Nut- Egyptian GodDeity"Goddess of the Sky"

The Separated Lovers

Nut was born from Shu and Tefnut, air and moisture, and with her brother Geb she formed a pair whose passion threatened to undo creation. Earth and sky pressed together so tightly that nothing could exist between them. No space for air or light or life. Their father Shu forced himself between them, lifting Nut above Geb with outstretched arms that would never tire.

She arches over the earth, her elongated body covered with stars, her fingers and toes touching the eastern and western horizons. Forever reaching toward the lover she cannot touch. On the walls of the cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos, a monumental relief shows Shu lifting Nut while Geb reclines below, his body forming the contours of the landscape, hills and valleys corresponding to his limbs and torso.

The Forbidden Birth

When Ra learned that Nut was pregnant by Geb, he forbade her to give birth on any day of the year. Thoth gambled with the moon god Khonsu and won enough moonlight to create five extra days that belonged to no year: the epagomenal days.

On these five days, Nut gave birth. Osiris came first. Horus the Elder followed. Set tore through his mother's side amid storms on the third day. Isis was born on the fourth, Nephthys on the fifth. The Cairo Calendar records whether each day was lucky or unlucky. Osiris's day was fortunate. Set's was ill-omened.

The Celestial Cow

In the Book of the Heavenly Cow, Ra decides to withdraw from the earth after the rebellion of humanity. He mounts Nut in the form of an enormous cow, and she rises into the heavens. She climbs so high that she grows dizzy and trembles. Shu and eight Heh gods brace themselves beneath her legs to hold her steady, and the sky is established at its proper height.

The stars fill the dark expanses of her belly, created from the dew of her body. Ra makes his new dwelling place there, high above the world he once walked. The earth is left to govern itself.

The Sun's Journey

Each evening Nut swallows Ra as he descends at the western horizon, her mouth. He travels through her body during the twelve hours of night, past stars and the souls of the blessed dead. Each morning she gives birth to him at the eastern horizon. Ra enters as an aged man and emerges as a newborn scarab, Khepri.

Egyptian astronomers mapped this journey onto her form. The decans, thirty-six star groups each rising at ten-day intervals, were arrayed along her torso and limbs to form a star clock that told the hours of the night. In the tomb of Ramesses VI, Nut stretches across the ceiling, annotated with texts identifying the positions of celestial bodies within and upon her body. At Dendera, a Ptolemaic-period ceiling shows her with the zodiac superimposed on her form, the same tradition sustained across more than two millennia.

The Ladder to Heaven

The Pyramid Texts describe a ladder, the maqet, set up for the deceased king to climb into the sky. "A ladder is set up for me among the stars," declares Utterance 304. Horus and Set stand on either side to steady the king's ascent. Nut waits at the top.

The destination was the circumpolar stars, the ones that never dip below the horizon. The Egyptians called them "the imperishable ones." To reach them was to share Nut's own nature, beyond the reach of time.

The Coffin's Embrace

Nut's image was painted on the inside of coffin lids. Her face was the first thing the mummy saw when the lid closed, her outstretched wings the last embrace before the journey west. The Pyramid Texts invoke her: "O my mother Nut, spread yourself over me, that I may be placed among the imperishable stars."

She also appeared as a sycamore goddess, leaning from a tree in the cemetery to offer food and water to the newly dead. Theban tomb paintings show her pouring water from a vessel while the ba-bird of the deceased drinks. Figs and cool water for those exhausted by their journey into the west. Coffins were made from sycamore wood, placing the dead within her body. The Coffin Texts extended the promise of rebirth beyond royalty: "I go up to the sky; I sit down beside the god; the sky opens its gates to me."