated because it
meant breaking up the primordial unity and accepting the rupture of the
substantial continuum - nww↔sxm - in the interiority of the One-All (tm)-Bau.
This eventuality was for them an unacceptable ontological possibility.

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 Traditional Egyptian theology is the affirmation that water, nwn↔nww, is
the ultimate ground of all existence, of all non-existence and tacit denial of
emptiness and nothingness as an ontological possibility.
The notion of Being-Creator that we affirm can be seen in the theological
dialogues carried out between connatural Atum and Nun, and vice versa, in the
Coffin Texts, and supposes an interior colloquy of the One as an unknowable
superior unit. This ontological reality -interchangeability-, is observed in the two
fragments of the following CT:

Dd.in Tm n Nww
Iw=i Hr mHt...
Pa.t nni
in sA.i anx Ts ib=i…

Atum says to Nun:

I was floating...
the inert Pat-humanity, without movement…
It is my son, Shu-Vida, who will found my heart..
CT, sp. 80 Barguet 471.

Dd Nww n Tm
Sn sA=k M3a.t..
anx ib=k
n Hr.sn r=k

Nun says to Atum:

Breathe your daughter Maat-true
for your heart to live.
They are not far from you...
CT, II 34-35h Barguet.

The nature of the Living-Eternal and unknown, manifested as First-Existing is,

existentially, Being: “who is, not-being” ← (Atum) → “who, not-existing,
exists”, and spatially is, Being: “not-being visible” ← (Amun) → “hidden”,
understanding by “non-visible”, its presence in natural phenomena and
“hidden” in the Duat distant and existing prior to the cosmos, all at the same
time. The Egyptian demiurge is a "determined" and "indeterminate" First
Existence simultaneously. In Atum/Amun, a breath-water-of-life emerging
from Nun- ocean is recognized, which is transformed into engendering

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breath of the cosmos to which it hypostatically transmits its ontological reality:
vibrant bio-nature of life in the interiority of Nun. Re-Aten was nothing more
than the manifest and neutral aspect of the demiurge in the cosmos,
understanding by neutral, transporting the primordial androgynous nature of
Atum, giver-of-life, daily to the cosmos, emphatically explicit from the CT, as
we see in the following passage:

…It's Re,
What is it?
It is Atum inside the disk-Aten of him.

...Ra pw
Sy pw
Tm pw imi Itn=f
CT, iv, sp. 335 Barguet.

The logical relationship of tacit reciprocity between: Atum/Amun↔Nun,

sought, as a consequence, the abolition of all distance -substantial-spatial-
temporal-, characteristic of Egyptian monist-theism. His theology was in charge
of upholding this principle at all costs: “There seems to be no essential ontological
separation – although there is a conceptual distinction between species, human beings,
animals, vegetation, cosmic constituents. Or, to put it another way: The categories
applied in Egyptian religious ontology do not accentuate the differences between men
and animals, or even between men and vegetative or cosmic phenomena. Rather, we see
the opposite interest: emphasizing affinities and connections [Finnestad, 31]. The result
of this cosmovision is a religiosity based on an inclusive summotheism that
will endure, with multiple theological variants, until its disappearance. The
application of the monistic principle, in-extremis, is made visible in the next
fragment of the CT:

I am Nuu (Nun)
the One without a second
I became in the big time
from my emergence (Atum)
I existed...
I am that (Atum) in Nun

Ink Nww
Wa ntw sn(n)w=f
xpr.n=f im sp wr

134
 n mHt=i
xpr.n=i..
ink sAa im Nww
CT, IV, sp. 334, 182n, Barguet.

The relationship of identity, (A = A), of the One-Multiple with Nun, insinuated

in the Ancient Period in the TP, was theologized from the Middle Period in the
CT, continued in the New Kingdom and speculatively matured in the
Ramesside Period. It will be conveyed in the c. xvii of the LM and this
cosmotheology will remain in this text, until the end of the Ancient Egyptian
civilization, in Roman times. Given its importance, we transcribe it again, with
the transliteration of its most significant part:

Ink nTr aA xpr Ds=f

ptr rf sw
aA xpr Ds=f
NTr aA pw, Nwn pw it(i)=f nTrw
BD, c. xvii, Grapow.
Relig. Urk. p. 9 abs, 2.

Nature of Atum
I am the Great God that exists of itself
What's that?
the Great God who exists of himself.
That Great God is Nun-ocean father of the gods.
BD, c. xvii, 2- Barguet, 57.

To close these reflections, we have one last question, namely:

The diverse didactic names of the ineffable demiurge of the theological

schools, are they only descriptors of the liturgical formulations of
theologians to invoke the One demiurge in ceremonies, or authentic
names of autonomous power of the ritual? In other words, are the names
the same unknown demiurge, beyond the liturgy, or simple didactic
supports for the invocation of an ineffable God? Or, to what extent, both
at the same time?

Answering this question becomes, almost, an ontological entelechy that is

not part of these reflections.

֍
135
 PART III

EPILOGUE

Souls and Shadows greet the demiurge - light.

The Tausert tomb - 19th Dynasty.

136
 Epilogue

The nature of God is a Sphere whose center

is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.
...and again parted until there were many from One,
fire, water, earth and the immense height of the air...
Empedocles of Agrigento.
C. Eggers Lan and others

God is in himself, the world is in God

and man in the world. The deficiency of
man is ignorance, his fullness
is the knowledge of God.
Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius.
Definitions VII, 5.
F. García Bazán

The traditional Egyptian religion supports a rigorous theism that we define

as the belief in a divine power, Living-Eternal, without interruption that is: The-
One-All originator and ordainrer of existences, both visible and invisible. Thus,
it is, at the same time, immanent and transcendent; consubstantial and
transubstantial. It is an absolute existence that possesses the dominion of all the
capacities, among them, the modes and forms of pre-existence –nenyu-; make
control nature, the present and what may come. Also the duration and the end
of things, life and the universe itself. In sum, a personal, self-aware and
omnipotent entity in whom: “wanting coincides with executing” [Cusa, De
Mente h V. n 77 (7-9) in Núñez, 107 and n. 19 in fine]. In other words, its
plasmatic aqueous substance sejem, connatural to Nun, is ethereal in the
cosmos, in all things and existences, but it is not all of them, with substantivity
and non-metaphysical transcendence for itself. Transcendence donated with
certain conditions -living in Maat-, to a kind of created beings, humanity,
hypostasis and emanated from itself.
The Egyptian theism supports a dynamic cosmovision of the world, which it
perceives as a hypostatic emanation, a metamorphosis of the first divinity that,
without being the universe in its entirety, is present in everything that exists. Its
activation implies the becoming of an unrevealed God and, therefore, the

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emergence of a sacred history: cosmotheological and natural. The Egyptian
theism is typical of a religion of the first degree [5- Assmann, c. 1 ss.], framed
in a strict ontological, cosmological and anthropological monism or unitarinism, with a
substantive inflection in the cosmos and a marked transnatural transcendence,
alien to any metaphysics that, in itself, explains many conceptions of the
religious imaginary of the Egyptian society that, for our Western logic, are
ambiguous or directly contradictory.
The radical ontological and cosmological difference of both comovisions
raised above, is clearly observed when contrasting their anthropologies. The
Egyptian re-integrates all the anthropological components: intellectual,
energetic, emotional, physical, and re-makes the person who is re-born
“complete or equipped”, through the liturgy of the Osirian Judgment and the
offerings. Thus, the Egyptian transcends death and forms a renewed personal
unity that will persist simultaneously, both in the visible and hidden dimensions
of the cosmos, in a permanent circulation and transformations [Díaz-Iglesias
Llanos, c. 1 and 3].
The classical Greek cosmovision is explicit, in general, in the Platonic
doctrine of the tripartite soul. He maintains that, at death, the soul of the people
leaves the body definitively, discarding it along with two elements or
incorporeal souls: the “iracible” and the “concupicable”. Only one of them, the
intellective or “logistike”, related to truth and wisdom, because it is
consubstantial with the Soul of the World, the Nous that is its principle, returns
to it to dwell with it in the Topos Uranos and reincarnate periodically. This last
anthropological conception and of the cosmos is markedly dualistic. The West
inherits the dualism of the philosophers of classical Greece and their successors,
with various formats up to our present [Plato, 571e, 580e-d - 614b].
In the scheme that we present below, the inclusive preposition m "in" or
"within" stands out, which, in ancient Egyptian, marks a homologous
relationship by nature between: The One and existences, things and the cosmos,
observable in the traditional theological methodologies of the Egyptian
priesthood. The Egyptian understanding of the cosmos establishes an abysmal
difference between its transnatural transcendent monism and the Western
perception of the cosmos, to which the conjunction with disjunctive effect
“And” fits, typical of a cosmovision where the One ineffable and the creatures
are not substantially the same. Same, and for this reason they are related in an
analogical way [Deleuze, c. xiv 491]. This last conception implies a dualism:
ontological, cosmological and epistemological, inherited from the philosophers
of classical Greece, currently in force.
In the case of traditional Egyptian cosmotheism, all modes and forms of
existences share their substance with the demiurge, a fact expressed
linguistically by the inclusive copula m recurrently used by the demiurge.
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 Egyptian priesthood in theological elaboration and interpretation of the
cosmos. This fact shows that all things and beings are, within the divinity, but
with a margin of transnatural transcendence for humanity. Thus, cosmic reality
takes place in a substantially unified universe, with two dimensions integrated
by the sub-existence of the demiurge in both planes of the cosmos: the visible
and the hidden. This cosmovision can be modeled as follows:

The One = [He + She] = All

Atum (Tm) All

Neheb-kau
-giver of life-
hidden (Amun) – of secret name (Re)
-etc. - etc. - etc.-

Sejem-wer
-Absolute Power-

Is
(sxpr Ds=f)

All possibilities M all non-possibilities

(xprw- nHH) “in”/ “within” (n xprw – D.t)

Simultaneous

Moment
-perfective instant-
(3.t=f)

Everything always
(Tm / zp)

139
 (present without past or future)
(eternity / infinity)

The nature of the function of the divine ka in the cosmos supports a theology
of mediation as it is in eternal circulation, manifesting itself as invisible: humid
breath-air (Sw), and visible: as reverberating light (jjw), of the demiurge [supra.
95 to 106]. It is the divine energy that intervenes and gives life to the world and
sustains it against the threats of dissolution and conversion into chaos.
The divine ka is the vehicle with which the creator updates his engendering
activity of the cosmos, articulating the invisible in the natural. Thus, it avoids
the splitting of man from divinity by possessing an extension of his ka,
consolidating a strong cosmotheological monism [supra. graph 48 / 64-65]. The
ka of the dimiurge, as a totalizer, makes possible, with its dynamis, the
accessibility of the hidden sphere to the manifest, allowing everything ethereal
or imperceptible to emerge as netjer/u; ba/u; aj/u in the visible space of the
cosmos.
The ka of the world, hypostasis of the sejem of the demiurge, is intermediary
energy and life-giving sacred force (Dsr) [Hoffmeier, 89-123 and c. 4], which sub-
lies as ka of ka within the macrocosm in general, and the microcosm
particularized in each existence. Thus, the ontological-consubstantial unity of
the "First Existent" with the cosmos and the natural multiplicity in/inside the
One-All is consolidated, excluding the Egyptian cosmovision of a dualism,
expressible in our terms, as: only the sensible and the intelligible [supra. 51 –
56]. The universal divine ka constitutes a triadic relationship of the demiurge
with the world, which bases its specific transnatural, dynamic and recursive
transcendence in the interiority of the cosmos, a transcendence that reaches
humanity, benefited by the Osirian drama and its divine funerary rituals [supra.
106 – 107 / 73 ss.].

ka-Universal
in

cosmic visibility cosmic occultation

The activity of the extended ka in the world means a perception of nature

containing a living reality that substantively underlies everything physical and
organic. It is the conception of a world endowed with life by the dynamis of the
ka that, by sub-existing, permeates the entire cosmos and, for this reason, it
140
makes sense to speak of a substantial interrelation between the elements that
make up the world, and also, consider them parts or modes of the demiurge
himself. It is possible to speak of a homology between the microcosm, -the
visible-, and the macrocosm -the hidden or invisible-, through the mediation
of the universal ka; considering all the components of nature and the universe
as forms or extensions of the demiurge and especially of his corporeality [supra.
48-49/71-72].
Thus, the Egyptian cosmotheology proposes a single ontology, -unified-,
since Atum is: The-One-that-is-in-All-and-is-All. Glossing Espinosa, we can
affirm that the Egyptian ontology also constitutes a natural ethic, expressed in
the Maat, as the eternal truth-order of the living demiurge in nature and in the
cosmos. This conception of reality is close to the proclamation: ¡Hen panta!,
"The One-All", that some pre-Socratic philosophers frequently proclaimed and
that a romantic poet, Hölderlin, rightly identified with: "Beauty", the Absolute
that underlies and divinizes creation, whose meaning is close to the Egyptian
Neferu (Nfrw) already seen [Deleuze, 483 / Hölderlin, 80 ss / supra 103].
The Egyptian theology of unitas multiplex, which was a political doctrine of the
state, proposes the belief in an active-power or divine power, the -sejem wer-
of the TP. It consists of a primordial and self-conscious existence, multiform
in Nun and at the same time hidden in the orderly cosmos [Bergman, pt. to]. It
is the speculation about an eternal existent: The One = Atum [He + She] non-other
equal = Everything. An existent that is, a totalizing Bau, very especially absolute and
omnipotent inasmuch as in it they coincide: “wanting with executing” [Núñez, 107, n. 19
in fine], active power, synthesized in the will or heka capacity of this Being over
the cosmos, which is also its foundation.
The speculation of this ontology, based on homology, is twofold. In the first
place, an extensive gradation between things and beings, taking this concept
from the amount of ka energy possessed, where realities are hierarchical series
derived from the universal active-power, the sejem of the demiurge, becoming
ka of ka. Secondly, we have distinctive forms, which give rise to the differences
in the modes of existence of the universe. The multiplicity of differentiation of
the world is determined by its origin, which emerges from the interiority of the
demiurge as: sputum or saliva, the cosmos from sweat, the netjeru or
superhuman powers; from tears, humanity.
Both conceptions, far from contradicting each other, intertwine inclusively
in a perpetual transfer of life energy, kau, between the visible and hidden
dimensions of the universe, a process sustained by the mutations of the Creator.
Thus, khepru, a verb with an apparent plural, describes the transformations of
the demiurge as a movement that begets life and sustains the cosmos, all
simultaneously [Jacq, 32-35]. Said in Egyptian terms: “Look! The tide recedes from
141
me, look! I am the one who remains [itself]” [CT 83 714, Piulats, 83]. The original
existence is the becoming of an unrevealed demiurge and, therefore, the
beginning of a sacred natural history, which is teleological-cosmological.
The Egyptian religion, from a cosmological perspective, is a theologized
interpretation of a divinized monistic universe, made up of two dimensions of
the same nature -the visible and the hidden- that guarantees a transnatural
transcendence of the demiurge beyond all metaphysics, and its survival latent at
the end of the duration of the cosmos in Nun, a conception that we can
synthetically model as: The One [He+She] = non-other [eg. without–second],
sub-existent in the universe –fragment of its corporeity-, without ontological
interruption between the two and, also, without substantial hiatus with the
multiple existences inserted by its will in the cosmos, parts of itself, immersed
in Nun-ocean.
We appreciate this last statement in the text that we will see next:

I am yesterday, dawn [today] and tomorrow,

and in a second time [always].
At the head of the mysterious births, the creator of the Netjeru-gods,
who gives food-kau to the Duat…possessor of two faces
lord of the dawns that penetrates the twilight [non–existence]
whose transformations take place in the abode-duat of death...
BD c. 64, 2-Barguet, 129.

The One-All is a self-existence that is absolute-consciousness, numinous and

markedly ineffable, theologically personified with various didactic protocols,
which fail to describe its nature. Depending on the time, we find it as Atum or
Amun, also Ptah or Re, individually or in combination with each other, and
with other secondary theological names, used to describe a primordial existence,
The One-All. It is an eternal, hidden, superhuman and unfathomable absolute
and, consequently, unspeakable as expressed in the following contemplative
and silent sentence from Imperial Age:

Who would dare to speak to the uncreated?

It is better to let it express itself in us.
Daumas, 104.

We can define the Egyptian perception of the creator and the world, from the ancient Egyptian
cosmovision, as the continuous movement of: The One = [He + She] not-another [eg. no-
second]:= Atum that engenders all without ceasing to be One; that remains in everything
without ceasing to be One; with its own substantivity and transcendence and also granted to
some kind of existence; that will destroy everything and will continue to be One = Bau, eternal
living being immersed in Nun.
142
 We define this complex and original theistic conception of the divine,
inserted in a monistic cosmological framework with transcendence beyond all
metaphysical conceptualization, as a summotheism, given the number of
hypostasis-Netjeru that accompany it in its evolution. Likewise, we have chosen
this appellation to define the traditional Egyptian religion, in order to
distinguish it from the extreme naturalism of Amarna, and to differentiate it
from the interpretation applied by Assmann to the religious reform of
Akhenaten, as an anti-constellationist counter-religion [Akhenjaty, 3]. Amarna
conveys an extremely causal naturalist-immanentist cosmovision, whose main
characteristic is to deny the conception of the traditional Egyptian cosmos,
synthesized as visibility-concealment, and deny the Osiriac transcendence for
humanity.
But, equally, the concept of summoteism that we have chosen to refer to the
traditional Egyptian religion as a monistic theism of non-metaphysical
transcendence, allows us to differentiate it from the concept of summodeism -
synonymous with pantheism-, used by Assmann to define the theology of the
Ramesside period. This definition was adopted by Vöegelin -the great German-
American historian-, considering that the analogy was one of the methods used
by the Egyptian priesthood for theological elaboration, proposing, in fact, a
disjunctive method for the study of the Egyptian beliefs. This method of
interpretation is appropriate for Eastern dualistic cosmological or religious
cosmovisions, or those of the Platonic-Aristotelian philosophical tradition, but
not the Egyptian [5- Assmann, n. 15 / Voegelin, § 3, 123 ss.].
The Vöegelin interpretation is equivocal, as it does not consider the
possibility that the Egyptian perception of the universe -origin, permanence,
extinction-, is a definitely monistic cosmovision and therefore, in our opinion,
the Egyptian cosmovision would be based on -a single substance; a single attribute
of an eternal living being, distributed as its modes and forms in the cosmos, a single ontology-
, understanding by ontology the accumulation of priestly speculations on the
ineffable absolute: One-All-Demiurge, eternal-existence and First-Existing, that
is in/within all living things, the cosmos and reality itself, everyone exist and
depend del One, not-another thing or concept. It is a conception similar to the
postulate of the archaic Greek thinkers: “´All things come from one and dissolve in
the same´”, a proposition attributed to Museo, el poeta” [Guthrie, t. ii, 67].
This interpretation allows us to affirm that the procedure applied by Egyptian
theologians in all their historical periods was inclusive of homology, through
the regular and methodical instrumentation of: prototypes; reduction formulas;
the m of predication and of the relative plural .w/.wt; to express the monistic
cosmotheism, typical of their religiosity. All combined to describe the cosmic

143
and bionatural multiplicity, which were interpreted, necessarily consubstantial
and contracted in the One-demiurge. These were the central methodological
instruments of the Egyptian theologians, to think of the cosmos in the divine
and the divine, All-One, in the cosmos, in all its historical epochs.
In other words, the diversity of the cosmos and nature were perceived as
compatible multiples, reducible to an Ineffable Existence -the demiurge-,
considering them substantially homologous, a necessary conceptualization for
the theological interpretation of "The One in the multiple" or "The Multiple in the
One”, attribute of the ineffable Egyptian Absolute. Thus, they described their
nature, to which numerous didactic names and combinations fit in the Egyptian
cosmovision of all its historical epochs, appreciable in the following text:

..All-Atum,
their names in eternal duration
in the infinite primordial water-magma,
moving in the endless darkness...

...Tm
Rn.w.sn m HHw m nww
m tnmw m qqw...
CT, sp 79 B1 C, 1.- Barguet, 470.

Central to Egyptian religious thought is the belief in the awakening of a

demiurge, consciousness-conscious-eternal, who leads an existence of lifeless
reverie in Nun, primordial and perennial magmatic water. This First-Existing-
is... none other than Bau, substantive sub-existent absolute self-consciousness in
the universe created by him. In Egyptian cosmotheology appears evident, and,
as a characteristic position of his thought, the notion of eternity as duration without
beginning or end of a first archetypal living being, become by itself, which has
always existed and which persists as primeval in everything created, as its
hypostases, modes and forms, and which will exist within Nun-sterile ocean,
after the term of the cosmos.
The traditional Egyptian cosmovision leaves no room for the concept of nothing prior to the
becoming of the primordial Being, the eternal First-Existing One, nor the possibility of nothing
to his subsequent return to the state of pre-cosmic passivity.
For this reason, it makes impossible the idea of emptiness of life prior to its
becoming, ideas that are typical of Greek cosmotheological and philosophical
thought, which puts the supreme Cronos-infinite above all possible existence.
In this context, it would be contradictory to assign to the Egyptian cosmovision
the conception of a conventional birth of the One-All-Demiurge. That would

144
imply, by extension, the idea in the Egyptian cosmovision, of nothingness and
the void of life, as a principle prior to the beginning of the cosmos and its
subsequent completion.

Colophon

…And the signs are,

since ancient times, the language of the gods.
F: Holderlin.
Lavaperur (h), 128
……..

And if your soul is not appeased, travel

towards other currents, towards the deepest,
and ask the brothers of Egypt.
There you will hear the deepest notes of the harp
of Urania and the transformation of the tones of it.
There they will open for you the book of destiny.
F: Holderlin.
The death of Empedocles,
Piulats, 10.

145
 INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 1. Atum the primordial serpent begins his transformations in the midst of Nun 35
Fig. 2. Pharaoh Sekhemkhet identified with the demiurge. 41
Fig. 3. Pharaoh Sesostris I -Jeperkare- offering to the One-demiurge. 43
Fig. 4. Herwy-f and the eternity of the ineffable One “The One (wa) of the two faces”. 49
Fig. 5. Osiris-Re. Formula of three that refers to the ineffable One. 50
Fig. 6 and 7. The Union of the two Earths–sematawuy (Sm3-T3wi) Formula of three which
refers to the One-demiurge. 51
Fig. 8. Image of Ptah. Formula of three symbols of power of the One. 52
Fig. 9. Geb and Nut. The passive masculine and the active feminine. 55
Fig. 10. Ankhesenamun with the sesedet-sejem sistrum. 65
Fig. 11. The ba next to the shadow of it. 71
Fig. 12. Amenhotep III and his ka. 71
Fig. 13. Ramesside cosmotheology. 76
Fig. 14. Amarnian cosmotheology. 80
Fig. 15. Traditional Heliopolitan Cosmotheology 85
Fig. 16. The inert. 88
Fig. 17. Obelisks with grains inside, symbol of divine light. 100
Fig. 18. Offerings of bread and beer. 101
Fig. 19. Lustral water of purification and rebirth. 101
Fig. 20. Sejem sceptres. Thutmose III with ruler's scepter and Tutankhamun's scepter. 108
Fig. 21. Divine breath as Shu-tekenu sustaining creation. 111
Fig. 22. Heliopolitan cosmic temporality. 116
Fig. 23. Amarnian cosmic temporality. 116
Fig. 24. The demiurge as Re-Horajty upholds the cyclicity of the cosmos. 82
Fig. 25. Dogmatic protocol of the Aten. 83
Fig. 26. Amun-Min. The ineffable demiurge begetter of the cosmos and of the Kas. 118
Fig. 27. Section of the funeral shroud of Queen Ahmose c. 64 of the LM. 119

146
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The author:
He was born in Buenos Aires on September 13, 1950. He studied Anthropology
at the Universidad de Buenos Aires - UBA and Orientalism at the Escuela de
Estudios Orientales - EEO of the Universidad del Salvador -USAL, graduated
Experto and Licenciado en Estudios Orientales with orientation in Philosophy
and History of Religions. He has complementary studies in ancient Egyptian
language. He has taught at the Escuela de Estudios Orientales since 1974,
initially, in anthropological subjects: Asian Ethnography and Archaeological
and Ethnographic Research Techniques.
Since 1978, he has been a professor in the cultural area of Ancient Egypt and
initiator of Egyptological studies at the Escuela de Estudios Orientales. He has
been a professor of Historia de la Cultura Egipcia since 1980 and Religión y
Filosofía Egipcia since 1986, at the Facultad de Filosofía, Letras y Estudios
Orientales - USAL. Currently, the full professor emeritus in this last chair. His
current activity is focused on university teaching, research on the subject of
ancient Egyptian thought and cosmovision at the Centro de Estudios del
Egipto y del Mediterráneo Oriental – CEEMO, and study guide for the specialty
of Ancient Egypt at the EEO.
He has published themes related to orientalism: Los Componentes Religiosos
de la Mezquita, in Temas para Arquitectos de Buenos Aires. Introducción al
Islam, both presented at the Sociedad Argentina de Orientalistas; Sociedad
Islámica Argentina. Two Canopic Jars at the Museo Nacional de Arte Oriental
de Argentina, in: Aegyptus Antiqua, vol. 5th, Buenos Aires. Argentina. The
Egyptological Heritage in the Argentine National Museums, Argentine official
report to the International Committee for Egyptology - CIPEG, of the
International Council of Museum - ICOM for the XIV International
Conference of ICOM, in Buenos Aires. Sur la Signification des Shabtis, in
Aegyptus Antiqua, vol. 6-7, Buenos Aires. Argentina. The Shabtis du Musée
National d´Art Oriental a Buenos Aires, in Aegyptus Antiqua; vol. 8. Buenos
Aires. Argentina.
He worked in the field of museums in the city of Buenos Aires, as curator of
cultural heritage in the Museo de Arte Popular de Buenos Aires; curator of the
collection of historical maps and plans of Buenos Aires of the Instituto

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Histórico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, and curator of the collections and
museographer of the Museo Histórico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.
Founding member of the Centro de Estudios del Egipto y del Mediterráneo
Oriental, CEEMO, he is a member of its Board of Directors and of the
direction of the magazine Aegyptus Antiqua. Member of the International
Committee for Egyptology - CIPEG of the International Council of Museums
- ICOM until 2010. Full member of the International Association of
Egyptologists AIE.

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