en·ne·ad Noun /ˈenēˌad/
enneads plural
- A group or set of nine
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| Ennead of Heliopolis with the king as Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis. Second shrine of Tutankhamun. 18th Dynasty. Egyptian Museum. Cairo. |
A variant of this ennead included Horus and Elder as second-born after Oiris. Although this group may have been constructed by priests of Heliopolis in order to incorporate Osiris and his related deities into their own theological system in a manner which placed the netherworld god at a lower position than their own sun god, together the various gods of the Heliopolitan Ennead nevertheless formed a group of great significance. The deities represented were not only those of creation but also of afterlife and, through Osiris and his eventual son Horus, of the ideology and mythology of kingship. Thus, the three are as which are arguably the most important concepts in ancient Egyptian religion were contained within the Heliopolitan Ennead.
Other cult centers constructed enneads of otherwise unrelated deities to which they awarded special veneration - as in the temple of Redesiyah in the eastern desert where Amun, Ra, Osiris, Ptah, Isis and Horus were grouped into an ennead through the addition of three forms of the deified SethosI. The number of deities in these groups did not always equal nine, however, as the ancient Egyptian term pesedjet can have a generalized meaning. Although the members of enneads are often specified, the number most often represents a general, all-encompassing group. The nine gods who stand before Osiris in the sixth hour of the underworld thus represent the rule of that deity over all the netherworld gods, just as the "nine bows" symbolize all Egypt's traditional enemies.
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