The Creation According To Hermopolis

The other great school of religious thought after Heliopolis was Hermopolis in Middle Egypt. Here eight gods and goddesses were worshipped. Nu and Nunet, Amun and Amunet, Heh and Hehut, Ke and Kekut. These eight gods were known as the Odgoad of Hermopolis and were regarded by some as the oldest gods in Egypt. The original mound from which the land of Egypt developed was supposed to have appeared at Hermopolis. It was here that the Sun God was supposed to have taken his stand having been created by the eight gods. It will be seen later this was not the only creation that the Sun God was supposed to have had.

Nu and Nunet stood for the primeval abyss out of which the world was created, while Amun and Amunet stood for the Hidden Ones. The others stood for mist and darkness. They were in fact the eight primeval deities from which everything developed. Associated with them was Thoth, the God Of Wisdom, called in Egyptian, Djhuti, and in Greek, Hermes. He is a moon god, a reckoner of time, and the Vizier of the Gods. Depicted as an ibis-headed man, his sacred animals are the baboon and the ibis, but this is really because there is a play upon their names in Egyptian. Thoth was thought to have invented writing, and wrote a book in which all the wisdom of the world was entered. One of his tasks was the restoration of the Eye of Re, after it had been stolen by Seth. Hermopolis was known as the City of Eight, and was a double city. The gods in this group of eight were all frog-headed and the goddesses all serpent-headed. Copies of the Book of Thoth existed in the temples and it was to this that the Greeks referred when they spoke of the Hermetic Books of the Egyptians. In the Judgement scene, it is Thoth who checks the scales, and Thoth who writes down the judgement. He was both the scribe of the Gods and the Vizier acting for Re during his absence, taking over also from Osiris in certain cases. He was also known as the "Twice Great".

There is no creation story of Thoth or of the other gods of Hermopolis, except that it was claimed that the primeval hill from which the whole land came, first appeared here, and that here Re took his stand upon it. Undoubtedly there were disputes between the priesthood of Hermopolis and that of Heliopolis, who had anyway a far more developed story. At some point the priests of Heliopolis gained the mastery, for the temple services carried on throughout Egypt were based on that of Heliopolis.