Nun — the Primeval Waters
The dark, endless water that was there before anything else — and still surrounds the world.
Also: Nun · Nu · Nwn · primeval waters · primordial ocean · precreation
Egyptians held that before the world there was Nun: a boundless, motionless dark water with no order in it. Creation began when the first mound of land or the creator rose out of these waters. Nun never disappeared; it surrounds the cosmos and lies beneath it, the inert chaos from which everything came and into which it could dissolve.
In short
The dark, limitless primordial waters out of which creation arose, conceived as the precreation state that still surrounds and underlies the ordered world.
Where it’s found
Pyramid Texts; Coffin Texts; Hermopolitan and Heliopolitan cosmogonies
How the idea developed across Egypt
A constant of Egyptian cosmogony from the Pyramid Texts onward; central to all three major creation traditions (Heliopolis, Hermopolis, Memphis).
Primary transliteration kept as 'Nu'; 'Nwn' is a bare consonant skeleton retained only as a search alias.