Atum jtm / tm

Overview

Atum is the god the Egyptians put at the beginning, and his name means approximately to be finished.

That is the first strange thing about him, and it is not a translation error. Budge derives the name from the root tem or temem, "to be complete, to make an end of," and reads the god accordingly as "the form of the Sun-god which brought the day to an end, i.e., as the evening or night sun" [budge-1904].

So the deity who exists before anything else is named for endings. Egypt's creator is its sunset.

He is also, uniquely among the major gods, never given an animal head. Budge notes flatly that "he is always depicted in the human form" [budge-1904]. In a religion of falcons, jackals, cows, beetles and cobras, the first being is a man in a crown.

Attestation history

Old Kingdom. Tem appears in Budge's roster of gods named in the Pyramid Texts at Unas 207, with the compound form Tem-kheprer at Pepi II 662 [budge-1904]. He heads the Great Company of Heliopolis in the paut lists: the Unas litany at line 240 begins "Tem, Shu, Tefnut, Seb, Nut, Isis, Set, Nephthys, Thoth, and Horus," and the twelve-god version at Pepi II 669 begins with him likewise [budge-1904].

Maspero's explanation of why these lists vary is worth recording: "The number nine was the original number, but each of the nine gods, especially the first and the last, could be developed" — and when Thebes wanted Amun in the Heliopolitan company, he "could be set at the head of it either in the place of Temu, the legitimate chief of the paut, or side by side with him" [budge-1904]. Atum's position is the one other cities had to negotiate with.

The oldest origin story. Budge is specific about where the myth of the first generation is written down: "The oldest legend about the origin of the gods is contained in the text of Pepi I., wherein it is said (line 465) that once upon a time Tem went to the city of Annu and that he there produced from his own body by the irregular means of masturbation his two children Shu and Tefnut" [budge-1904].

The creation narrative. Budge translates a first-person account in which the god sets out the whole sequence:

I came into being from primeval matter, and I appeared under the form of multitudes of things from the beginning. Nothing existed at that time, and it was I who made whatsoever was made. I was alone, and there was no other being who worked with me in that place. [budge-1904]

and then:

I found there no place wherein I could stand. I worked a spell on my heart, and I laid a foundation before me… It was I who emitted Shu, and it was I who emitted Tefnut, and from being one god I became three. [budge-1904]

Later — the Book of Gates. In the eleventh hour a winged serpent is addressed by Ra, and Budge describes what happens: "The god who stands by the winged serpent is Temu, who springs out of the reptile's back when Ra addresses it; but as soon as the words cease Temu disappears into the serpent" [budge-1904]. He exists for exactly the duration of the speech.

Geography. Budge's Lower Egyptian nome list gives the eighth nome as Theket (Succoth), capital Per-Atem (Pithom), deity Atem [budge-1904] — the Egyptian name behind the Pithom of Exodus i. 11.

What the texts say

"From being one god I became three." This is the cleanest statement of plurality-from-unity in the corpus, and it is arithmetic, not metaphor. One becomes three by emitting two. Everything after — nine gods, twelve gods, the whole Ennead — is expansion of that first division.

Creation is an act of the body, and Egypt did not tidy it up for long. The Pepi I text says masturbation. Budge, writing in 1904, calls the myth "crude" and speculates about "semi-savage" origins, which is his period speaking rather than the evidence. What the evidence actually shows is discomfort later: Budge records that Egyptians eventually "assumed that his shadow, khaibit, acted the part of wife to him," or that the goddess Iusaaset was his wife [budge-1904] — and elsewhere he records two female counterparts attached to Tem, Iusaaset and Nebt-Hetep, both in the company of Heliopolis. A consort was retrofitted onto a god who originally had none, and apparently more than once.

Completion and becoming are the same god's two ends. Tem is "to finish"; ḫpr is "to come into being." Morning is Khepri, noon is Ra, evening is Atum. The compound Tem-kheprer at Pepi II 662 puts both words in one name.

There is a further implication the texts do not spell out but the etymology carries: if tem means completion, then the god of the first moment and the god of the last are the same, and the day is a closed circuit rather than a line.

Iconography

A man. Bearded, human-headed, generally in the Double Crown of Upper and Lower Egypt — which reads as a claim of rule over the whole country rather than a nature-symbol.

He carries the was sceptre and ankh. In the solar barque he appears as the evening form. In the Book of Gates eleventh hour he is the figure emerging from the winged serpent's back.

The absence of an animal form is the iconographic argument: this god is not of anything in the world, because he precedes the world.

Cult and practice

Annu / Heliopolis is his city and the seat of the Great Company. His priests held the theological initiative that other centres — Memphis, Thebes — had to answer, absorb, or overwrite.

Per-Atem / Pithom in the eastern Delta carried his name into a second tradition entirely; it is one of the two store-cities of Exodus i. 11.

In funerary practice he is addressed directly for breath: the deceased says "Hail, thou god Tem, grant unto me the sweet breath which dwelleth in thy nostrils" [budge-1904].

See also the Eighth Division — Tem sits in the sealed Circle Sesheta with Khepera and Shu, on a weaving loom, and the souls inside are heard from outside "like the hum of many bees of honey."