Nun personified the primordial watery chaos that existed before creation in ancient Egyptian cosmology.
Egyptian creation traditions imagined the universe beginning as an endless, undifferentiated expanse of dark water. This primeval abyss was called Nun, and the first land—the primordial mound—emerged from it. Depending on the local tradition, the creator appeared from or within these waters as Atum, Ra, or another form of the emerging sun god.
Nun was one of the eight primordial deities of the Ogdoad, a group worshipped particularly at Hermopolis. His female counterpart was Naunet. Unlike gods with prominent temples and cult images, Nun represented a cosmic condition as much as a personal deity. He could be understood both as the source from which ordered existence arose and as the abyss to which the cosmos would eventually return. A common mix-up is to treat Nun as the Nile itself; he represented the limitless waters before the ordered world, not Egypt's earthly river.