Keku-semau

Keku-semau in hieroglyphics
	Keku-semau as "concentrated darkness"

In ancient Egyptian mythology and astronomy, Keku-semau describes the region of the dark zones outside the created world. In particular, the area from the place of "eternal darkness" to the "primordial darkness" is meant.

background

The Keku-semau is understood as the “upper heaven” in which the deity Nun is at home. The upper part of the sky begins after leaving the edge zone Reteh-qabet . In this primordial darkness there are neither stars nor other heavenly bodies , but only the darkness in which only “the primordial waters of the Nun” exist.

In the Nutbuch , the Keku-semau is described as a region in which the four cardinal points lose their meaning because it is "the place without directions":

“Borders to the south, north, west and east are unknown (in Keku-semau). These are fixed in the Nun. The ba does not rise there. That land is unknown to the gods and the transfigured. There is no light at all. Every place is empty of heaven and empty of earth. That's the entire duat . "

- Nutbuch, Sethos script

The mythological ideas of the Egyptians come very close to the modern conception of the universe , which says that there the well-known dimensions of the earth, with the limitation to the three dimensions of length, width and height, have lost their sole definition of validity.

literature

Alexandra von Lieven : Floor plan of the course of the stars - the so-called groove book . The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Ancient Eastern Studies (among others), Copenhagen 2007, ISBN 978-87-635-0406-5

Individual evidence

↑ See Hellmut Brunner In: Wolfgang Röllig: Das Hörende Herz - Small writings on the history of religion and intellectual history of Egypt - , Universitäts-Verlag, Freiburg 1988, ISBN 3-7278-0567-6 , pp. 356-358.
↑ Cf. Alexandra von Lieven: Plan of the course of the stars - the so-called groove book . The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Ancient Eastern Studies (et al.), Copenhagen 2007, ISBN 978-87-635-0406-5 , p. 141.

[1] See Hellmut Brunner In: Wolfgang Röllig: Das Hörende Herz - Small writings on the history of religion and intellectual history of Egypt - , Universitäts-Verlag, Freiburg 1988, ISBN 3-7278-0567-6 , pp. 356-358.

[2] Cf. Alexandra von Lieven: Plan of the course of the stars - the so-called groove book . The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Ancient Eastern Studies (et al.), Copenhagen 2007, ISBN 978-87-635-0406-5 , p. 141.