Geb- Egyptian GodDeity"God of the Earth"

The Cosmic Separation

In the beginning, Geb and Nut lay in an embrace so complete that nothing could exist between them. No air, no light, no space for any living thing. Their father Shu, god of air, thrust himself between the lovers on Ra's command, lifting Nut high to form the vault of heaven while Geb remained below as the earth.

Temple and tomb paintings preserve the scene: Nut arched overhead, her star-spangled body forming the sky, fingertips and toes touching the horizons. Geb lying beneath, his body the undulating landscape. Shu standing between them with arms upraised, holding them apart. The Pyramid Texts return to this image again and again. Creation did not begin until the lovers were parted.

The Longing God

Geb's grief at the separation shaped the natural world. His laughter caused earthquakes. His weeping filled the oceans and rivers. Mountains rose toward the sky because the earth yearned upward, reaching for a wife it could never touch. Every morning Nut gave birth to the sun from her eastern horizon. Every evening she swallowed it at the west. Geb watched this daily cycle, his wife's body visible above him, separated by the immovable presence of their father.

The wind that blew across the land was Shu himself, the air that held them apart. Every breath an Egyptian drew was drawn from the substance of the barrier between two lovers.

The Great Cackler

Geb was depicted with green or black skin, the colors of vegetation and the fertile Nile silt. Crops grew from his body. The greening of the fields after the annual flood was his visible renewal.

His sacred animal was the goose, and one of the oldest creation traditions cast him as the Great Cackler, a primordial goose who laid the cosmic egg upon the waters of Nun. From the egg the sun god emerged, the first light breaking the shell of darkness. The cackle that accompanied the laying was the first sound ever heard. Hermopolitan traditions placed the egg on the mound of creation where the Ogdoad's energies converged; the Heliopolitan version set it within the Ennead's cosmogony.

As "Father of Snakes," Geb held dominion over the serpents that lived in burrows and crevices beneath the surface. They emerged from his body and returned to it. Funerary spells invoked his authority over serpents to protect the dead from bites in the underworld and to command the serpent-demons that guarded the passages of the Duat.

The First King

Geb was among the primordial kings who ruled Egypt before human pharaohs. The divine succession ran from Ra to Shu to Geb to Osiris, each transfer a precedent for legitimate rule. His children with Nut were born on the five epagomenal days that Thoth won from the moon in a game of draughts: Osiris and Isis, Set and Nephthys. Through them Geb became ancestor to the active Egyptian pantheon.

When Horus and Set fought over the throne of the murdered Osiris, Geb sat in the divine tribunal. The Shabaka Stone preserves a Memphite tradition in which Geb first divided the kingdom, giving the north to Horus and the south to Set, then reconsidered and awarded the entirety to Horus as Osiris's rightful heir. The pharaoh's throne was called the "Throne of Geb." To sit on it was to claim dominion over the land that was the god's own body. The Pyramid Texts record the words: "The earth speaks. The doors of the earth-god are opened for you."

The Earth Receives the Dead

The dead were buried in Geb's body. Funerary texts addressed him directly, asking the earth to open his arms and receive the deceased, just as he opened to receive the sun each evening when it passed below the western horizon. The Coffin Texts invoke him as guardian, asking Geb to shield the dead from harm within his depths and to keep the earth firm above the burial chamber so the tomb would endure.

To be buried was to return to the god from whom all life sprang. Every grave dug was a door opened into his body. Every burial, a reunion.