Latin Proverb

Omne vivum ex ovo

All life comes from an egg.

The Dogon creation myth involving the cosmic egg is a variant of an earlier belief where the egg gives rise to the deity who creates the universe and forms the world.

In the Egyptian tradition, a lotus blossom bloomed to signal its birth and the beginning of the rest of creation. The Dogon cosmology follows a similar storyline: an egg "hatches," and gives rise to a primordial being who creates the universe.

The cosmic egg motif is worldwide and found everywhere Africans went. This is especially the case in ancient Greece.

There, the first-born deity is Phanes, whose name meant "to bring light" or "to shine," and it is he who emerged from the egg and gave birth to the universe. However, the cosmic egg-and-man motif was only the beginning of a much deeper truth.

The unfolding of the cosmic egg-and-man motif’s meaning occurred while looking for the last major conflict between Greek natives and Hellenes for control of all of ancient Greece.

The Messenian Wars began when the natives compelled the Hellenes to adopt Orphism, their spiritual custom. 

It is here that the cosmic egg resurfaces as the Orphic egg, with the serpent-like creature, Ananke, the personification of inevitability, compulsion, and necessity, wound about it.