Nut (deity)

Symbols: Stars; sky; cow

Country: Egypt

Mother: Tefnut

Father: Shu

Siblings: Geb

Children: Osiris; Iris; Horus the Elder; Seth; Nephthys

Nut was a primeval Egyptian goddess of the heavens. She was the daughter of Shu, god of air, and Tefnut, goddess of moisture; she was also the granddaughter of Atum, the primeval creator. Her laughter was thunder and her tears rain. With her celestial body, she protected Earth from the waters of chaos from which it had been created.

Because the ancient Egyptians recognized her as the mother of the all heavenly bodies, they believed that Nut swallowed the sun each evening only to have it emerge from her womb when she gave birth to it again each morning. Similarly, she would consume the stars in the morning and then give birth to them again in the evening.

Nut was also associated both with the afterlife and with the Egyptian concept of resurrection. It was believed that after death, people became stars in the goddess’s heavenly body. The holiest of these heavenly bodies became the polar stars, which never set.

The goddess was often depicted as a woman carrying a water pot on her head. Nut was also pictured with an elongated body, which she held up in an arch. In these paintings, her toes and fingertips would touch the horizon, and the heavenly bodies and stars would appear as sparkling lights across her body. This depiction indicates that the ancient Egyptians also believed she was a bridge across the sky, and many scholars think she may have also symbolized the Milky Way in these representations. The earth god Geb, her brother and consort, was often shown under her, reclining on his side, supporting himself with one arm, and stretching up towards Nut.

At times, Nut was also depicted as the divine cow, whose four hoofs were positioned at the four cardinal points (north, south, east, and west); the sun and stars appeared under her body. In these representations, she was held aloft by her father Shu, who stands with upraised arms beneath her.

In Mythology

When the sun god Ra discovered that Geb and Nut had married in secret without his permission, he had the couple separated. Shu, their father, raised Nut into the heavens as the sky, forever keeping the husband and wife apart. Geb was heartbroken and wept for his loss. His tears formed the oceans and seas on Earth.

Ra also said that Nut couldn’t give birth to children in any month of the year. Thoth, the god of wisdom and learning, took pity on the couple and helped them out. Thoth gambled with the moon and won a seventy-second part of the moon’s light, and from that part, he created five new days in the year. Nut was thus able to give birth to five children—Osiris, Horus the Elder, Seth, Isis, and Nephthys. All of them were key figures both in the Egyptian pantheon and in Egyptian mythology.

One Egyptian myth describes how her eldest son Osiris, the king of Egypt, was murdered and dismembered by his jealous brother Seth. After gathering together all of the scattered pieces, Osiris’s wife Isis teamed with the other deities to successfully rejoin the fragments and restore Osiris to life. As his death and life were judged free of wrongdoing, Osiris was given eternal life by the gods. No longer a living king, Osiris was made king and judge over the dead of the underworld. In this role, Osiris came to represent the resurrection that all ancient Egyptians desired. Furthermore, because she was Osiris’s mother, Egyptians came in time to associate Nut with Egyptian funerary beliefs and also with resurrection. Dead pharaohs were believed to be embodiments of Osiris, and Nut was seen to be their mother, who protected them and watched over them eternally.

In yet another myth, Nut helps Ra in his celestial journey. When Ra became tired of ruling on Earth, Nut transformed into a cow and gave him a ride to the heavens on her back. As she climbed higher and higher, she became dizzy, and four gods were appointed to support her four legs (which became the world’s pillars), while Shu supported her belly. In this way, Ra was taken to the heavens.

Origins and Cults

As a cosmic deity, Nut didn’t have any temples or a cult dedicated to her worship, but she is depicted in numerous temples and tombs. In addition, a shrine dedicated to her at the Horus temple at Edfu can be found on the eastern side of the sanctuary. She is shown on the ceiling with her body stretched above some boats; Ra himself is pictured in one of those boats. At the Dendera temple near Luxor on the western bank of the Nile River, Nut’s image appears on the ceiling of a small side temple or chapel that was possibly used for New Year rituals or as a sacred site that people visited in order to be healed. She is also depicted on the ceiling of the large hall at the same temple.

Nut’s links to the Egyptian afterlife can be seen in the many tomb ceilings that were painted to look like the night sky with stars. These paintings represented the heavens that the deceased hoped to reach after death. Paintings of stars or of Nut also appeared on the inner lids of sarcophagi. (A sarcophagus is a coffin that held the corpses of dead Egyptians.) Because these images were painted onto the inner lid, the deceased and Nut would come face to face when the sarcophagus was closed. With her starry body stretched over the mummy, she would watch over the deceased from the underside of the lid, and in this way, she would be able to protect him or her throughout eternity. Thus was Nut able to fulfill her role as the embodiment of the mother goddess. Furthermore, the coffin over time became the symbol of a womb, into which the deceased would enter after death. By welcoming the deceased individual into her womb, Nut embraced the child as her own, once again fulfilling her function in Egyptian mythology as the mother goddess.

Bibliography

Bunson, Margaret. Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2012. Print.

The New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology. Trans. Richard Aldington and Delano Ames. London: Hamlyn, 1959. Print.

Watterson, Barbara. Gods of Ancient Egypt. Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2013. Print.

Wilkinson, Richard. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003. Print.

Goddesses in World Culture, Vol. 1. Ed. Patricia Monaghan. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2011. Print.