Atum was the primordial creator-god of ancient Egypt — the self-created being who rose from the waters of chaos at the beginning of time and brought forth the first gods and the ordered world from his own substance. The first of the great Ennead of Heliopolis and the setting sun in his aspect, he is the source from which all things came, the god who made himself and then made everything.
The Self-Created One
Atum (“the complete one,” or “the all”) was the creator-god in the cosmogony of Heliopolis, the most influential of Egypt's creation myths. In the beginning there was only Nun, the dark, formless primordial waters of chaos — and from these waters Atum brought himself into being, the first being to exist, self-created and self-generated, rising upon the first mound of dry land (the benben) to emerge from the endless deep. He was often merged with the sun-god as Atum-Ra, and represented the sun in its setting, evening aspect, as Khepri was the dawn and Ra the noon.
The First Creation
Having created himself, Atum then created the first other gods from his own body, without a partner. By his own act — spitting, or sneezing, or by his own seed — he brought forth the first divine couple: Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture. From Shu and Tefnut came Geb (earth) and Nut (sky); and from Geb and Nut came Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys. These nine gods — Atum and the eight who descended from him — formed the Great Ennead of Heliopolis, the foundational family of the Egyptian pantheon. Thus Atum was the father and source of the gods, the single being from whom the whole divine family, and through them the ordered world, unfolded.
The Lord of Totality
Atum's name and nature express the idea of completeness and totality — he was “the all,” the one who contained all things within himself before they were separated out into the many. He was depicted as a man wearing the double crown of Egypt, a king among the gods, and he was associated with the finished, completed state of creation as well as its beginning. In some texts he was also the god who would, at the end of all things, return the world to the primordial waters from which it came, so that he was both the first and the last, the beginning and the end of the created order.
The Source of All Things
Atum endures as one of the great creator-gods of world mythology — the self-created being who rose from chaos and brought forth the gods and the world from his own substance, the father of the Ennead, the lord of totality. He embodies the Egyptian vision of creation as an emergence of order, life and multiplicity from a single, self-generated source rising out of the formless deep, and stands at the very head of the family of gods whose dramas would shape three thousand years of Egyptian faith.
Before there was anything, he made himself out of the waters of chaos — and then, alone, brought forth the first gods from his own body, and the whole world unfolded from the one who was "the all."