i.2.3 Egyptian Mythology
In Early Egyptian mythology, the principal deities were also heavenly bodies, and they made great efforts to calculate and predict the time and place of their appearances. One Egyptian legend declares that the Sky goddess Nut gives birth to the Sun god, Ra, once a year. Nut is often portrayed as a naked female stretched across the sky, and the Sun is shown entering her mouth, passing through her star speckled body and emerging from her birth canal nine months later, from the spring equinox to the winter solstice. Thus, Ra becomes a self-creating god, i.e. the Universe is self-creating and eternal.
According to the ancient Egyptian creation myths depicted in many tomb wall decorations and writings, the World emerged from an lifeless waters of chaos, called Nu, when the sun rose for the first time. Some myths attributed the creation to the set of eight primordial deities called the Ogdoad, the self-engendered god Atum and his offspring, the contemplative deity Ptah, and the mysterious, transcendent god Amun. The first thing to emerge from the waters is a pyramid-shaped mound, called the benben. The sun was also closely associated with creation, and it was said to have first risen from the mound, as the general sun-god Ra or as the god Khepri, who represented the newly-risen sun.