The Egyptian account is as follows: In the beginning was the primitive ocean, a wild waste of waters. From this tossing chaos sprang land and sky, and it was from their embrace that other things arose. The general idea present in this account was probably derived from the Nile floods or from glimpses of the ocean. The lifting of the watery mists which are seen rising each morning from the Nile, the parting of them from the earth and the raising of them to the sky was a work variously attributed to Ra (the sun) or Shu (the atmosphere). Gradually the Egyptians developed ideas of various deities all of whom derive from objects and activities in nature. To these were then assigned the work of creation. At first this work was thought of as a shaping or fashioning in a literal sense. Ptah, the Great Artificer, shapes the sun and moon eggs on his potter's wheel; Osiris, the god of vegetation, formed with his hand the earth, its waters, its air, its plants, all its cattle, all its birds, all its winged fowl, all its reptiles, all its quadrupeds. Is this view very far different from the account given in the so-called second story of creation beginning with verse four of Genesis? There it is written: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Somewhat later developed the more priestly, or theological, account; just as it did for the Hebrews. Creation was then conceived more mystically as an act of will issuing in a word of command. We should remember that, for primitive thought, words were not mere verbal signs, useful to man as means of communication, but were conceived, more realistically and naively, as essential parts of things, bound up with their existence. {34} This same fact will explain much of the ritual of magic. When God says, "Let there be light," light is selected and, as it were, coerced into existence by the name. As time passed man became reflective and critical. He had nothing essentially new to offer, yet he felt dissatisfied with the crude imagery of tradition. Step by step with the growth of society, we always find the passage from creation myths built around the idea of spontaneous generation to the idea of a god who molds men as a potter does his clay, and thence to a _fiat_ in which the creative will of a supernatural and transcendent deity finds expression. There is a remarkable similarity in creation stories, just as we would expect. The same few motives repeat themselves with local variations.