Many of the world’s oldest cultures have references to chaos in their mythology and creation stories. The Chinese, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Babylonians, Indians and Greeks are amongst them. Common to them all is the notion that order arises out of an infinite state of chaos to form the cosmos or ordered universe. This process either occurs of its own accord or is assisted by a god or god-like figure.
Cosmogonical chaos has many different names. Sometimes it is directly referred to as chaos itself, exemplified by the Egyptians and the Greeks. It is also referred to as a metaphor: Hun-tun in Chinese mythology, Asat for the Vedic Indians, and Tiãmat in Babylonian cosmogony.
The Chinese have direct references to chaos in their stories of creation. One mythological Chinese emperor (analogous to the gods of the Greeks and the Romans) had the name Hun-tun, meaning chaos.
Hu and Shu were most grateful for Hun-tun’s hospitality, so they resolved to bore the orifices required for sight, hearing, eating, and breathing into Hun-tun. This they did, boring one hole a day. On the seventh day, as the final orifice was completed, Hun-tun died. With the death of chaos, the world came into being. The Chinese word for lightning is shu-hu, which is a combination of the names of the North and South emperors, and hence, a stroke of lightning may also have been involved.
Another Chinese text from the third century AD describes chaos as a hen’s egg. This egg is depicted as the yin-yang symbol popular today ([ ).
Phan-ku grew at the same rate also, his body filling the space between. When Phan-ku died his body formed the earth’s elements.
The concept of the world egg is not confined to China. Similar themes can also be seen in classical Indian cosmogonies, in which a world egg opens to form the heavens from its upper part and the earth from its lower.
Chinese mythology also has a story in which chaos re-emerges: the world of mirrors and the world of humans were not always separated. Although being quite different in form, the mirror beings and human beings lived together in harmony. One night, however, the mirror people invaded without warning. Their might was great, and chaos supervened. Human beings quickly realised that the mirror people were, in fact, chaos.
Only with the strength of the Yellow Emperor god did human beings manage to defeat the mirror people. In order to prevent any further uprising, the Yellow Emperor cast a spell that bound the mirror people to mimic the actions of men. However, the Emperor’s spell was not strong enough to bind them to this task for eternity. One day, the spell would diminish and chaos would once again show its face.
Egyptian cosmogony, as with that of the Chinese, refers directly to chaos, although it takes a different form. For the Egyptians, chaos was an ocean, the predecessor of all else; boundless, it had existed for eternity. Although chaos was often described by the Egyptians as unexplainable and formless, it was never perceived to be immaterial. Creation was the act of giving ‘watery chaos’ definition and differentiation, not achieved by an act of a god, but by a force called the demiurge.
Another link between Chinese and Egyptian chaos mythology is the use of dragons, although views on their significance differ. While the Egyptians saw the dragon Apophis as representing chaos, the Chinese saw dragons as embodying the principle of order (yang).
The myth of Ra, the sun god, taken from Egyptian Mortuary Texts, describes the battle between the God Ra and Apophis. Ra was victorious, overcoming the forces of darkness and disorder, but the dragon is not mortally wounded.
It is significant that Ra does not succeed in killing the dragon, only suppressing him. This harkens back to the Myth of the Yellow Emperor (see section 2.1), where chaos is only laid dormant and not eradicated.
Vedic Indian mythology also has a linkage to that of the Egyptians and the Chinese. It involves the story of the warrior god Indra. The section of the story that is of interest begins before the ordered world had come into being, during a period where the Adityas and the Rakshashas are at war. The Adityas are generally portrayed as being human in form although possessing superhuman powers, while the Rakshashas are demons, usually taking the form of serpents, dragons, or sometimes boars.
The Adityas are descended from the goddess Aditi, whose name means freedom, and standing for freedom, they want the cosmic waters to be released. The demons, whose names often mean restraint or bondage, contain the cosmic waters, which are guarded by Vritra, the arch-demon.
The Adityas call upon the help of Indra; perhaps they even instigate his creation. The youngest of the gods and eager to make a name for himself, Indra was born of the sky (his father) and the earth (his mother). To prepare himself for battle, Indra took three draughts of the stimulant soma. This caused him to grow so large as to fill the earth and sky. His parents leapt apart in shock, never to be reunited.
Indra fought Vritra armed with the thunderbolt, vajra, and after a furious battle, the arch-demon lay dead. Through this victory, Indra became king of all the gods, and as the cosmic waters flowed from the belly of Vritra, as order flowed from chaos, he set about making the ordered world.
2.5 Mesopotamian & Babylonian Mythology
For the Mesopotamians, a culture dating back as far as 3,000 BC, the world began with a boundless ocean, akin to that mentioned in Egyptian mythology.
The Babylonians had several gods representing different manifestations of chaos. One of these was Tiãmat, a primordial chaos goddess of salt ocean.
The Greek mythology, like that of the Egyptians and Chinese, has chaos embedded in its stories of creation, although the timing of its inception varies. One source, Arogonautica Orphica 12, states that chronos, or time, was the first to exist. Another, that of Plato, indicates that Uranus and Gaia were the primordial beings.
The majority of sources, however, identify chaos as one of the earliest cosmogonical entities. Hyginus states that chaos arose out of primordial mists. According to the Hesiod, chaos was the first into existence, and from it came Nyx (night), Gaia (earth), Erebus (pure darkness of the underworld), Tartus 1 (the lowest abyss beneath the earth), and Eros (the god of love). It is up to interpretation as to whether these entities are the offspring of chaos or whether they just came into being of their own accord. In the cosmogony of Ovidius, first of all "was what man called chaos: a rough unordered mass of things." God then gave the world order. Aristophanes, a Greek playwright who lived around 400 BC, also saw chaos as the first to exist, although not alone, since Nyx, Erebus, and Tartus 1 also accompanied chaos in the beginning.
As with the Chinese, the Indians, and the Egyptians, Aristophanes’ account involves a cosmic egg. Nyx laid an egg in Erebus, from which hatched Eros, who "caused all things to mingle." This reference to Eros and the egg probably implies the beginning of life. Love can also be viewed as reproduction, as suggested by the word ‘mingle’, with the egg being a symbol of fertility and life.
There are a variety of cultures that have water as the initial cosmogonical entity. As well as those already mentioned, these include the Maidu Indians of California, the people of the Marshall Islands, Russian Altaic, the Hurons (American Indians), and to a lesser extent the Yoruba (of Nigeria).
The themes of chaos and that of the primordial, boundless ocean are recurrent throughout many cosmogonies. The Egyptians and the Mesopotamians provide a key linkage between the two, giving chaos the form of an ocean. Clearly for both, chaos is a force that must be in some way controlled.
Oceans would provide an accurate metaphor of chaos for many cultures attempting to describe that which the Egyptians viewed as unexplainable. Oceans are vast, seemingly infinite. Some cultures, notably the Vikings, believed that the ocean continued to the end of the world and disappeared over the edge. It was an infinite source that continued beyond the horizon of human perception.
More recent research into fluid dynamics has discovered an infinity of a different kind. One of the earliest researchers in this field was Leonardo Da Vinci (see section 5.4.1). He found that eddies break up into eddies of decreasing size, a form of infinite complexity, a recurring theme in today’s scientific view of chaos.
Oceans are also turbulent and unpredictable, two aspects which are key to the modern understanding of chaos. From the earliest research into the movement of water, turbulence has been linked to large flow rates. The work of Leonardo da Vinci also represented this. In this way the ocean represented something of infinite size and infinite complexity.
Oceans are also a prime example of that which is the same on varying scales and quantities. A wave breaking on a sandy riverbank takes the same form as a six-foot wave breaking at a top surf location. This is akin to the self-similarity of fractals, where small sections show a likeness to the overall image.
When endeavouring to relate chaos as an experience tangible to the everyday world, the ocean is likely, for many cultures, to have provided the most accurate metaphor.