In terms of interest in superstition, astrology, etc., we’re about negative
8 on a 1–10
scale, but every once in awhile an odd historic and sociocultural belief arouses
our curiosity.
Everyone who watched last year’s opening ceremonies at the Beijing Summer
Olympics knows that China chose the date–08/08/08–because the number
8 is deemed very fortunate in China. Second only to 8 in terms of good
favor is 9, making yesterday–09/09/09–a highly auspicious date
as well. (Now that it’s over, I can’t report that anything strikingly
fabulous happened to me, but then again, I’m probably not a strong test case.)
It turns out China is not the only society or culture that deems 9 special. In
fact, ancient Greek had a special word for “the nine,” “ennead,” which
meant a grouping of nine deities. The notion of nine deities, in turn,
derived from Egypt–famously polytheistic, with a large and changeable
cast of divine characters–where the word for the same concept was “pesedjet.” Interestingly,
“pesedjet” in Egyptian was not necessarily constrained to nine gods,
but could be as few as seven or as many as ten. Perhaps this flexibility
was to accommodate the varying priorities of particular Egyptian rulers.
The Great Ennead of Helipolis, the most famous iteration on the notion
of pesedjet, consisted of Ra, his children Shu and Tefnut, and their offspring
Geb, Isis, Nephthys, Nut, Osiris, and Set. Here’s Ra:
We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
