Chaos

“In the Classical world, Chaos in Hesiod’s Theogony and in Virgil’s Aeneid is personified as the primal state in which earth, sky, and seas were all merged. More generally, chaos is the opposite of cosmos, which refers to the ordered whole. It is this latter juxtaposition that is particularly evident in the ancient Near East. Egyptian philosophers conceived of the precreation state as the opposite of the created state. In Mesopotamian views of the precosmic condition, chaos was personified only secondarily in the conflict myths in which the created order was considered to be at risk. In this cosmological literature, the creatures posing the threat must be overthrown and order reestablished.”—Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology, page 27