Nun

Nun is the personification of the primordial waters, the infinite, dark, formless ocean that existed before creation. In every major Egyptian cosmogony — Heliopolitan, Hermopolitan, and Memphite — Nun represents the pre-creation state from which the ordered cosmos emerged. Unlike other gods, Nun has no temples, no cult, and no active mythology: he is not a deity who acts but a condition that precedes action.

Nun never ceased to exist after creation but continued to surround the ordered cosmos on all sides — above the sky, below the earth, and at the edges of the world. The annual Nile inundation was understood as an eruption of Nun's waters into the created world, a beneficial return of the primordial force that renewed fertility. The fear that Nun might one day reclaim the cosmos entirely was a persistent Egyptian theological anxiety, and the maintenance of Ma'at through proper ritual was understood as humanity's contribution to keeping the forces of Nun at bay.

In the Hermopolitan tradition, Nun is one of the Ogdoad — four pairs of male and female primordial deities representing the qualities of the pre-creation state: Nun and Naunet (water), Huh and Hauhet (infinity), Kuk and Kauket (darkness), and Amun and Amaunet (hiddenness). Together, the Ogdoad generated the conditions from which the first light emerged. In the Heliopolitan tradition, Atum arose from Nun to begin the process of creation, standing upon the primeval mound (benben) that was the first solid matter to emerge from the waters.