Information about Atum

Atum

This article is about Atum, the Egyptian deity. For the Yu-Gi-Oh character, see Yugi Mutou.

Atum (alternatively spelled Tem, Temu, Tum, and Atem) is an important deity in Egyptian mythology, whose cult centred on the city of Heliopolis. His name is thought to be derived from the word 'tem' which means to complete or finish. Thus he has been interpreted as being the 'complete one' and also the finisher of the world, which he returns to watery chaos at the end of the creative cycle. As creator he was seen as the underlying substance of the world, the gods and all things being made of his flesh or alternatively being his kas.

Atum is one of the most important and frequently mentioned gods from earliest times, as evidenced by his prominence in the Pyramid Texts, where he is portrayed as both creator god and father to the king. He is usually depicted as a man wearing either the royal head-cloth or the dual white and red crown of Upper Egypt, and Lower Egypt, reinforcing his connection with kingship. He is also sometimes shown as a serpent, the form which he returns to at the end of the creative cycle and also occasionally as a mongoose, lion, bull, lizard or ape.

Atum
in hieroglyphs

In the Heliopolitan Ennead cosmogony, he was considered to be the first god, having created himself, sitting on a mound (benben) (or identified with the mound itself), from the primordial waters (Nu). Early myths state that Atum created the god Shu and goddess Tefnut from his semen by masturbation in the city of Annu (the Egyptian name for Heliopolis)^[1], a belief strongly associated with Atum's nature as an hermaphrodite (hence his name meaning completeness). Strictly, the myth states that Atum ejaculated his Semen into his mouth, impregnating himself, possibly indicating autofellatio, which has led many to misinterpret (euphemistically) the myth as indicating creation from mucus.

Later belief held that Shu and Tefnut were created by Atum having sex with his shadow, which was referred to as Iusaaset (also spelt Juesaes, Ausaas, Iusas, and Jusas, and in Greek as Saosis), meaning (the) great (one who) comes forth. Consequently, Iusaaset was seen as the mother and grandmother of the gods. The strength, hardiness, medical properties, and edibility, led the acacia tree to be considered the tree of life, and thus the oldest, which was situated close to, and north of, Heliopolis, was said to be the birthplace of the gods. Thus, as the mother, and grandmother, of the gods, Iusaaset was said to own this tree.

In the Old Kingdom the Egyptians believed that Atum lifted the dead king's soul from his pyramid to the starry heavens.^[2]. By the time of the New Kingdom, the Atum mythos, merged with that of Ra, who was also the creator and a solar deity, their two identities were joined into Atum-Ra. But as Ra was the whole sun, and Atum became to be seen as the sun when it sets (depicted as an old man leaning on his staff), while Khepera was seen as the sun when it was rising.

Notes

1. ^ Egyptian gods Atum URL accessed December 30, 2006.
2. ^ [1] retrieved November 9, 2006

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Yugi Mutou (武藤遊戯 Mutō Yūgi
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deity or god is a postulated preternatural or supernatural being, who is always of significant power, worshipped, thought holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, or respected by human beings.
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Ancient Egyptian religion encompasses the beliefs and rituals of Ancient Egypt. It was followed in Egypt for over three thousand years until the establishment of Coptic Christianity and Islam.
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Heliopolis (Greek: Ἡλίου πόλις or Ἡλίουπόλις
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Ka may refer to:

Ka (cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet
Ka (kana), a Japanese character
Karnataka, a state of India ()
Ka band, the kurz-above band in the electromagnetic spectrum
K_a, the acid dissociation constant in chemistry

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The Pyramid Texts are a collection of ancient Egyptian religious texts from the time of the Old Kingdom. Written in Old Egyptian, the pyramid texts were carved on the walls and sarcophagi of the pyramids at Saqqara during the 5th and 6th Dynasties of the Old Kingdom.
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Upper Egypt is a narrow that extends from the cataract boundaries of modern-day Aswan to the area between El-Aiyat and Zawyet Dahshur, south of modern-day Cairo. The northern section of Upper Egypt, between El-Aiyat and Asyut is sometimes known as Middle Egypt.
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Lower Egypt is the northern-most section of Egypt. It refers to the fertile Nile Delta region, which stretches from the area between El-Aiyat and Zawyet Dahshur, south of modern-day Cairo, and the Mediterranean Sea.
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Egyptian hieroglyphs
Child systems Hieratic

ISO 15924 Egyp

Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
Egyptian hieroglyphs (sometimes called hieroglyphics
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Cosmogony, or cosmogeny, is any theory concerning the coming into existence or origin of the universe, or an origin belief about how reality came to be. The word comes from the Greek κοσμογονία (or
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Benben, in Egyptian mythology, or more specifically in the Heliopolitan tradition, was the mound that arose from the primordial waters, Nu, and on which the creator god Atum settled. In the Pyramid Texts, e.g. Utterance 1587, Atum himself is at times referred to as "mound".
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Nu may refer to:

Nu (letter), a letter in the Greek alphabet: lowercase ν, uppercase ?
Nu (kana), the Japanese characters ぬ and ?
NU (sound project)
Nu (mythology), the male form of the Egyptian goddess Naunet

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In Egyptian mythology, Shu (meaning dryness and he who rises up) is one of the primordial gods, a personification of air, one of the Ennead of Heliopolis.
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In Egyptian mythology, Tefnut is a goddess of water and fertility, indeed her name means moist waters (i.e. rain). She was created by Atum (a solar god, as were Ra, Horakty, and Khepri) from his mucus, a mythology that may be related to the alternative translation of her
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Semen is an organic fluid (also known as seminal fluid) that usually contains spermatozoa. It is secreted by the gonads (sexual glands) and other sexual organs of male or hermaphroditic animals for fertilization of female ova. The process of discharge is called ejaculation.
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hermaphrodite is an organism that posses both male and female genetalia.^[1] In many species, hermaphroditism is a common part of the life-cycle, particularly in some asexual animals and some plants.
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Ejaculation is the ejecting of semen from the penis, and is usually accompanied by orgasm. It is usually the result of sexual stimulation, which may include prostate stimulation. Rarely, it is due to prostatic disease.
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Autofellatio is the act of oral stimulation of one's own penis as a form of masturbation. Most men do not possess sufficient flexibility and/or penis length to safely perform the necessary frontbend.
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highly specialized aspect of its associated subject.
Please help [ improve this article] by adding more general information.

Mucus is a slippery secretion of the lining of the mucous membranes in the body.
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Sex refers to the male and female duality of biology and reproduction. Unlike organisms that only have the ability to reproduce asexually, sexed male and female pairs have the ability to produce offspring through meiosis and fertilization.
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A shadow is a region of darkness where light is blocked. It occupies all of the space behind an opaque object with light in front of it. The cross section of a shadow is a two-dimensional silhouette, or reverse projection of the object blocking the light.
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Hardiness of plants is a term used to describe their ability to survive adverse growing conditions. It is usually limited to discussions of climatic adversity. Thus a plant's ability to tolerate cold, heat, drought, or wind are typically considered measurements of hardiness.
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Pharmaceutical chemistry may refer to:

Medicinal chemistry
H3 Pharmaceutical Chemistry

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eating (formally, ingestion) is the process of consuming nutrition, i.e. food, for the purpose of providing for the nutritional needs of an animal, particularly their energy requirements and to grow.
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Acacia
Miller

Species

About 1,300; see List of Acacia species

Acacia is a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described in Africa by the Swedish botanist Linnaeus in 1773.
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tree of life is a mystical concept, a metaphor for common descent, and a motif in various world theologies and philosophies.

Conceptual and mythological "trees of life"

Various forms of trees of life
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Heliopolis (Greek: Ἡλίου πόλις or Ἡλίουπόλις
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The Old Kingdom is the name commonly given to that period in the 3rd millennium BC when Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization in complexity and achievement – this was the first of three so-called "Kingdom" periods, which mark the high points of civilization
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Ra (Re and later Amun-Ra; reconstructed as *ri:ʕu) is the ancient Egyptian sun god. He was a major deity in ancient Egyptian religion by the fifth dynasty.
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solar deity (also heliolatry or sun worship), is a god or goddess who represents the sun, or an aspect of it. People have worshipped these for all of recorded history.
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