Ultimately, a final end did await the gods. In Egyptian mythology it is clear that only the elements from which the primordial world had arisen would eventually remain. This apocalyptic view of the end of the cosmos and of the gods themselves is elaborated upon in an important section of the Coffin Texts in which the creator Atum states that eventually, after millions of years of differentiated creation, he and Osiris will return to ‘one place’, the undifferentiated condition prevailing before the creation of the world (CT VII467-68). In the Book of the Dead this ‘end of days’ is even more clearly described in a famous dialogue between Atum and Osiris in which, when Osiris mourned the fact that he would eventually be isolated in eternal darkness, the god Atum comforted him by pointing out that only the
(Left) The god Osiris, wrapped in a mummy’s bandages, stands beside a stylized tomb. Detail of coffin decoration. 21 st dynasty. Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
(Below) Neheh (recurrent time) and Djet (continuous time) personified as a god and goddess representing differing aspects of eternity in ancient Egyptian thought. Detail, outer shrine of Tutankhamun. Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
Isis-Aphrodite, a form of the ancient goddess widely worshipped in the Roman Period. Isis ivas one of the last of Egypt’s deities to survive historically. University of Leipzig Museum.
Two of them would survive when the world eventually reverted to the primeval ocean from which all else arose. Then, it is said, Atum and Osiris would take the form of serpents (symbolic of unformed chaos) and there would be neither gods nor men to perceive them (BD 175). Despite their seemingly endless cycles of birth, ageing, death and rebirth, the gods would finally perish in the death of the cosmos itself, and there would exist only the potential for life and death within the waters of chaos.
World History
