Brook wrote:"until Ra rose from the waters of Nun (various gods and goddesses of Chaos)"
Magical Egypt - Cosmology Part 8 of 8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc5c608C9RY
#62
http://www.nobledreams.co.uk/viewtopic.php?pid=24013#p24013
Brook I’ve been studying the Egyptians Gods/Goddesses all day and the stories are sooo confusing what with all the differing accounts, especially with the Ennead, the Ogdoad and the Memphis Cosmology all competing. Then there’s the fact that the Egyptians authorities apparently combined Gods/Goddesses to keep the peace when one from another city began to become more popular than their own, Ra becoming Atum-Ra and Amun-Ra (among others) for instance.
As relates to this thread, I did find bits of it interesting though, such as re Ptah:
His Tatenen form is represented by a young and vigorous man wearing a crown with two tall plumes that surround the solar disk. He thus embodies the underground fire that rumbles and raises the earth. As such, he was particularly revered by metalworkers and blacksmiths, but he was equally feared because it was him who caused earthquakes and tremors of the earth's crust. In this form also, Ptah is the master of ceremonies for Heb Sed, a ceremony traditionally attesting to the first thirty years of the Pharaoh's reign.
The god Ptah could be opposite the sun god Re, or Aten during the Amarna period, where he embodied the divine essence with which the sun god was fed to come into existence, that is to say to be born, according to the Memphite mythological texts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptah
I also found it interesting that in the Ogdoad of the Hermopolitan Cosmogony they had a group of eight gods that created the world, four male and four female. Only the female’s names were simply the feminine form of the name of the God, so really could be considered as only four. (Hermaphrodites?) The male gods were represented as having frog’s heads and the females as having serpent’s heads, thus associated with rising up out of the primordial waters of Nun, with Amon being the wind that stirred those waters up. Then it’s usually said that the gods and their consorts were usually “brother and sister”, with poor old Geb (Earth) and Nut (the sky) being forced apart by Ra, who was jealous of them. Seems Ra was the only god who didn’t have a consort, or feminine counterpart. That makes sense to me if he might have been the Fire Elemental that E says went off on his own and ultimately became our Sun.
I got the above information from both a book I have called “Egyptian Mythology” by Veronica Ions and also from Wiki.
I have a question for you though. I’ve only seen the wave symbol in conjunction with female gods, or goddesses. Has this been your experience too? Or is it associated with male gods also?