Chaoskampf  

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Chaos (Greek khaos) refers to the formless or void state of primordial matter preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in creation myths, particularly Greek but also in related religions of the Ancient Near East.

The motif of chaoskampf is ubiquitous in these myths, depicting a battle of a culture hero deity with a chaos monster, often in the shape of a serpent or dragon.

Fifth-century Orphic cosmogony had a "Womb of Darkness" in which the Wind lay a Cosmic Egg whence Eros was hatched, who set the universe in motion.

Greco-Roman tradition

In Greek cosmology, Khaos was a primordial state of matter from which the cosmos and the other gods emerged. For Hesiod and the early Greek Olympian myth (8th century BC), Chaos was the "vast and dark" void from which Nyx emerged.

Chaos was also personified as a primal deity in Greek mythology, as the first of the Protogenoi and the god of the air.

Primal Chaos was sometimes said to be the true foundation of reality, particularly by philosophers such as Heraclitus. It was also probably what Aristotle had in mind when he developed the concept of Prima Materia in his attempt to combine Platonism with Presocraticism and Naturalism.

Ovid (1st century BC), in his Metamorphoses, described Chaos as "a rude and undeveloped mass, that nothing made except a ponderous weight; and all discordant elements confused, were there congested in a shapeless heap."

Ovid. Metamorphoses 1.5-9

Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia caelum
unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe,
quem dixere chaos: rudis indigestaque moles
nec quicquam nisi pondus iners congestaque eodem
non bene iunctarum discordia semina rerum.
"Before the ocean and the earth appeared—
before the skies had overspread them all—
the face of Nature in a vast expanse
was naught but Chaos uniformly waste.
It was a rude and undeveloped mass,
that nothing made except a ponderous weight;
and all discordant elements confused,
were there congested in a shapeless heap." (trans. B. Moore)





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