The Cosmic Egg

Summary

The cosmic egg is the story of the world before it existed: all of it was gathered in one egg, or the one who would make it was in the egg, and then the egg opened and what we see came out of it. Its oldest complete telling is in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, the Indian book that explains the sacrifice: in the beginning the world was water, nothing but a sea of water; the waters desired to multiply, toiled and practised fervour until they grew hot, and a golden egg was produced; there was no year yet, and the egg floated for the space of a year. After a year a man came out of it, Prajāpati, and broke the egg open; there was no resting-place for him, and he floated in the egg for another year. Then he tried to speak: he said bhūḥ, and it became the earth; bhuvaḥ, and it became the air; svaḥ, and it became the sky. That is why a child tries to speak at a year old, and to stand at a year old.

Before this telling a hymn of the Rigveda says: in the beginning arose hiraṇyagarbha, "the golden germ", the one lord of all beings, who fixed earth and heaven; and the mighty waters came, bearing the germ and bringing forth Agni. The Egyptian Coffin Texts, composed between 1991 and 1786 BCE, name "the Great Cackler" and "the one around his egg", and in the creation story of Hermopolis an egg came from the first eight gods, containing the god who made the world; in one version it was laid by a goose called "the Great Cackler", in another by the ibis, the bird of Thoth. In Aristophanes' Birds black-winged Night lays an egg in the bosom of Erebus, and out of it springs Eros with golden wings. Of Persia Plutarch tells that Oromazes created twenty-four gods and placed them in an egg, and those created by Areimanius pierced the egg and got inside, so that evil is mixed with good. In China heaven and earth were mixed like a hen's egg, and Pangu was born inside it. In Japan the Nihon Shoki begins: heaven and earth were not yet divided, and they were "like a hen's egg".

The idea these stories turn on is that the world was once closed in a single shell, everything mixed with everything, and that creation is the opening of that shell. The stories then differ over what was in the egg. The creator himself is in it in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, in China and at Hermopolis, growing inside until he breaks it; Eros is in it in Aristophanes. The world itself is in it in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad: the egg splits in two, the silver half becoming the earth and the gold half the sky; its thick membranes are the mountains, its thin membranes the clouds, its veins the rivers, its fluid the ocean; and then the sun is born from it. Among the Persians the good alone is in it, and evil pierces it from outside. Two things recur: the egg rests on the water or comes out of it, and the first time is the time of brooding: the egg floats a year, lies a year, and Pangu grows in it for eighteen thousand years.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. In Lane bayḍa is a bird's egg, so called for its whiteness, and it is also "the continent, container or receptacle of anything"; hence bayḍat al-islām, "the place that comprises Islam, as the egg comprises the young bird", bayḍat al-qawm, the midst and main part of a people's abode, afrakhat al-bayḍa, the egg had a young bird in it, and afrakha bayḍat al-qawm, what was hidden of the people's affair became apparent. So Arabic holds in the word what the stories hold: a vessel that contains everything, and a young one that comes out and makes the hidden plain. The Qur'an calls heaven and earth before creation ratq, closed together, and the act of creation fatq, splitting apart, and with this word the project's Chinese essay reads the name Pangu as fataq, the one who split the egg. Egyptian has two words for egg, one of them štꜣ.t, which the Egyptian dictionary places in the root štꜣ, to be secret, hidden; we read it on the method as Arabic satara, to veil.

Linguistic Root

The egg and the container

In Lane bayḍa is the egg of the ostrich and of any bird, so called for its whiteness, plural bayḍ and buyūḍ; afrakhat al-bayḍa, the egg had a young bird in it; bayḍat al-balad, the egg the ostrich abandons in the desert. He then says that bayḍa is "the continent, container or receptacle of anything", whence bayḍat al-islām, the place that comprises the Muslims as the egg comprises the young bird, or their collective body; bayḍat al-qawm, a people's quarter, the heart and midst of their abode; ibtāḍahum, he entered their bayḍa; and afrakha bayḍat al-qawm, what was hidden of their affair became apparent. Bayḍa is also an iron helmet, so called because it resembles an ostrich egg. So in Arabic the egg is a vessel that contains, a middle that is guarded, and a hidden thing that hatching brings to light, which is what the stories make it: the egg holds the creator or the world, evil pierces it in Plutarch's account as an enemy enters a people's bayḍa, and then it hatches and what was covered appears.

The hidden egg

The Egyptian dictionary gives swḥ.t as egg, with examples such as an ostrich egg ground in fat as a remedy in the Edwin Smith papyrus, and the stela of Piye, where the king says he was "ruler in the egg". It gives štꜣ.t as egg too, of the same root as štꜣ, to be secret, hidden, mysterious, whence secret and the hidden image of a god. The Book of the Dead calls the sun god jm.j-swḥ.t=f, "the one who is in his egg", and says that the wind "lets the one in the egg live". The dictionary lists in the Coffin Texts "the Great Cackler", Ngng-wr, and "the one around his egg", at two nearby places in the third volume. So in Egyptian the egg is the hidden thing, and in Arabic satara is to cover and conceal, sitr that with which one veils. Arabic s answers Egyptian š, t is t, and the Egyptian ꜣ was in Old and Middle Egyptian a liquid like r and l, as the page of Heka reports from Peust. It is a reading proposed on the method.

The golden germ and jirāb

Monier-Williams gives garbha as the womb, the inside, middle or interior of anything, the calyx of a flower, the inner sanctuary of a temple, and a foetus or child, from the verb grabh, to seize, conceive. He gives hiraṇyagarbha, "a golden foetus", as a name of Brahmā, so called as born from a golden egg formed out of the seed deposited in the waters at the first creation, according to Manu 1.9. In Lane jirāb is a traveller's provision bag, said to be a receptacle of sheepskin, and the case of a sword. Arabic jīm was once pronounced g, as the page of Garuḍa reads his name as jarad, and b is b; so the Sanskrit womb is a jirāb that holds the foetus, as the egg holds the young bird. It is a reading proposed on the method, weakened by the fact that Arabic jirāb is a bag for provisions and a sword-case, not a womb.

Ratq and fatq in the essay

The project's Chinese essay reads Pangu as fataq, saying that he parted heaven and earth, which had been stuck together like an egg, and that the Qur'an describes this first parting: "Have those who disbelieve not seen that the heavens and the earth were ratq, and We split them apart?" In Lane ratq is closing up a rent and repairing it, and fatq its opposite, slitting a thing and unpicking its seam; the reading is set out on the pages of Pangu and the separation of heaven and earth. The second Chinese essay reads the cosmic egg as the state of the universe before the Big Bang, and its breaking as the Big Bang itself.

Attestations by Culture

India: the golden germ and the split egg

Rigveda 10.121 asks after every verse: to which god shall we offer our oblation? And at the end it answers: Prajāpati, none but you comprehends all these created things. The hymn puts the golden germ at the beginning and makes the waters a bearer who brings forth Agni. Then the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa brings the egg itself, and makes it the reason a child speaks and stands after a year, and that woman, cow and mare bring forth within a year. The Chāndogya makes the egg the world itself, and the sun the first thing born from it; when it was born, joyous sounds rose and all desirable things came forth, which is why the sun is greeted with sounds every morning and evening. Monier-Williams notes under hiraṇyagarbha that Manu makes the seed a golden egg shining like the sun, in which Brahmā the creator was born. In other Indian stories Garuḍa and the Nāgas hatch from eggs, and Mārtāṇḍa, eighth son of Aditi, is born from a "lifeless egg".

Egypt: the egg of the Eight

Jennifer Houser Wegner, curator in the Egyptian Section of the Penn Museum, writes that the eight gods of Hermopolis were four frog-headed males and four serpent-headed females: Nun and Naunet for water, Heh and Hauhet for infinity, Kek and Kauket for darkness, and Amun and Amaunet for hiddenness, Amun's name meaning "the hidden one"; and that from these eight came a cosmic egg containing the god who made the world. The town's Egyptian name is ḫmn.w, "Eight-Town", Arabic al-Ashmunayn.

Greece: Night's egg

The chorus of birds in Aristophanes says: in the beginning there were only Chaos, Night, dark Erebus and deep Tartarus; black-winged Night laid an egg in the bosom of the boundless Erebus, and from it sprang graceful Eros with glittering golden wings, who mated with Chaos in Tartarus and so hatched the race of birds. The Orphic hymn to Prōtogonos, the First-born, calls him "egg-born", with golden wings, and names him Phanes because he wipes away the gloom of night. Apollodorus tells that Nemesis laid an egg by Zeus, and a shepherd carried it to Leda, and from it Helen hatched.

Iran: the pierced egg

Plutarch reports that Oromazes, Ahura Mazda, enlarged himself to three times his size, removed himself as far from the sun as the sun is from the earth, adorned the heavens with stars and set the Dog-star as their watchman, then created twenty-four other gods and placed them in an egg; those created by Areimanius, Angra Mainyu, pierced the egg and got inside, "hence evils are now combined with good". So here the egg is the good world, and evil enters it through a hole, as in the Bundahishn Ahriman pierces the sky and springs down to the earth.

China: the hen's egg

The Yiwen leiju preserves from Xu Zheng's Sanwu liji: "Heaven and earth were mixed together like a hen's egg, and Pangu was born inside it; after eighteen thousand years heaven and earth opened, the clear yang became heaven and the turbid yin became earth." The same chapter preserves from the Huntian yi, the treatise on the celestial sphere: "Heaven is like a hen's egg; heaven is large and earth small; inside and outside heaven there is water." So for the Chinese the egg is an image of creation and also of the shape of the sky.

Japan: the borrowed egg

The Nihon Shoki begins: of old, heaven and earth were not yet separated, nor yin and yang divided; they formed a chaotic mass "like a hen's egg", of obscure limits and containing germs; then the clear and light became heaven and the heavy and turbid became earth. The Kokugakuin study explains that this first paragraph takes its wording from the Huainanzi and the Sanwu liji, and that the Kojiki begins differently.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In most stories the egg rests on the water: Prajāpati's egg floats on the sea for a year, the waters of the Rigveda carry the golden germ, the eight gods of Hermopolis are water, darkness and infinity, and the Huntian yi puts water inside and outside heaven. This belongs to the primordial waters. The opening of the egg is the first separation of heaven and earth: a silver half for earth and a golden half for sky in the Chāndogya, the clear rising and the turbid sinking in China and Japan, and the ratq that was "split" in the Qur'an.

In the Chāndogya the parts of the egg become the parts of the world, the membranes mountains, the veins rivers, the fluid the ocean, as the limbs of Pangu, Puruṣa and Ymir become its parts in the cosmic body pattern. Light comes out of the egg: the sun in the Chāndogya, the sun god "who is in his egg" in Egypt, golden-winged Eros and Phanes who wipes away the night in Greece; this joins the egg to the sun's journey, in which the sun is born every morning. Twins come out of eggs among the Amazigh and the Greeks, Ayur and Tayurt from two eggs and Helen from one, as in the divine twins. And the clear and the turbid, yang and yin, which part when the egg opens in China, are qi and the balance of yin and yang.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Chinese myths reads the cosmic egg as the singularity in which the universe was compressed into one point before the Big Bang, its breaking as the Big Bang, and the rising of the light and sinking of the heavy as gravitational differentiation. The second Chinese essay says that the cosmic egg exists beyond China and counts it, with the flood and the making of man from clay, among the structures China shares with Mesopotamia and India. The Hindu essay says that Brahmā created the world from himself or from a cosmic egg.

The texts themselves are closer to the bird's nest than to physics: the egg floats a year as it is brooded, splits as a shell splits, has membranes, veins and fluid, a child speaks after a year as Prajāpati spoke, and the goose cackles. The story takes the beginning of the world from the beginning of life as people saw it every day in birds.