Moon Knight's third episode introduced the Ennead, the pantheon of Egyptian gods who have abandoned humanity. But where did the Ennead come from? Are they gods like Thor, or like the celestials? And how do they connect to the Eternals, Thor Love and Thunder, and the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? We're here to explain.
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Written by Srinidhi Rao ( / shishurao )
Hosted by Ryan Arey ( / ryanarey )
Edited by Harriet Lengel-Enright
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The show Moon Knight is tied to Egyptian mythology. The hero works for a god, the villain is a god, and all these gods are there too-it’s a lot to process, if you don't know a lot about this lore. So, we’re here to explain what the heck the Ennead are, and how they connect to the deep, rich history of the Marvel Cinematic universe.
In the first episode, we were introduced to the group known as the Ennead [clip]. Now, in episode 3, we finally see the Ennead together and learn that they use their avatars to keep tabs on Earth.
That one line opens up so many questions. Why don’t they meddle anymore? Why did they meddle to begin with? Who exactly are they? Where are they? And why did they abandon humanity?Well, we’re here to break it down.
First, let’s go over what these beings are. In one of our earlier videos, we put out a theory where these Egyptian gods are just aliens from a different planet. They share similarities with other aliens we’ve previously seen in the MCU -magic like the Norse Gods, controlling their host bodies like Venom, etc.
In the comics, the Egyptian gods come from a dimension next to Earth called Celestial Heliopolis.Their home city is built on a small planet like Asgard. In some origin stories, the gods actually originated on Earth but traveled to Celestial Heliopolis when the pharaohs started to rule Egypt. Which we’ve also theorized about in a past video.
See, in the comics a couple supervillains have their roots in ancient Egypt. One is Apocalypse, like we saw in that movie. [go go power rangers]. Apocalypse was the first mutant, and he’s thousands of years old. So it could be that the rise of this new pharaoh, this mutant, caused the people of earth to turn away from the gods and worship him.
And the other Egyptian villain from Marvel comics is Kang the conqueror. I'm sure you know this, but Kang is the evil variant of he who remains.. In the comics he was a time traveler who went into the past to conquer egypt, and made his super high tech headquarters inside the sphinx.
If Kang conquered ancient Egypt, then this could have also caused the people to turn away from their gods.
Back to Celestial Heliopolis-it’s also known as the Overvoid. Now this seems to be the place where the gods in Moon Knight currently are, as Khonshu says.
But exactly when were these gods on Earth? Well, in the book Steven was reading, we learn that the Egyptians originally revered one god whose likeness was never represented. So there were never any statues or drawings to portray its likeness.
Over time the Egyptians split this one deity into multiple deities, each with their unique individual roles. Eventually, humans favored some gods more than others. This is similar to the Eternals, who came to Earth in 5000 BC to help civilizations prosper, with each member of the team being deified in different places around the globe.
Now there are literally hundreds of Egyptian gods, but the Ennead is the main council of gods with 9 members. There are different schools of thought on which gods are actually in the ennead-it’s like do you prefer The Van halen of Sammy Hagar or David Lee Roth.
When Ennead converges for the trial of Khonshu, we see that every avatar represents the role of their host god. The highest ranking members are Osiris, lord of the dead, his wife Isis the mother goddess, and their son Horus, god of kingship and the sky.
In the comics and egyptian mythology itself, Osiris is the god of the dead and the afterlife. His most famous myth is when he was sliced into pieces by his jealous brother Seth. His wife Essees half revived him to have their son Horus- making him the first mummy. Eventually Horus fights Seth, and aids his mother in fully reviving Osiris, giving Osiris the role of lord of the dead and afterlife. At the end of the 3rd episode, Osiris is the one to explain to Harrow of Khonshu’s imprisonment, which could be thought of as death for a god.