Greek mythology

The Orphic Egg in the Ancient Greek Orphic tradition is the cosmic egg from which hatched the
primordial hermaphroditic deity Phanes/Protogonus (variously equated also with Zeus, Pan,
Metis, Eros, Erikepaios and Bromius) who in turn created the other gods. The egg is often
depicted with a serpent wound about it.
Many threads of earlier myths are apparent in the new tradition. Phanes was believed to have
been hatched from the World-Egg of Chronos (Time) and Ananke (Necessity). His older wife
Nyx (Night) called him Protogenus. As she created nighttime, he created daytime. He also
created the method of creation by mingling. He was made the ruler of the deities and passed the
sceptre to Nyx. This new Orphic tradition states that Nyx later gave the sceptre to her son Uranos
before it passed to Cronus and then to Zeus, who retained it.
Egyptian mythology
In the original myth concerning the Ogdoad, the Milky Way arose from the waters as a mound of
dirt, which was deified as Hathor. Ra was contained within an egg laid upon this mound by a
celestial bird. In the earliest version of this myth, the bird is a goose (it is not explained where
the goose originates). However, after the rise of the cult of Thoth, the egg was said to have been
a gift from Thoth and laid by an ibis, the bird with which he was associated.
Phoenician mythology
A philosophical creation story traced to "the cosmogony of Taautus, whom Philo of Byblos
explicitly identified with the Egyptian Thoth"the first who thought of the invention of letters,
and began the writing of records" which begins with Erebus and Wind, between which Eros
'Desire' came to be. From this was produced Mt which seems to be the
Phoenician/Ge'ez/Hebrew/Arabic/Ancient Egyptian word for 'Death' but which the account says
may mean 'mud'. In a mixed confusion, the germs of life appear, and intelligent animals called
Zophasemin (explained probably correctly as 'observers of heaven') formed together as an egg,
perhaps. The account is not clear. Then Mt burst forth into light and the heavens were created
and the various elements found their stations.
Following the etymological line of Jacob Bryant one might also consider with regard to the
meaning of Mt, that according to the Ancient Egyptians Ma'at was the personification of the
fundamental order of the universe, without which all of creation would perish. She was also
considered the wife of Thoth.
Chinese mythology
In the myth of Pangu, developed by Taoist monks hundreds of years after Lao Zi, the universe
began as an egg. A god named Pangu, born inside the egg, broke it into two halves: the upper
half became the sky, while the lower half became the earth. As the god grew taller, the sky and
the earth grew thicker and were separated further. Finally Pangu died and his body parts became
different parts of the earth.
Finnish mythology
In the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, there is a myth of the world being created from the
fragments of an egg laid by a diving duck on the knee of Ilmatar, goddess of the air:
One egg's lower half transformed
And became the earth below,
And its upper half transmuted
And became the sky above;
From the yolk the sun was made,
Light of day to shine upon us;

From the white the moon was formed,

Light of night to gleam above us;
All the colored brighter bits
Rose to be the stars of heaven
And the darker crumbs changed into
Clouds and cloudlets in the sky.
Japanese creation myth
the Nihon Shoki states that the Kamiyonanayo group was the first to appear after the creation of
the universe, as opposed to the Kamiyonanayo appearing after the formation of heaven and earth.
It also states that the first three generations of deities are hitorigami (individual deities) and that
the later generations of deities are pairs of the opposite gender, as compared to the Kojiki's two
generations of hitorigami.
Modern mythology
In 1955 poet and writer Robert Graves published the mythography The Greek Myths, a
compendium of Greek mythology normally published in two volumes. Within this work Graves'
imaginatively reconstructed "Pelasgian creation myth" features a supreme creatrix, Eurynome,
"The Goddess of All Things", who arose naked from Chaos to part sea from sky so that she could
dance upon the waves. Catching the north wind at her back and, rubbing it between her hands,
she warms the pneuma and spontaneously generates the serpent Ophion, who mates with her. In
the form of a dove upon the waves, she lays the Cosmic Egg and bids Ophion to incubate it by
coiling seven times around until it splits in two and hatches "all things that exist... sun, moon,
planets, stars, the earth with its mountains and rivers, its trees, herbs, and living creatures".