Nut and Shu are recorded in a parent-and-child line within the Egyptian Pantheon.
At a glance
Egyptian Pantheon
tradition
Egyptian Pantheon
the sky, the stars, the daily solar cycle, rebirth
domains
air, the space between sky and earth, sunlight, dryness
arched, star-covered body, the solar disc she swallows and births each day
symbols
ostrich feather, raised arms (holding up the sky)
—
also called
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Where they meet
The atlas records no shared domain or symbol between them. What connects them is elsewhere: Nut and Shu are recorded in a parent-and-child line within the Egyptian Pantheon.
Where they part
Nut alone
the sky, the stars, the daily solar cycle, rebirth
Shu alone
air, the space between sky and earth, sunlight, dryness
How each was worshipped
Nut
Cult sites: No major independent state temple; honored chiefly through funerary art and coffin decoration.
Festivals: The five epagomenal days at year's end were associated with the births of her children.
Nut's presence in Egyptian religion is felt overwhelmingly through funerary art: her image, arched across coffin lids and tomb ceilings, was meant to receive the dead into her body each night just as she received the sun, promising the same daily rebirth to the deceased.
Shu
Cult sites: Cult center at Leontopolis, where he was worshipped alongside Tefnut in lion form.
Shu and Tefnut were worshipped in leonine form at Leontopolis in the Nile Delta. Elsewhere, Shu's presence was felt chiefly through his role in the cosmological iconography of sky and earth rather than through a widespread independent cult.
Nut
Egyptian Pantheon
Goddess of the sky, daughter of Shu, consort of Geb, and mother of Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Nut's star-covered body arches over the earth, swallowing the sun each evening and giving birth to it again each dawn.
Nut was born to Shu and Tefnut and, with her brother and consort Geb, formed the third generation of the Ennead. Ra, angered by her secret pregnancy by Geb, forbade her from giving birth on any day of the calendar year, until Thoth won five extra days through which Nut bore Osiris, Horus the Elder, Set, Isis, and Nephthys.
Nut is the sky itself, depicted as a woman whose elongated, star-covered body arches over the reclining earth god Geb, held apart from him by their father Shu. Daughter of Shu and Tefnut, Nut forms, with Geb, the next generation of the Heliopolitan Ennead after Atum, Shu, and Tefnut.
God of the air and dry space, a member of the Ennead. Shu was produced by Atum and, with his twin sister and consort Tefnut, fathered Geb (Earth) and Nut (Sky), whom he is famously depicted physically separating and holding apart.
Shu was produced by the creator god Atum at the very beginning of creation, spat out or sneezed into being along with his twin sister Tefnut. Together they fathered Geb and Nut, and Shu is remembered above all for physically separating his two children, sky and earth, holding them apart to allow the ordered world to exist between them.
Shu is the personification of air and the dry, light-filled space that separates sky from earth. In the Heliopolitan cosmogony recorded in the Pyramid Texts, he was produced by the creator god Atum, who is said to have sneezed or spat him out along with his twin sister Tefnut, goddess of moisture, at the very beginning of creation.