Ma‘at―whose name means, among other things, ‘law’ and ‘order’ and is denoted in Egyptian hieroglyphs by an ostrich feather,⁹ is often given wings when she is shown in “human” form.  These two representations, then, may by way of metonymy (one of the two basic methods of creating meaning; the other, of course, being metaphor)―be interpreted as implying that Ma‘at is in reality a bird.  At the same time, Ma‘at is also a star―or, more likely, the planet Venus―in which epiphany she accompanies the Sun God R‘a in the ferry (‘ferry’ is actually one of the Egyptian words for ‘star’) that carried R‘a into the dawn of the first day, at creation.  Most significantly, as she travels through the sky with R‘a, Ma‘at determines the order of time as displayed by the Sun’s regular course.  Conversely, R‘a’s nighttime journey through the Underworld brings him into contact with his main enemy, the serpent Apopis.  Each night, R‘a must defeat this demon of disorder, and in this battle the Sun God is assisted by the Star-Bird Ma‘at.¹⁰  As a result, Ma‘at and Apopis constitute an early example of the conflict of forces―embodied in the Snake and the Bird―as representative of the (daily, in this case) creation of the world.

    Other Egyptian instances of such Snake-Bird symbolism abound, and in fact the most popular creation myth among the aristocracy constitutes but a variant of the same theme.  In this version of the theme, the serpent Atum emerges from the Primal Sea, coils himself to become the Primordial Mound (as the Egyptians called the island Earth), and forms a nest in which the Bennu Bird or Phoenix (in this case, definitely the planet Venus) lays the Egg of the Sun.¹¹

  Of course, this was not the only such creation myth, though it was certainly the most well-known in Egyptian.  At the same time, many other allusions to the Snake-Bird motif can be found throughout Egyptian literature.  And it is fairly apparent from these many references that these three nature-symbols―the Snake, the Bird, and the Egg―form a symploce of complementary elements whose interelationships constitute nothing less than the creation of the world.