Nut (goddess)

• 1. Introduction

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  Nut, the ancient Egyptian goddess of the sky, stretches across the ceiling of the world. Her body arches on fingertips and toes, spanning the four cardinal points of north, south, east, and west. Stars cover her skin. The dead cry out to her: "O my Mother Nut, stretch Yourself over me, that I may be placed among the imperishable stars which are in You, and that I may not die." She is one of the oldest deities in the Egyptian pantheon, and her story reaches back to the creation myths of Heliopolis. How did a woman arching over the Earth become a barrier between chaos and the ordered cosmos? And why was she painted inside the lids of coffins, watching over every burial across thousands of years?

• 2. Sky, Earth, and Family

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  Nut is the daughter of Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, a personification of moisture. Her brother and husband is Geb, the earth. In contrast to most other world mythologies, which pair a sky father with an earth mother, Nut is the sky and Geb is the earth beneath her. Some scholars have noted this reversal as a distinctive feature of Egyptian cosmology. Nut originally ruled only the nighttime sky before her domain expanded to include the full sky. She bore four children: Osiris, Set, Isis, and Nephthys. A Graeco-Egyptian version of the myth adds Horus as a fifth child.

  The creation story of Heliopolis places Nut at the centre of a generational chain. Tefnut and Shu gave birth to Nut as the sky; Nut then mated with Geb the earth, and from that union came Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Osiris would later become the god of the dead. He is killed by his brother Set and scattered across the earth in fourteen pieces; Isis gathers every piece and reassembles him. Nut's headdress was the hieroglyph for part of her name, a pot, which some scholars also read as a symbol of the uterus.

• 3. The Sun's Daily Journey

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  Each day, according to Egyptian belief, the sun and moon crossed Nut's body. At dusk they were swallowed and passed through her belly during the night. At dawn they were reborn. This cycle gave Nut the title "She Who Holds a Thousand Souls," because she was central not only to the sun's rebirth every morning but also to the resurrection of her son Osiris. She was also called "She Who Protects" for her role in enveloping Ra, the sun god.

  A sacred symbol connected to Nut was the ladder used by Osiris to enter her heavenly skies. This ladder was called the maqet and was placed in tombs to protect the dead and to invoke divine aid. Nut also stood as the barrier separating the forces of chaos from the ordered cosmos, a role that made her presence in burial spaces not merely decorative but functionally protective.

• 4. Protector of the Dead

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  Tomb vaults throughout ancient Egypt were often painted dark blue and filled with many stars as a representation of Nut. She was frequently painted on the inside lid of the sarcophagus itself, her image stretching directly over the body of the deceased. Prayers addressed her in terms of intimate comfort: "I am Nut, and I have come so that I may enfold and protect you from all things evil."

  The Book of the Dead records a hymn addressed to her as a sycamore tree: "Hail, thou Sycamore Tree of the Goddess Nut! Give me of the water and of the air which is in thee." Her role as a sycamore connects her to another of her forms; alongside the human figure and the cow, Nut was sometimes depicted as a sycamore tree. She was also shown as a giant sow suckling many piglets, with those piglets representing the stars. Some scholars have suggested the Egyptians may have seen the Milky Way itself as a celestial depiction of Nut.

• 5. Plutarch and the Five Days

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  The Greek philosopher Plutarch, who lived in the first century CE, wrote about Nut in his work De Iside et Osiride. He presented a narrative he likely drew from real Egyptian mythology, although the early Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge argued that Plutarch's account contained imaginative embellishments or misinformation. In Plutarch's telling, the figure he equated with Nut, called Rhea, was cursed by the sun-god Helios to never give birth during any day of the year.

  Mercury intervened by gambling with the moon-goddess Selene, winning a seventieth portion of her moonlight. From this winning he fashioned five extra days, which were added to the existing 360-day calendar. These days became known in Egypt as the "Epact," or intercalary days, celebrated as the birthdays of the gods. On each of the five days one child was born: Osiris, Horus the Elder, Set, Isis, and Nephthys. The third day, Set's birthday, was considered an omen of bad luck. Ancient Egyptian texts themselves barely reference this episode, offering only a subtle hint that it was Nut's father, not her husband as Plutarch proposed, who was responsible for the pregnancy. One Egyptian text describes the moment as occurring "when the sky was full with gods, unknown to men, while the great Ennead slept."

• 6. The Book of Nut

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  The text known today as the Book of Nut was called in ancient times The Fundamentals of the Course of the Stars. Scholars regard it as an important collection of ancient Egyptian astronomical texts, possibly the earliest of several such works, with origins going back at least to 2000 BC. Because Nut was the sky goddess, she plays the primary role in this text. Alongside her, the text covers star deities, decan deities, and the cycles of stars and planets. It also addresses timekeeping.

  The Ptolemaic temple of Edfu, dedicated to Horus the Elder, identifies Horus as the son of Nut and Geb, the brother of Osiris, and the eldest son of Geb. That temple inscription ties together the astronomical and mythological threads of Nut's identity: a mother whose children include the gods who govern death, resurrection, and time itself.