The primordial Egyptian Nun

Your offering-cake belongs to you, Nun and Naunet,

Who protects the gods, who guards the gods with your shadows

-- Pyramid Text 301

Nun, also spelled Nu , oldest of the ancient Egyptian gods and father of Re, the sun god. Nun’s name means “primeval waters,” and he represented the waters of chaos out of which Re-Atum began creation.

Nun appearance portrayed as a bearded man or a frog headed man with blue green skin which represents water and wearing the palm frond that symbolized long life, one on his head, and another on his hand. Naunet appearance portrayed as a snake headed woman or as a snake itself. Sometimes, Nun also depicted as man carrying a solar bark on his upraised arms. On the boat standing is by eight deities.

Nun’s qualities were boundlessness, darkness, and the turbulence of stormy waters; these qualities were personified separately by pairs of deities. Nun, his female counterpart, Naunet, and three further pairs together formed the Ogdoad (group of eight gods) of Hermopolis. Various Egyptian creation myths retain the image of the emergence of a primeval hillock formed of mud churned from the chaotic waters of Nun. Since it was believed that the primeval ocean continued to surround the ordered cosmos, the creation myth was reenacted each day as the sun god rose from the waters of chaos. Nun was also thought to continue to exist as the source of the annual flooding of the Nile River.

According to the theology of the Ogdoad the universe was formed from the interaction of eight elements (instigated by one of a number of possible gods including Thoth, Amun, Horus and Ra); water, nothingness or invisibility, darkness and infinity. 

(The Masuline is illustrated as Frogs while Feminine are snakes) 

Water was represented by Nun and Naunet (the female form). 

Although the Egyptians had many different creation myths, they all agreed that the universe came from the primordeal waters of Nun, and many legends suggested that everything would slip back under these waters at the end of the world. 

There were no priests or temples devoted specifically to Nun, but he was represented by the sacred lake of each temple and was frequently referred to in religious inscriptions.

"You [the Eight] have made from your seed a germ [bnn], and you have instilled this seed in the lotus, by pouring the seminal fluid; you have deposited in the Nun, condensed into a single form, and your inheritor takes his radiant birth under the aspect of a child."  

(Edfu VI, 11-12, and Esna V, 263.)

Nun existed in every particle of water and formed the source of the river Nile and the yearly innundation. The god was also associated with the laying of foundations for all temples, possibly because the Egyptians used simple and effective technique which took advantage of the fact that water will always form a horizontal level in order to ensure that the foundation layers of structures were flat.

Nun is often associated with the forces of chaos. When Ra decided that the people were not giving him the respect he was due, it was Nun who suggested that Re should send out his 'eye' to destroy mankind and end the world. 

However, unlike the water serpent Apep (who was the enemy of Ra and a purely destructive force) Nun had a positive aspect. Nun protected Shu and Tefnut from the forces of chaos, as represented by demonic snakes. 

According to one myth it was Nun who told Nut to transform herself into a solar cow and carry Ra across the sky because he had become old and weary.

Nun was represented as a frog or a frog-headed man (as a member of the Ogdoad) but could also be depicted as a bearded man with blue or green skin (reflecting his link with the river Nile and fertility). 

In the latter form he can look fairly similar to Hapi, the god of the Nile, and often appears either standing on a solar boat or rising from the waters holding a palm frond (a symbol of long life) Occasionally he appears as hermaphroditic with pronounced breasts.

In Memphis, Nun was associated with the creator god, Ptah in the form of the composite deity Ptah-Nun. 

Both gods were described as the father of the sun god (Ra or Atum), However, rival priests claimed that Thebes was the place where the primeval mound first rose above the waters of Nun. 

As Amun was both the creator god of Thebes and a member of the Ogdoad they suggested that Nun had been a powerful, but inert force until Amun turned himself into the primeval mound and thereafter created the other gods.

 Naunet and Nun

In the 12th Hour of the Book of Gates Nu is depicted with upraised arms holding a "solar bark" (or barque). The boat is occupied by eight deities, with the scarab deity Khepri standing in the middle surrounded by the seven other deities.

During the late period when Egypt became occupied, the negative aspect of the Nun (chaos) became the dominant perception, reflecting the forces of disorder that were set loose in the country.