The world egg, cosmic egg or mundane eggis a mythological motif found in the creation

myths of many cultures and civilizations. Typically, the world egg is a beginning of some
sort, and the universe or some primordial being comes into existence by "hatching" from
the egg, sometimes lain on the primordial waters of the Earth.[1][2]
Vedic mythologyEdit

Vivasvan, Rahu, Bhūmi, Naraka, Ananta, Garbhodaksayi Vishnu

This is one of many material universes, Brahmandas, which expand from Mahavishnu when He breathes.

The earliest idea of "egg-shaped cosmos" comes from some of the Sanskrit scriptures. The
Sanskrit term for it is Brahmanda (बबबबबबबबबब) which is derived from two words -
'Brahm' (बबबबबब) means 'cosmos' or 'expanding' and 'anda' (बबबब) means 'egg'.
Certain Puranas such as the Brahmanda Purana speak of this in detail.
The Rig Veda (RV 10.121) uses a similar name for the source of the
universe: Hiranyagarbha (बबबबबबबबबब) which literally means "golden fetus" or
"golden womb". The Upanishads elaborate that the Hiranyagarbhafloated around in
emptiness for a while, and then broke into two halves which formed Dyaus (Heaven)
and Prithvi (Earth). The Rig Veda has a similar coded description of the division of the
universe in its early stages.
Greek mythologyEdit
The Orphic Egg in the ancient Greek Orphic tradition is the cosmic egg from which hatched
the primordial hermaphroditic deity Phanes/Protogonus (variously equated also
with Zeus, Pan, Metis, Eros, Erikepaios and Bromius) who in turn created the other
gods.[3] The egg is often depicted with a serpent wound around it.
Many threads of earlier myths are apparent in the new tradition. Phanes was believed to
have been hatched from the World-Egg of Chronos (Time) and Ananke (Necessity). His
older wife Nyx (Night) called him Protogenus. As she created nighttime, he created
daytime. He also created the method of creation by mingling. He was made the ruler of the
deities and passed the sceptre to Nyx. This new Orphic tradition states that Nyx later gave
the sceptre to her son Uranos before it passed to Cronus and then to Zeus, who retained it.
Egyptian mythologyEdit

The Ancient Egyptians abided by a multiplicity of truths when it came to creation myths.
For instance, the Hermopolitan, Heliopolitan and Memphite theologies, were equally
validated. Under the Hermopolitan theology, there is the Ogdoad, which represents the
conditions before the Gods were created (Van Dijk, 1995). An aspect within the Ogdoad is
the Cosmic Egg, from which all things are born. Life comes from the Cosmic Egg; the sun
god Re was born from the primordial egg in a stage known as the first occasion (Dunand,
2004).

Phoenician mythologyEdit
A philosophical creation story traced to "the cosmogony of Taautus, whom Philo of
Byblosexplicitly identified with the Egyptian Thoth—"the first who thought of the
invention of letters, and began the writing of records"— which begins with Erebus and
Wind, between which Eros 'Desire' came to be. From this was produced Môt which seems
to be the Phoenician/Ge'ez/Hebrew/Arabic/Ancient Egyptian word for 'Death' but which
the account says may mean 'mud'. In a mixed confusion, the germs of life appear, and
intelligent animals called Zophasemin(explained probably correctly as 'observers of
heaven') formed together as an egg, perhaps. The account is not clear. Then Môt burst forth
into light and the heavens were created and the various elements found their stations.
Following the etymological line of Jacob Bryant one might also consider with regard to the
meaning of Môt, that according to the Ancient Egyptians Ma'at was the personification of
the fundamental order of the universe, without which all of creation would perish. She was
also considered the wife of Thoth.
Chinese mythologyEdit
In the myth of Pangu, developed by Taoistmonks hundreds of years after Lao Zi, the
universe began as an egg. A god named Pangu, born inside the egg, broke it into two halves:
the upper half became the sky, while the lower half became the earth. As the god grew
taller, the sky and the earth grew thicker and were separated further. Finally Pangu died
and his body parts became different parts of the earth.
Norse mythologyEdit
In the book Futhark by Edred Thorsson, the cosmic egg is compared to the
rune Hagalazwhich is symbolic of the fertile void from whence everything is spawned. It is
symbolic of the chasm Ginnungagap or the void that existed before Odin willed himself to
be. Hagalaz, as well as representing elemental disruption or chaos, is the potential for the
birth of good or evil depending on what sorts of being or entity fertilizes the egg. In magic
rituals, users of seidr or galdr will take an egg and "fertilize" it with their desired outcome,
whether it be good or evil, and then crack the egg to release what is built up inside.
Hail is cold grain
 and shower of sleet
and sickness of serpents.

Finnish mythologyEdit
In the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, there is a myth of the world being created from
the fragments of an egg laid by a diving duck on the knee of Ilmatar, goddess of the air:
One egg's lower half transformed
And became the earth below,
And its upper half transmuted
And became the sky above;
From the yolk the sun was made,
Light of day to shine upon us;
From the white the moon was formed,
Light of night to gleam above us;
All the colored brighter bits
Rose to be the stars of heaven
And the darker crumbs changed into
Clouds and cloudlets in the sky.

In many original folk poems, the duck - or sometimes an eagle - laid its eggs on the knee
of Väinämöinen. [4]
Polynesian mythologyEdit
In Cook Islands mythology, deep within Avaiki(the Underworld), a place described as
resembling a vast hollow coconut shell, there dwelt in the deepest depths, the primordial
mother goddess, Varima-te-takere. Her domain was described as being so narrow, that her
knees touched her chin. It was from this place that she created the first man, Avatea, a god
of light, a hybrid being half man and half fish. He was sent to the Upperworld to shine light
in the land of men, and his eyes were believed to be the sun and the moon.[5]
RepresentationsEdit
 In the temple of Daibod, Japan, it is represented as a nest egg floating in an expanse of water.
 On the island of Cyprus, the egg is represented as a gigantic egg-shaped vase.[6]

Modern mythologyEdit
In 1955 poet and writer Robert Graves published the mythography The Greek Myths, a
compendium of Greek mythology normally published in two volumes. Within this work
Graves' imaginatively reconstructed "Pelasgian creation myth" features a
supreme creatrix, Eurynome, "The Goddess of All Things",[7] who arose naked
from Chaos to part sea from sky so that she could dance upon the waves. Catching the north
wind at her back and, rubbing it between her hands, she warms
the pneuma and spontaneously generates the serpent Ophion, who mates with her. In the
form of a dove upon the waves, she lays the Cosmic Egg and bids Ophion to incubate it by
coiling seven times around until it splits in two and hatches "all things that exist... sun,
moon, planets, stars, the earth with its mountains and rivers, its trees, herbs, and living
creatures".[7] [8]
In modern cosmologyEdit
The concept was resurrected by modern science in the 1930s and explored by
theoreticians during the following two decades. The idea comes from a perceived need to
reconcile Edwin Hubble's observation of an expanding universe (which was also predicted
from Einstein's equations of general relativity by Alexander Friedmann) with the notion
that the universe must be eternally old. Current cosmological models maintain that 13.8
billion years ago, the entire mass of the universe was compressed into a gravitational
singularity, the so-called cosmic egg, from which it expanded to its current state (following
the Big Bang).
Georges Lemaitre proposed in 1927 that the cosmos originated from what he called
the primeval atom.
In the late 1940s, George Gamow's assistant cosmological researcher Ralph Alpher,
proposed the name ylem for the primordial substance that existed between the big
crunch of the previous universe and the big bang of our own universe.[9]