A Life-bestowing Body Part of the Demiurge Atum in the Ancient Egyptian Religious Context: Textual and Archaeological Evidences

As a life-giving body part, the hand played a great role in both creating deities and perpetuating humans in ancient Egypt. The Pyramid Texts described the creative power of the hand of the self-engendered god, Atum, in creating the earliest divine couple. This conception of the life-bestowing hand emphasizes that from the very first moment of the world, it was the responsibility of the hand of the demiurge to create life. By the end of the Second Intermediate Period and the beginning of the New Kingdom, the “Hand of Atum” became a special title borne by the mothers of the children of Atum. In the iconography of the New Kingdom, the creative hand of the self-rejuvenated dead, who in this case incarnated Atum, was also very essential for surviving after death. This paper seeks to characterize the culture of the fertile hand through the textual and iconographical acts, which were of prime importance in activating the procreative ability of both the creator god, Atum, and the risen dead.