The Ogdoad

The Ogdoad ('the Eight') are the eight primordial deities of Hermopolis, the city of Thoth. Arranged in four male-and-female pairs — frog-headed gods and serpent-headed goddesses — they personify the qualities of the chaos before the world: the primal waters (Nun and Naunet), infinity, darkness, and hiddenness, the conditions of the deep out of which the first mound and the creator-sun emerged.

Their home, Hermopolis, the Greeks named for Hermes, identifying Thoth with their own god of wisdom — so that the city of the Ogdoad became a meeting-point of Egyptian and Greek theology, and a wellspring of the Hermetic tradition.