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One Alone in the Water
by
Dr. Wayne Glowka
Professor of English
Ages before the microscope revealed that human life begins as a fertilized ovum floating in uterine fluid, creation myths--almost like unconscious memories of the beginnings of human life--posited that the universe began when a single being appeared in the dark primeval waters.
An embryo
This being rose in light, ordered the universe around itself, and filled creation with other living beings. The universe thus has a divine purpose, a purpose that people share.
The myths offer little explanation of where the original being or the primeval waters came from. But after this original being became aware of itself, it began creating the rest of the universe, sometimes out of itself, sometimes out of the original matter in the primeval waters. Sometimes the original being has a spiritual nature; sometimes it has a physical nature. The nature of the being reflects basic values of the culture.
The Egyptian Creation Myth
The
Egyptian Book of the Dead
In ancient Egyptian fragments dating from 3000 to 1500 B.C.E., the original being describes itself as a spirit that arose in the waters:
I am the Eternal Spirit,
I am the sun that rose from the Primeval Waters. ("Egyptian" 17)
This original being is the sun god of Heliopolis, called Atun or Re. The god is at once spiritual but also perhaps physical in its identification with the sun. It is the source of light and thus life. Although ancient Egyptian religion was polytheistic (i.e., it had many gods), it also had a tendency to be monotheistic, in that from time to time pharaohs and priests stressed one god above all others, who in this view were all forms of the one god.
Christians familiar with the opening words of the Gospel of John might find the Egyptian god’s self-description familiar:
My soul is God, I am the creator of the Word.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I am the Word, which will never be annihilated
in this my name of "Soul"
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Word came into being.
All things were mine when I was alone. ("Egyptian" 17)
In essence, the Egyptian god created himself: he created the Word, and he is the Word.
As a self-created being, the Egyptian god is the source of everything else. He is the source of order and goodness:
Evil is my abomination, I see it not.
I am the Creator of the Order wherein I live.
Creation is thus the imposition of the self on lifeless matter of the universe. The Egyptian god is also the source of the other gods, who are in essence parts of himself:
I was Re is [all] his first manifestations:
I was the great one who came into being of himself,
who created all his names as the Companies of the [lesser] gods,
he who is irresistible among the gods.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I considered in my heart, I planned in my head how I should make every shape
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
other beings—the myriad forms of Khopri—and that there
should come into being their children and theirs.
So it was I who spat forth Shu and expectorated Tefnut
so that where there had been one god there were now three as well as myself
and there was now a male and female in the world. ("Egyptian 17-18)
Shu and Tefnut combine to produce other gods, who in turn produce others. Mankind, however, comes from the tears of Re. As in other myths, mankind has a divine origin, this time from the sadness of a god.
Other Creation Myths
Other creation myths from around the world also tell of a creator god who rises from the water and becomes the source of all.
A Torah Scroll
A clear example of this process can be found in the ancient Hebrew account in Genesis 1, which was compiled "probably as late as the fifth century B.C.E." (Leeming 24). In this account, God the creator, who seems to have no origin, gives form to a universe in chaos. "In the beginning," reads the text, "God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen. 1.1). It is not clear if this claim is a summary of the story that follows or is the first step in the process. Whatever the case, "the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep" (Gen. 1.2). The verse describes the dark primeval waters and the disordered stuff of the physical world.
The next two sentences remind us in general ways of the Egyptian account of the sun god rising from the waters:
And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. (Gen. 1.2-3)
The Hebrew God is not the sun, and the light created in this pronouncement does not come from the sun—but the Egyptian god is not truly the sun either. In both cases, the creator god brings light to a watery, chaotic world.
The Hebrew God then brings order into the world by separating light from darkness, waters from waters, and waters from the earth (Gen. 1.4-10). Then He calls upon the earth and seas to bring forth creatures of various kinds (Gen. 1.11-13, 20-25) and speaks the sun, moon, and stars into existence as principles of order in the firmament (Gen. 1.14-19). With the world prepared, God speaks human beings into existence as the rulers of the physical world, for whose benefit all other things are made. In this version of creation, humans come from the words of God, and male and female are created together (Gen. 1.26-30; see note below on Gen. 2).
Michelangelo's "Expulsion from the Garden of Eden" in the
Sistine Chapel
The Mesopotamian Enuma elish, which is at least as old as "the reign of Nebuchadrezzar in the twelfth century B.C.E." (Leeming 18), tells a story that is more dynamic than the Egyptian and Hebrew accounts of how the god of light rose above the waters.
In the polytheistic Mesopotamian account, the stuff of the universe is not inert matter. Each component of the universe is a god, and creation is a series of battles between the divine components. The original gods are the primeval waters: the male Apsu, who is the sweet water ocean; and the female Tiamat, who is the salt water ocean. These two watery gods beget generations of gods whose surging back and forth disturbs the original two gods ("Mesopotamian" 19). Apsu decides to destroy his children, but Ea, the wise god of earth—who is earth—rises up and defeats Apsu. Ea builds his palace on Apsu, and thus sweet water is placed under the earth ("Mesopotamian" 20-21). Ea then fathers Marduk, who is the sun who sees and hears all. When Tiamat, the salt ocean, arises in storm, Marduk defeats her in battle and cuts her in two: half of her remains on the earth as ocean while the other half is placed into the firmament as the blue sky ("Mesopotamian" 22). Marduk later creates mankind from the blood of a god who sided with Tiamat in the battle, and we see that mankind once again has a divine origin ("Mesopotamian" 23).
The Mesopotamian Deity Marduk
The Indian myth recorded in the Rig Veda (c.2000-1700 B.C.E.) offers more questions than answers about the beginning of things, but it does suggest that all things began with an original being alone in the dark waters.
The Hindu god Shiva
The Indian myth challenges our ability to reason about the origins of things and claims that there was a time when nothingness itself did not exist:
Then even nothingness was not, nor existence.
There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.
What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?
Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed? ("Indian" 29)
The universe was then was completely unlike the universe that we know:
Then there were neither death nor immortality,
nor was there then the torch of night and day. ("Indian" 29)
However, the myth seems to posit that the original being, "the One," was there, alone in the darkness of the water:
The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining.
There was that One then, and there was no other.
At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness.
All this was only unillumined water. ("Indian" 30)
The One, however, arose at last, "born of the power of heat" and desire, both the products of the mind:
The One which came to be, enclosed in nothing,
arose at last, born of the power of heat.
In the beginning desire descended on it—
that was the primal seed, born of the mind.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Seminal powers made fertile mighty forces.
Below was strength, and over it was impulse. ("Indian" 30)
While the myths of the Egyptians, Hebrews, and Mesopotamians do not question the authority of their stories, the Rig Veda admits that the ultimate truth of the myth of creation is essentially unknowable. There are no witnesses:
But, after all, who knows, and who can say
whence it all came, and how creation happened?
The gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen? ("Indian" 30)
The surprising thing about this doubt is the final admission that the creator itself may not even know the truth about the origins of the universe:
Whence all creation had its origin,
he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
he, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows—or maybe even he does not know. ("Indian" 30)
This Indian text has a philosophical framework that is alien to the other texts examined here. Nonetheless, it still posits, however tenuously, that all things came from one thing alone in the water.
Myths from Africa and the Americas, recorded in modern times by Europeans, offer similar notions of one alone in the water.
In the African Boshongo story of creation, Bumba, the original being, is alone in the darkness of the water:
In the beginning, in the dark, there was nothing but water.
And Bumba was alone. ("Boshongo" 39)
In a process reminiscent of the oral creation of the universe by the Hebrew God, Bumba vomits up the heavenly bodies. After he vomits up the sun, it "spread light over everything" and "dried up the water until the black edges of the world began to show" ("Boshongo" 40)—and thus the first being separated light from darkness and the seas from the land. Bumba continues to vomit up creatures, and these creatures then create other creatures of their kind.
The Mayan Plumed Serpent God
In the Mayan creation story from the Popul-Vuh, the original being is alone in both the sky and the sea. This dual existence may seem mysterious, but the genetic relationship between the seas and the sky in the myths of the Hebrews and the Mesopotamians may offer a clue to understanding the duality. In essence, the seas and the sky in these myths are one element. The Mayan God and the sky and the seas all seem to be coeval in their existence:
In the very beginning, there was only the still sky and the still sea. Nothing moved, and there was no sound because there were no living creatures. There was no earth and no sun or moon to give light. Only God was surrounded with His own light, and He was in the heart of the still, dark sky and in the heart of the still, dark sea. In the sky He was called Hurricane, the Heart of Heaven; and in the depths of the water, where he seemed to shimmer as if covered by green and blue feathers, He was called The Feathered Serpent. ("Mayan" 60)
The Mayan God is thus alone in the darkness of the primeval waters. Like the Hebrew God, the Mayan God is source of his own light long before sun is created. Also like the Hebrew God, the Mayan God creates by speaking:
First He said: "Let the emptiness be filled! Let the earth appear!"
And the earth appeared, with mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, grass, and trees and vines. But there was still no sound in the darkness.
Then God said: "Shall there be only silence under the trees?"
Then the animals appeared. . . . ("Mayan" 60).
The goal of the Mayan God is to have people and the dawn appear together. The animals are not satisfactory as creations because they cannot communicate properly and say the names of God ("Mayan" 59-60). After some trial and error with mud and wooden people, God sends two parts of Himself to give order to things. These two parts have sons themselves who make the sun and the moon move. Then God makes satisfactory people from corn meal and corn liquor. Since these people are capable of seeing too much and too far, God darkens their vision to make them more like men and less like gods. However, despite this loss of vision, the people are happy, and God is happy. The Mayan God’s purpose, like that of God in Genesis 1, is fulfilled: both create a beautiful world for people.
All of these myths present a universe ordered by one original being, a supreme being. The supreme being may not necessarily be the source of everything, but he is the source of order. He separates the chaotic universe into discrete parts and bodies that follow the patterns he ordains. The end of creation is the human race, which has a divine origin and must follow a divinely ordered plan. The current universe has the sky, the earth, and the seas—all in their places. The universe is ordered so that people have a suitable place to live.
Note on Genesis 2
An older story (from around 950 B.C.E.) appears in Genesis 2. This story gives a very different account of creation. In it, God forms "man of the dust of the ground" and breathes "into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2.7). The God plants a garden as place for the man to live (Gen. 2.8). God makes animals out of the ground for the man to name, but none of the animals is a suitable mate for the man (Gen.2.19-20). God therefore puts the man to sleep and makes a woman from one of the man’s ribs (Gen. 2.21-22).
Works Cited
"Boshongo (Bantu): Bumba’s Creation." Leeming 39-40.
"Egyptian: The Beginnings." Leeming 17-18.
"Hebrew: Genesis." Leeming 24-26.
"Indian: The Rig Veda and the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad." Leeming 29-31.
Leeming, David Adams, ed. The World of Myth. New York: Oxford UP, 1990.
"Mayan: The Popul-Vuh." Leeming 60-62.
"Mesopotamian: Enuma elish." Leeming 18-24.
For further exploration, click on the following links:
There are several pages in Dr. Deborah Vess's World Civilization Virtual Library that are relevant to topics in this discussion. You will find many resources on these pages on myth, history, and culture. See especially:
You might also consult the Myths and Legends database, which has an unbelievable amount of information on almost all the world's myths.
Universal Myths and Mysterious Places: Uranus site
Creation Myths from the Bantu, Silluk, Sioux, Chinese, and .. Quantum Physics! See also Creation Myths: Debate from this same website, with links to the Epic of Gilgamesh story and debate over truth of Biblical accounts.