Primeval Mound (Benben)

BEN-ben

egyptian: bnbn

Definition

The primeval mound is the first patch of dry land that the Egyptians believed rose out of Nun, the dark primeval waters, at the very beginning of the world. On that mound the creator-sun first appeared, in the moment Egyptians called the First Time (zep tepi) — the original sunrise that started everything. At Heliopolis this first hill was the benben, a sacred stone whose pointed shape is echoed in the tip of an obelisk and the capstone of a pyramid (the pyramidion).

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat the rising of the first mound as the founding event of every Egyptian creation story, whatever the local theology calls its creator. Wilkinson points out the lived image behind it: just as the Nile flood receded each year and high ground re-emerged from the water, so the world was imagined to begin when the first mound rose from the waters of the First Time.

In Practice

The mound is a cosmological idea, not a deity, but it sits at the center of Egyptian sky-religion because it fixes where and when light first entered the cosmos. The benben stone at Heliopolis was understood as that first hill made solid, which is why temple obelisks and pyramid capstones repeat its tapering form — each a small standing model of the place the Sun first shone. The mound is also personified as the earth-god Tatenen, "the risen land," the hill itself given a divine character; in Memphite theology this Tatenen is fused with the creator Ptah (see Ptah). Hornung notes that Tatenen stands for the depths of the earth, set against Nun's watery depths. So whenever you meet the First Time, the first sunrise, or a pointed sacred stone in Egyptian material, the primeval mound is the underlying image — kept distinct from the gods said to have appeared on it.

Historical Origin

The motif is attested from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts. PT Spell 600 has Atum rise "as the benben in the Benben Enclosure in Heliopolis" (Allen 2005). The mound-deity Tatenen runs into the New Kingdom Books of the Afterlife. It is treated in Belmonte & Lull, Astronomy of Ancient Egypt (2018); Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses (2003); and Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife (1999).

Further Reading

  • Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
  • Juan Antonio Belmonte & José Lull, Astronomy of Ancient Egypt
  • Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife