ATUM ANCIENT EGYPT GOD
LAST UPDATED 7/1/24
INTRODUCTION
THE TRUE MEANING OF ATUM’S NAME
HOW DID ATUM CREATE THE UNIVERSE?
ATUM’S TRANSFORMATION & USE IN GENESIS
THE 3 POWERS OF ATUM: MAGIC, SPEECH & PERCEPTION
INTRODUCTION
The meaning, origin and the appropriation of the name of the Ancient Egyptian God Atum, hides a stunning secret in plain sight. Because Atum is about light. In fact he can be considered as a photon of light. In Genesis Atum was the muse to describe everything from God’s creation of light, to Adam and Eve.
In Ancient Egypt, Atum was associated with both the origin of the Cosmos as well as the sun. Atum was the one of the earlier, creator gods of the group of nine deities known as the Ennead. Atum was said to have created himself and then the other gods who all originated from him. And according to early Egyptian beliefs, all of the other gods were said to have received Atum’s Ka, or vital force. Atum’s name had several derivatives. This is very important as you’ll see. The Coptic Version was Atoum. Another important alternative name was Atem,. Other alternative names were, Tem Temu and Tum.
THE TRUE MEANING OF ATUM’S NAME
The Egyptian verb tm, thought to be the origin of Atum’s name. Tm meant ‘to finish.’ or to complete. Atum is actually A+ tum. This distinction explains what the idea of completion was really meant to convey. And it all becomes clear in an etymology search And right there, the first secret that has been hiding in plain sight about who or what the God Atum really was..
Because Atum, was a metaphor for that indivisible unit that we know today as the atom.
I was struck by the statement in the second half in the Bible’s creation story in the Gospel of John. which says “ without him was not anything made that was made.” Why bother to add that second statement?. Unimportant Semantics?. Maybe, maybe not. let’s see if we can get to the bottom of things.
By searching for the etymology of the word atom, rather than the word Atum, the secret is unravelled. The search results in some startling co-incidences, Assuming of course that these are all just simple coincidences. So here’s a summary of the search from etymology online..
From Etymology Online:
The ‘atom’ means an indivisible extremely minute body, or the building block of the universe, which comes from Late 15th Century
Greek ‘atomos ‘ “which meant uncut and indivisible. Tomos = cutting while A + tomos = the opposite. ie not cutting;
From the Greek comes the Latin ‘atomus’ meaning "indivisible particle.”
The 3rd root comes from PIE which is an acronym for Proto-Indo-European languages.
The root word Tem in PIE means to cut. like the Greek, A+Tem suggest the opposite meaning. ie ‘not cutting’ again suggesting indivisible.
Tem was one of Atum’s alternative names.
PIE is believed to have been originally one language that was spoken from roughly 4500 to 2500 BCE. Those original speakers of Proto-Indo-European languages became spread out in the Middle East and the Mediterranean as they migrated from the Pontiac Caspian Steppes which is was an area that stretched from the South Ural mountains in Russia, through Eastern Europe, and ending at the point where it narrowed and became a part of the larger Eurasian Steppe. The history and geography of this area is of great importance to that central story of the snake, because it was the area from which waves of mass migrations of people came from. These migrations went down into the Egypt, Mesopotamia and other surrounding areas.
THE ATOM AS THE FOUNDATION OF ALL CREATED THINGS
In case you’re now understandably thinking, there’s just no way that the Ancient Egyptians could have known about the atom, to later pass such information on to the Greeks, let me remind you that they were recording complicated information, the equivalent of the Big Bang, Physics and meteorology combined, that had come to them from outside of their civilization and knowledge base. And they had to do so with the means that they had at hand. So giving one of their gods a name that meant indivisible was actually pretty good under the circumstances.
The Atom was first described in 400 BC by the Greek Philosopher named Democritus who proposed that all matter could be reduced to distinct small particle or ‘atomos’ at which point they would no longer be reducible. Perhaps it was just a coincidental guess. At any rate, centuries later when Scottish Chemist John Dalton finally rediscovered some important properties of this tiny particle, it was given the English version of the name ‘atomos’ which is of course is atom.
Atoms as we’ve been told, make up everything in existence. Without atoms there is not anything made that was made. Metaphors that paint the atom as the creator, are not be taken literally.
Instead, it’s up to us to search for the true meaning behind them, in order to educate ourselves and see the hidden knowledge and wisdom, that they might be hiding. Ancient Egypt’s story of the snake was intended to instruct humanity about a possible future threatened by the normal activities of our sun’s and give them the means to create the solution to this potential problem .
However the solution depends on harmony between peoples as opposed to the present state of human affairs marked by divisions of culture race and rampant greed and irrational beliefs of superiority.
WHAT GENDER WAS ATUM?.
The manner in which Atum created his children, the gods of the ennead, has given rise to questions about whether Atum was male, female or had both genders within himself. Theoretical physics has it’s Big Bang Theory while Ancient Egypt’s story of how their creator God Atum managed this feat, is decidedly both more amusing and colorful. At any rate to answer the question about gender, if we absolutely must choose, then it would be closer to the truth to say that Atum had both genders within himself.
This is based on the observation that the universe uses a template that follows somewhat the male and female construct. This templates has to do in part with electromagnetic behavior. In which electric charge and electric fields are equivalent to the male construct. While magnetism and magnetic fields, more closely resembles the female construct.
Atum was also associated with the sun. And its the movement in the sun’s core that creates electrical currents. They in turn, create magnetic fields. This therefore in some sense allows Atum to hold both male. and female constructs within himself. And more importantly, it would line up with the Ancient Egyptians attempts to explain a subject that is very complex one even for us today. Imagine how much more complex it must have been for the Ancient Egyptian to try and explain how Atum could generate children from himself without a female equivalent.. They had to do so with few tools and inadequate words, using only their imagination..
HOW DID ATUM CREATE THE UNIVERSE?
As I mentioned earlier, there were several accounts of how Atum created the universe, One of the more popular one that was proposed, was the belief that atom as the Sun God, created himself as the result of the energy and matter that was inherent in the watery abyss, before creation began, and that was known to the Ancient Egyptians as chaos, Atum emerged as a snake out of the chaos waters, sitting on a mound known as the Benben stone. This was a structure that was identified as a pyramidion with a shape that was similar to the one at the top of a pyramid.
To the Ancient Egyptians, Atum was the god of pre and post existence. They believed that Atum created the universe and order from out of the Chaos, as that he would one day return the universe back to it’s pre-creation state of chaos. It is this specific belief around which the story of the snake is built. And which will be fully laid out inside the various articles about Ancient Egypt. The Egyptians also believed that like the sun, Atum was able to renew himself each morning.
Another account told of how Atum created his daughter Tefnut ( the goddess of moisture ) and his son Shu ( the god of air ), by sneezing them out of his nostrils. Undoubtedly the most infamous account, is one particularly earthy account, that is recorded in the Hymn to Atum. This account states that Atum created the Gods Shu, Nut, Geb and Tefnut through masturbation.
And it is this quasi reproductive act, that is normally only performed for self gratification, that would lay the groundwork for the bible’s version of creation in Genesis. More about this in a minute
Then there was another intriguing account proposed by the temple priests of Memphis. According to that account, it was the God Ptah, who in fact started the ball rolling by creating Atum, using thought and then speaking Atum into existence. And finally yet another account tells. that Atum created the universe and the first gods by forming a union with his shadow.
ATUM’S TRANSFORMATION & USE IN GENESIS
Atum’s self gratification as described in his physical act of his genesis of creation, was the first part of the secret that presented itself to my mind in a flash of intuition about seven years ago. At first I ignored it as it made no sense. And then just as unexpectedly, one day out of the blue, the second part of secret also presented itself into my mind.
HOW LIGHT IS CREATED
Atoms emit light after this sequence of steps:
1. The atom collides with another moving subatomic particle, which excites the atom.
2. As a result of the collision, the electron inside the atom jumps to a higher energy level.
3. Should the electron fall back to its original energy level. The extra energy the electron had collected is then released as a photon of light
In the creation story in the Hebrew Bible, the story of Adam and Eve appears just once in Genesis. And then there is no further mention of Adam except for a simple genealogy listing in Chronicles 1:1. And it is in Genesis that the Egyptian God Atum the Atom, is transformed into a metaphor called Adam.
It is worth noting that the Ancient Israelites even after being freed from what they reported as an inhuman slavery by the The Egyptians, quite puzzlingly kept so many of the the Egyptian myths that they then re-purposed for their own new religion. Atum the creator god was just one of many such repurposing.
Now the Bible is obviously no place for glorifying self gratification. And so the choice is made to stay away from the self gratification act of Atum that the Egyptians had no qualms about using. . However the need to describe how creation unfolded as well as to have a male and female to represent the first offspring or creations of God, still had to be addressed The bible’s solution?. First a mix of details taken from all of those conflicting creation stories about Atum.
Then using some of the facts about the atoms characteristics, the first female and a first male were created in the Genesis version of the creation story by taking the atom apart.
Normally the strong force binds the positively charged proton, and the negatively charged smaller electron together in their orbits around the nucleus inside the atom. Electrons being elemental particles, unlike protons and neutrons, and the nucleus of the atom itself, are not made of smaller particles. What this means, is that an electron can exist on its own. Electrons can be released from their orbits around the nucleus of an atom for several reasons, In the Genesis version of creation, this release is accomplished in a metaphor in which God removes one of Adam’s rib to create Eve.
Adam and Eve are not a human couple. They’re simply metaphors. Adam represents an atom that has had an electron removed.n on the physics of light. In the biblical Genesis creation story, with its famous statement: “And god created light” is the bible version of the physics of light. While the Ancient Egyptian’s account involved attributing various aspects of light and of the atom to their god Atum
Another very important part of the Genesis creation story is of course that snake that tempted Eve to eat the apple and ushered in man’s fall from grace. With that, the Biblical version of Egypt’s story of the snake made its debut and would come to a peak in the apocalypse. That I will explain in another article. For now I want to wrap this up with the three very important aspects of Atum that you need to know about in order to understand Atum even more clearly.
THE 3 POWERS OF ATUM: MAGIC, SPEECH & PERCEPTION
Heka, or Hekau as it was also known, was the Ancient Egyptian word for magic. Heka was also made into a god in his own right. Heka was said to have existed before duality came into being. Atum it turns out, was the Ancient Egyptian personification of magic, or Heka.
The word ‘Ka’ is incorporated into the word Ka. And Ka for the Egyptians represented a person’s vital force. In addition, Heka was also about the power of words or speech, and speaking things into existence. This is detail worthy of note, because it concurs with one of the account of Atum’s creation, the one in which he was spoken into existence by Ptah..
Image BERNAD DUPONT WIKI- COMMONS CC BY-SA 2.0
Heka was symbolized by 2 intertwined snakes. So whenever you see the 2 snakes amidst the pharaoh’s accoutrements of power, what is being portrayed is an invisible force that the Egyptians thought of as both the vital force as well as magic. And they believed that force was able to accomplish extraordinary things.
Heka did not stand alone. Instead god Heka was associated with 2 other gods that the Egyptians named Hu and Sia respectively. Collectively Heka, Hu and Sia made up the 3 components of Atum. Now as to the characteristics of these two gods; the god Hu represented the power of the spoken word. And was said to be the personification of the authority inherent in speech. Hu was said to be the first word, that Atum the creator exclaimed, upon completing his self pleasuring act.
The Ancient Egyptian were imaginative if nothing else. And so with that first word or exclamation, Atum as a result, created the Ennead, the group of 9 deities headed by Atum himself.
The god Sia on the other hand, the third aspect of Atum’s nature, was the god who represented intellectual perception. Sia is also thought to have had a connection to writing, given the fact that he was often shown holding a papyrus scroll, which itself was believed to represent cognitive and intellectual achievements.
In summary, The Ancient Egyptians believed that Atum first created himself by rising up and separating himself from the waters of chaos.Next he created everything that exists. Atum created air and moisture in the form of his children Shu and Tefnut. And he also created man as a result of the tears of joy that he shed when his children who had previously disappeared, were returned: (this is yet another early Egyptian account account about Atum) At one time the Egyptians partnered Atum with the earth, later that changed and he was partnered with the setting sun.
Atum by his nature was comprised of magic, the ability to speak things into existence as well as having cognitive and intellectual abilities. In other words he had the ability to think about what he wanted to create and use thought and speech to direct the magic which in reality was light, to create what he wanted. Is it any wonder that Atum and how he created the universe, sounds so much like the god in Genesis?.
