Ennead of Heliopolis

Before anything, there was water. It had no surface and no floor, no current and no sound, and it went on in every direction without a shore. Then a hump of ground came up through it, dark and wet, the way a mudbank shows when the Nile flood drains back, and something was sitting on top.

That was Atum, and nobody made him. The priests of Heliopolis, the temple city the Egyptians called Iunu, held that he had been inside the water all along and simply became. A spell cut into the walls of royal pyramids in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties addresses him under a double name, Atum-Khepri, and says he rose up as a hill and shone as the benben, the sacred stone kept at Heliopolis in the house of the benu bird. A god, a mound and a flash of light on stone, all at once. It is the oldest surviving picture of the first morning.

He was alone, which is a difficult position for a creator. The same spell says he spewed out Shu and spat out Tefnut, and the verbs are puns on their names. Other tellings have him sneeze, and others say he used his own hand. The methods differ and the result does not: a son who is air and a daughter who is moisture, and with them a pocket of breathable space inside the endless water. Atum then put his arms around the pair, the spell says, so that his own life force would be in them. One wet, undignified noise on a mudbank, and after it there is room for a world.

From there the family grows by generations. Shu and Tefnut have Geb, the earth, and Nut, the sky, and those two set the edges of everything. Geb and Nut have four children: Osiris and Isis, Set and Nephthys. Order and fertility on one side, disorder and its companion on the other, and both pairs needed. Count them from the top and there are nine. The Egyptians wrote the group with a word, psḏt, that means exactly that, the Nine, and the Greek word ennead says the same thing in a different language.

Nine was never a strict count. Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, is often counted in with them, and sometimes an older falcon god, Horus the Elder, is added instead. The pyramid spells already speak of a Great Ennead, a Lesser Ennead, a Dual Ennead and even Seven Enneads. Centuries later Seti I had an ennead carved for a temple at Redesiyah that was made of six major gods and three divine forms of himself. The word had come to mean something close to “the full company of the gods”, and the arithmetic was left to fend for itself.

What the Heliopolitan Nine looked like as a group, nobody says, because they were never one creature. They are nine separate gods with nine separate bodies, and what joins them is descent. The account is at heart a genealogy, and that is why it mattered to kings. In the burial chamber of a pyramid, under a ceiling of carved stars, the spells call on the Great Ennead in Heliopolis by name and ask that the dead king’s name and his monument should last as theirs do. They ask Atum to put his arms around the king and the pyramid, just as he once held Shu and Tefnut. The first act of creation is turned into a protective embrace around a tomb.

In later story the Nine have a second job. A long comic tale survives on a papyrus written in the reign of Ramesses V, in the Twentieth Dynasty, about the quarrel over the throne after the death of Osiris. Horus claims it as the son. Set claims it as the stronger. The Ennead sits as the court. Most of the bench leans toward Horus from the beginning, the sun god favours Set, and so the case drags on and on, hearing after hearing, while the two rivals try to settle it by other means. In the end the court finds for Horus and he is given his father’s crown. It is not a flattering portrait of divine justice. It is a recognisable one.

The power of the Nine is hard to overstate, because in the Heliopolitan view they are not rulers of the world so much as the world itself. Air, moisture, ground, sky, the growing of crops, the storm and the desert all sit somewhere on the family tree, and everything else that exists is a further unfolding of Atum. Sitting together, they can award the kingship of Egypt. Called on in a tomb, they can make a name last.

Their limits are just as plain. As a court they are slow and divided. As a system they never had Egypt to themselves. A short distance upriver at Memphis, the priests of Ptah taught that their god had thought the world in his heart and spoken it with his tongue, and that Atum and his Nine were among the things he spoke. At Hermopolis the story began with eight gods, not nine. Egyptologists long held that the Heliopolitan list was itself a piece of temple politics, drawn up to seat Atum at the head of the table and fit powerful gods such as Osiris in below him, though that reading has been questioned. Whatever its beginnings, the family of nine kept its place from the Old Kingdom down to the time of the Ptolemies. The water it rose from was never said to have gone away.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the nine gods of the Ennead of Heliopolis?

The Ennead of Heliopolis is made up of Atum, his children Shu and Tefnut, their children Geb and Nut, and the four children of Geb and Nut: Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys. The nine form four generations of one family. Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, is often counted with them as well.

What does the word Ennead mean?

Ennead comes from the Greek for “the nine”. The Egyptian word it translates, psḏt, usually read as Pesedjet, means the same thing. In practice the Egyptians used the word loosely, and some enneads had more or fewer than nine members.

How did Atum create the first gods in the Heliopolis creation story?

In the Heliopolitan account Atum came into being by himself in the first waters and appeared on a mound that rose out of them. A pyramid spell says he spewed out Shu, the air, and spat out Tefnut, moisture, while other versions have him sneeze or use his own hand. Shu and Tefnut then became the parents of Geb, the earth, and Nut, the sky.

What did the Ennead do in the dispute between Horus and Set?

The Ennead sat as the court of gods that judged whether Horus or Set should inherit the throne of Osiris. In a tale written down in the reign of Ramesses V, most of the Ennead favours Horus while the sun god favours Set, so the case runs for a very long time. The court finally rules for Horus.

Was the Ennead of Heliopolis the only Egyptian creation story?

No. The priests of Ptah at Memphis taught that Ptah created the world by thought and speech and that Atum and the Ennead were among the things he made. Hermopolis had its own account built around eight first gods. The Heliopolitan Ennead stayed important from the Old Kingdom to the Ptolemaic period all the same.

Related Entries

Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys, Horus, Nun, Khepri, Bennu, Ra, Ptah