ABSTRACT
The origin of the universe is represented in various ways: starting from an egg, the transformation of an anthropomorphic entity killed by the gods, as a series of divine births that reproduce natural phenomena, or as a chain of creative acts of a god/demiurge. The motif of the uni verse that emerges from an egg is sometimes linked to the image of an aquatic bird that dives to the bottom of the ocean and brings back a bit of mud from which the earth is gradually formed. In totemic myths, bird-men are frequently depicted as phratric ancestors, which may ac count for the wide diffusion of this motif. Older mythologies have the egg hatch totemic birds, islands, heavenly bodies, the sun (for example, in Aboriginal Australia and in Africa), several gods, and in the end, the center of the universe-the earth. The idea of reciprocal exogamy or binary logic sometimes gives rise to the idea of two cosmic eggs, or an egg divided into two differently colored parts that give rise to opposed beings. In Dogon mythology, for example, one half is associated with the White Fox Yurugi. The other half is affiliated with his negative counterpart Yazigi.
