The Island of the Egg

Currently there is much interest among alternative authors in the Edfu building texts describing a myth which they try to relate to the Lost island of Atlantis, the myth concerns an island first known as the Island of the Egg, a veritable isle of mysteries, this is topical as the recent Blood Moon transpired at the astrological location of the mysterious egg as i noted here.

“I have risen from the egg that is in the land of mysteries. My mouth has been given me, that I may speak therewith before the gods of the nether world. I shall not be kept away from the Council of the great God, for I am Osiris, the lord of Rosetau, this God who is at the top of the terrace. I have come, having accomplished my heart’s desire in the Isle of Flame. I quench any fire that has broken out”.

The Edfu texts were compiled during the Ptolemaic period from earlier Egyptian sources, the island of the egg is the place of first creation.

The first record…of the Sanctified God who came into being at the First Occasion, sets out a picture of a primaeval island (iw). This island has a principal name Island of Trampling [or Crushing] (iw titi)…the name of a region in which the creation took place, is known to us only from the first Edfu cosmogonical record…The sacred place Djeba in Wetjeset-Neter having been created, the Sanctified Ruler…appeared. He came from the underworld…as a protector

The island goes through several stages, it is transformed into an island of flames at the birth of the light and then becomes the island of Trampling, as confrontation and destruction takes place in terms of transformation.



Of course all questions of creation generally come down to which came first the chicken or the egg, the egg emerges from the feminine waters of Nun, often it is attributed to Hathor, perhaps in earlier times to Neith, from whose Temple the Atlantis myth supposedly emerged.



There is association of this myth with the sages and the Builder Gods, in my opinion it is the greatest of myths and has a Sumerian counterpart which can be considered, there is indication that the first arising of the light or consciousness was destroyed in the expansion of the Universe and that this then reconstituted, overcoming chaos represented by a serpent.

This text seems to imply a belief in the existence of a group of nameless [shmw] deities who existed before the origin of the world, and who were believed to act as a single creating power…these powers are described as the Primaeval Ones…the lords of the light…The Ghosts, the Ancestors…These nameless Creators of the Earth seem to have been regarded as its original inhabitants…they are also described as the Great Ennead…the Sanctified Ones who…created their own bodily form for themselves

Thus they dreamt themselves into being and took things from there;

The general tone of the beginning of the first record seems to convey the view that an ancient world, after having been constituted, was destroyed, and as a dead world it came to be the basis of a new period of creation…

The Pn-God…is to be linked with the gnn, the Weak One…believed to reside in a field of reeds, who died there and whose mortuary image was hidden in the same field of reeds…the first act of creation…in the Island of Trampling was solely an act of recreation of a divine world which once existed.

Then appeared on the scene a large company of divine beings…the whole company was then divided into four groups; each group was placed along one side of the bw-titi…Thereafter the snake was overthrown and the victorious gods are said to have settled beside him…The divine powers who were believed to have acted in this phase of creation were the deities who took part in the former process

The Place-for-crushing resembled a ifdw [four sides] of the divine shelter (nwt) within that domain

The correlation with Sumerian tradition can be seen in the emphasis on the establishment of the four sided construct and association with reeds, to them this was represented by the square of Pegasus or the field constellation that emerged from the waters, the egg of the Blood Moon was at the place of incubation beneath the swallow or Dove, situated beneath Pegasus, were in the Atagartis myth;

The star-map indicates that the setting of this myth and its participants are not, in fact, of this earth, but are to be found in the heavens. What is of pivotal importance is the identity of the ‘river Euphrates’. Apart from the earthly river, the ‘Euphrates’ can also be found on the star-map where it is closely associated with the watery outflow joined to the Swallow.

This heavenly river actually runs parallel to the course of the ecliptic and now that this fact is established, the action of the fish can be better understood – they escort the sun (the mythical egg) from its lowest point at the solstice and guide it onto its ascending path that leads towards the spring and ‘dry land’, which is represented on the star-map by the constellation of the Field. .

Thus the egg or the Sun (and Moon] return to the place of first establishment, the Goddess most likely associated with the egg in earlier times was probably Ninhursag or Ninmah, but there are no texts relating to this only the later Atagartis mythos, the Goddess Nanse of the marsh land reeds and birds and fishes was associated with dream incubation which almost certainly did relate to the light dreaming itself into being, as was the case with Sisig the Sun God that emerges from the underworld and God of dreams, so the suggestions of the tradition remained but these must date back to the pre-literate period.



Of course this passeth all understanding...

The Shebtiw in the Temple at Edfu

The Midnight Sun

Or maybe they had an egg as reference

Love when you post threads. I'm marking this to read later today...It looks fascinating.

a reply to: Hyperia

Of course they had an egg as reference because the Universe was created by egg Gods...




a reply to: IAMTAT

It is fascinating, alternative authors like i mentioned such as Graham Hancock in his latest book and Andrew Collins are relating the myth to Atlantis, whilst clearly a creation myth the archetype may have gone into the telling of that story.

These primeval god-men are quite specifically referred to in a body of literature known as the Edfu Building Texts found carved on the walls of the Ptolemaic temple of Edfu in Upper Egypt. Andrew shows how when the Elder gods (they are named variously in the texts as the Elders, the Shebtiu, the Falcons, the Sages and the Ancestors) disappear from the Nile valley, the first neolithic communities begin to spring up in the Upper Euphrates valley of northern Syria, south-east Turkey (Anatolia).

Gods of Eden

Of the greatest interest is the temple’s idea of itself expressed in the acres of enigmatic inscriptions that cover its walls. These inscriptions, the so-called Edfu Building Texts, take us back to a very remote period called the ‘Early Primeval Age of the Gods’ – and these gods, it transpires, were not originally Egyptian, or even connected with Egypt in any way, but lived on a sacred island, the ‘Homeland of the Primeval Ones’, in the midst of a great ocean.

Graham Hancock

a reply to: Kantzveldt

I look at the first stage and all I can see is 'oven and bun' and the phrase a bun in the oven.

Looks very interesting, tagging for later as well.

a reply to: Kantzveldt

I love topics on Atlantis and other sunken cities. I really doubt the two are related but, reading the OP, I couldn't help think of the [beautiful] Isle of Eigg here in Scotland.

www.isleofeigg.net...

And slightly off topic, never understood why people find this such a puzzle...

originally posted by: Kantzveldt
Of course all questions of creation generally come down to which came first the chicken or the egg

The egg came well before the chicken, eggs were around in Dinosaur times, Chickens, not so much...

a reply to: Kantzveldt

Interesting stuff, you should check out wiki or some other source for Väinämöinen he was the inspiration for "Gandalf the grey",
in his birth or creation story, there is a lot of stuff about eggs in the ocean, literally.

i remember also seeing a weird looking tibetan picture, it showed a weird island, shaped like an elephant, you mentioned the island of trampling, get it?,

this makes me think the sarcophagus lid of our protector lord Pacal, he also rose from the underworld, where the serpents reside..

Darn it, i really hate these ancient mysteries, there is always more, older and older, feels like a rabbit hole.

a reply to: Kantzveldt

Good Read, i also have the book 'the gods of eden'.

S/F

a reply to: solve#

Yes i'm not sure what the actual trampling involved, i suppose the basic principle is compression to such an extent inverse expansion is inevitable, apart from elephants doing the job perhaps also grapes were involved in a symbolic sense.

Would the Sumerian primeval deity story of Alalu be related to this?

a reply to: IAMTAT

Possibly he was Hurrian and Anu was considered to have taken the rule of Heaven from him, similar successive stages being seen in Greek mythology of course, but the Sumerians did recognise that the Universe had rebelled as it were from the original founders and descended into Chaos before order was restored.

The opposition of m e / partsu and n a m t a r / shimtu is not just conceptually implied, but turns out to be made explicit in third millennium cosmogony. Herein a cosmic ocean, N a m m a , produces a proto-universe, Heaven and Earth undivided. In a series of stages, all represented by gods, Heaven and Earth produce the Holy Mound (d u k u g ), which in its turn produces E n l i l , ‘Lord Ether’, who by his very existence separates Heaven and Earth. E n l i l , representing the space between Heaven and Earth, the sphere of human and animal life, organises what he finds by his decisions (n a m t a r / shimtu), and thus puts everything into place: the universe becomes a cosmos. Before being permanently subjected, however, the primordial universe (Heaven and Earth) rebels; its representative, a member of the older generation of gods, E n m e sh a r r a , ‘Lord All M e ’, tries to usurp E n l i l ’s prerogative to n a m t a r / shimtu (i.e. prerogative to make decisions). He is defeated by E n l i l and incarcerated in the netherworld for good. The myth can be read as a theistically-slanted argument on two modes of defining order: an immutable cosmological order (m e / partsu) whose unmistakable champion is E n m e sh a r r a , against a protean, individual-centred, volitional, anthropomorphic order, whose champion is E n l i l

A few concluding considerations, the religious tradition involved here despite some adaptations was alien to ancient Egypt, the Greeks just happened to dig out an old document recording it and carved it onto the walls of Edfu, it is considered to therefore have arrived from outside of Egypt and to be very old, to some this suggests Atlantis the only problem there being that's entirely mythical.



In some ways the manner in which the Shebtiu collective go about establishing order plot by plot reminds me of Second Life and also the principle of the Sumerian field constellation which has the sum of all measures incorporated within subdivided plots;



It's perhaps the case then this is the sort of thing that Fish people believe in as the Sumerian version of this is a myth relating to them, in symbolic terms the myth plays out every year in terms of the egg reaching the point of incubation in Pisces at the dividing line between that constellation and Aquarius at Spring equinox at present, 13,000 at the Autumnal.

Shebttiu

a reply to: Kantzveldt

Trampling was involved in threshing grain. Grain was threshed with a board called a tribulum (which is where the word tribulation comes from).

The threshing floor of Aruna was the site of the almost sacrifice of Isaac, and also the place that the temple of Solomon was built. Seeing how the temple was looked at as the axis mundi, and so is the cosmic egg, I'm wondering if there is some connection there.

Trampling is also related to reeds, papyrus are smashed by trampling I believe (sorry trying to be brief, can't remember the reference).

originally posted by: Kantzveldt
A few concluding considerations, the religious tradition involved here despite some adaptations was alien to ancient Egypt,

I'm not entirely sure of this. It has some correlation to a number of Egyptian cosmogonies - including the myth of Gegen Wer (the Great Honker).

the Greeks just happened to dig out an old document recording it and carved it onto the walls of Edfu,

I don't think this is likely. The temple of Edfu is dedicated to Horus and Hathor. It takes a lot of time and effort to carve hieroglyphs into the wall, and they're not going to put something up there unless it has real meaning and real significance.

The sequence seems to derive from Memphis and Heracleopolis, but is adapted for the Greek rulers' programs: escholarship.org...-6


More on the Shebtiu. The conclusion section is particularly interesting. starfoundation.nousphere.net...

Pisces at the dividing line between that constellation and Aquarius at Spring equinox at present, 13,000 at the Autumnal.

I think this "dividing line" is of fairly recent origin. The Greeks foisted their constellations on the Egyptians - and originally each constellation did not take up 1/12th of the sky. (as shown here: thumb101.shutterstock.com...)

a reply to: Byrd

Perhaps, there is some correlation to earlier tradition, but i think it is the Greeks that wish to place emphasis on an egg in the cosmologies of that period, there was similar interest in Northern Mesopotamia with the Atargatis mythos.

The zodiac constellations were relatively recent in Egypt, but really the transition points of the stellar asterisms along the ecliptic plane will be observed and considered no matter how you divide things overall, take Newark Earthworks for example.

a reply to: Kantzveldt
Here is what I was referring to earlier

Yam Suph

The ancient story tells of the brother of Osiris, Set(hippopotamus), breaking his body into thousands of pieces and broadcasting them over the land. In fact, hippos do break up papyrus rhizomes and can clear running streams that have been clogged. The story continues as Isis, his sister wife, collects the bits of his body and stores them in a chest. Rhizome cultivation would require collection of roots to be over-wintered in a dark, dry box. During planting season, the saved rhizome or "eye" could be replanted on woven mats at the edge of lakes. Evidence for chufa planted on mats is shown in the picure above. Osiris is sitting on a throne that sits on the woven mat with chufa growing out of the plaits. The canopied Sukkah is reminiscent of the huts of Sukkot.

originally posted by: Kantzveldt
a reply to: Byrd

Perhaps, there is some correlation to earlier tradition, but i think it is the Greeks that wish to place emphasis on an egg in the cosmologies of that period, there was similar interest in Northern Mesopotamia with the Atargatis mythos.

I would agree that it's Greek, but think that it's more similar to the (Orphic Egg/World Egg with its emergent self-engendering deity. I think that this makes sense in light of the rule of the Ptolemies who were quite Greek an not Mesopotamian. In addition, I'm not seeing any mention of Atargatis as self-generating or associated with eggs.

The zodiac constellations were relatively recent in Egypt, but really the transition points of the stellar asterisms along the ecliptic plane will be observed and considered no matter how you divide things overall, take Newark Earthworks for example.

If I recall correctly (from the time when I was doing astrology), when considering "the age of (whatever)" actually refers to a segment of the sky and not to the actual position of the constellations. Aries, for instance, shares mutual sky space with Taurus' body and Leo and Gemini likewise stake out most of the territory of Cancer. Even when I was doing astrology, I had trouble reconciling this notion - and it would seem that supporters of the idea can't agree on any date

So I would tend to discount any stellar associations.