entities: ENT_EGY_NUN

The core table — every entity in the database, spanning gods, angels, demons, aeons, prophets, saints, heroes, spirits, monsters, personified abstractions, cosmological realms, and ritual categories. Use category to filter by functional type (146 values: Underworld Deity, Hero, Adversarial Being, Revealer Figure, etc.). Use tradition to filter by tradition. The short_note column contains a scholarly description with source citations.

Data license: MIT · Data source: jebboone/deitydb

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entity_id canonical_name greek_name tradition entity_type category primary_domains tags cult_scope primary_period evidence_confidence review_status inclusion_basis earth_association_score chthonic_flag serpent_flag short_note entity_class
ENT_EGY_NUN Nun   Egyptian Primordial deity Primordial Deity primordial waters; chaos; creation   Hermopolitan/Pan-Egyptian   A candidate_verified_name Egyptian primordial deity 2 0 0 Nun (also Nu) is the primordial watery abyss of Egyptian cosmology — the boundless, dark, chaotic expanse of inert water that existed before creation. He is the foundational element of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad cosmological system (khmun, "City of the Eight"), the oldest Egyptian cosmogony, in which creation occurs when the Ogdoad's forces stir the primordial waters and the primordial mound (benben) rises from them, upon which the creator deity (Ra-Atum or Thoth, depending on the tradition) comes into being. Nun is not destroyed by creation but persists as the waters surrounding the known world and beneath the earth — the source of the Nile's annual inundation and of the sun's journey through the underworld. The Pyramid Texts (c. 2400–2300 BCE) are the earliest attestation: "O Atum, when you came into being you rose up on the high ground, you rose up as the bnbn stone in the Mansion of the Phoenix in Heliopolis" — with Atum emerging from Nun. Nun is gendered male and paired with Naunet (female counterpart, the watery sky above) as the first of the four Ogdoad pairs. His conceptual parallel in Mesopotamian cosmogony is Apsu (the primordial male freshwater abyss of the Enuma Elish) and Nammu (the Sumerian primordial sea-goddess from whom creation emerged). In temple iconography Nun is sometimes depicted as a man holding up the solar barque, symbolizing the moment creation emerged from the primordial waters. Wilkinson (2003) pp. 100-101; Pinch (2002) pp. 167-168. deity

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