Ego sum qui copulavi pugno meo,
Libidinem sentivi[1] in umbra mea,[2]
Semen cecidit (?) e meo ipsius ore.
What I ejected was Shu,
What I spat out was Tefênet.
My father, the abyss, sent them.[3]
My eye followed them through ages of ages (?)[4]
As (they) separated from me. After I was formed as the only (god),[5]
Three gods were (separated) from me (since?) I was on this earth.
Shu and Tefênet rejoiced in the abyss in which they were.
They brought me my eye (back) (following) after them.
After I had united my members,[6] I wept over them.
The origin of men was (thus) from my tears which came from my eye.
It became angry against me after it had come (back),
When it found that I had made me another (eye) in its place
(And) I had replaced it by a resplendent eye;
I had advanced its place in my face afterward,
(So that) it ruled this whole land.
Now (?) at its (?) time were their (?) plants (?).[7]
I replaced what she had taken therefrom.
I came forth from the plants (?).
I created all reptiles and all that was in (?) them.[8]
Shu and Tefênet begat [Qêb] and Nut.
Qêb and Nut begat Osiris, Horus (the one before the eyeless) (?), Sêth, Isis, and Nephthys from one womb,
One of them after the other;
Their children are many on this earth.'"
Like most ancient Oriental texts concerned with the problem of cosmogony, this is an attempt to use various traditions of very contradictory character. We see, for example, that it starts with the assumption that the abyss was occupied by strange monsters, or "reptiles," among whom the sun-god grew up; while another theory, evidently much more recent, regards the solar deity as the very first being that actually lived and as the creator of all things, so that the sun-god created, first of all, these primeval monsters.[9] With the formation of the first pair of cosmic gods by the sun the poet loosely connects the different theory that the creation of ordinary
