How many gods make up the Ogdoad of Hermopolis?

How many gods make up the Ogdoad of Hermopolis? The Ogdoad consists of eight gods.

The Ogdoad was a group of primordial deities associated with Hermopolis, an important religious center in Middle Egypt. Their name comes from a Greek term meaning “group of eight,” reflecting the group’s structure as four male–female pairs who represented the conditions existing before creation.

The traditional pairs were Nu and Naunet, representing the primeval waters; Heh and Hauhet, associated with infinity or boundlessness; Kek and Kauket, linked with darkness; and Amun and Amunet. Their names were often paired masculine and feminine forms of related concepts.

Later Egyptian and Greco-Roman-era representations commonly showed the male gods with frog heads and the female gods with serpent heads. The earliest certain reference to the Ogdoad dates to the Eighteenth Dynasty, although the theological ideas behind the group may be older. The number eight is therefore not an approximate count: it is the defining feature of the Ogdoad.