Chaos
Χάος
The empty yawning that existed before anything else.
Hesiod's Theogony opens with the line: "First of all, Chaos came to be."
The Greek word khaos means "a gaping chasm." Its modern sense of jumbled disorder came much later.
From Chaos followed Gaia (earth), Tartarus (the abyss), and Eros (attraction).
SourcesHesiod, Theogony
Commonly confused
Chaos was not "confusion" but a "gap." The image of tangled disorder hardened later, passing through the Roman poet Ovid.