Creation of life from clay in the context of Ogdoad (Egyptian)


Creation of life from clay in the context of Ogdoad (Egyptian)

⭐ Core Definition: Creation of life from clay

The creation of life from clay (or soil, earth, dust, or mud) appears throughout world religions and mythologies, some of the earliest occurring in the creation myths about the origin of man in the cosmology of the ancient Near East. The idea occurs in both biblical cosmology and Quranic cosmology. The clay represents an unformed, chaotic material which is shaped and given form by the gods in a creative process. A related motif is the use of clay to seed or create the world. In southwest Asia, the clay-shaping was cast as a magical act. In the same way that humans would use clay to make terracotta images of their gods, so the gods moulded humans out of clay in their godlike form. They were described as obtaining this material by pinching off pieces of wet mud.

The most famous example of this is in the biblical Book of Genesis (2:7), where Adam is made out of dust, an idea that appears across the Bible (Job 10:9; Psalm 90:3; 104:29; Isaiah 29:16, etc.). The idea is also found in the Epic of Gilgamesh where the goddess Aruru creates Enkidu from clay, in Egyptian mythology where Khmun makes man out of clay, and various Greek texts crediting Prometheus (one of the Titans) with doing the same. Later, the concept would influence art history, such as the impact it had on the work of Giorgio Vasari.

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Creation of life from clay in the context of Prometheus

In Greek mythology, Prometheus (/prəˈmθiəs/; Ancient Greek: Προμηθεύς [promɛːtʰéu̯s]) is a Titan responsible for creating or aiding humanity in its earliest days. He defied the Olympian gods by taking fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge and, more generally, civilization.

In some versions of the myth, Prometheus is also credited with the creation of humanity from clay. He is known for his intelligence and for being a champion of mankind and is also generally seen as the author of the human arts and sciences. He is sometimes presented as the father of Deucalion, the hero of the flood story.

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Creation of life from clay in the context of Nüwa

Nüwa, also read Nügua, is a mother goddess, culture hero, and/or member of the Three Sovereigns of Chinese mythology. She is a goddess in Chinese folk religion, Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. She is credited with creating humanity and repairing the Pillar of Heaven.

As creator of mankind, she molded humans individually by hand with yellow clay. In other stories where she fulfills this role, she only created nobles and/or the rich out of yellow soil. The stories vary on the other details about humanity's creation, but it was a tradition commonly believed in ancient China that she created commoners from brown mud. A story holds that she was tired when she created "the rich and the noble", so all others, or "cord-made people", were created from her "dragg[ing] a string through mud".

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