Nut

The Star-Covered Sky

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.

The Birth of the Ennead's Younger Gods

According to a myth recorded by the Greek writer Plutarch in Isis and Osiris and echoed in earlier Egyptian tradition, the sun god Ra, angered to learn that Nut was secretly pregnant by Geb, decreed that she could not give birth on any of the 360 days of the year. Thoth, in a wager or game with the moon god, won enough extra light to create five additional days outside the regular calendar, the epagomenal days. On these five days Nut gave birth in turn to Osiris, Horus the Elder, Set, Isis, and Nephthys, completing the second generation of the Ennead central to Egyptian mythology.

Swallower and Mother of the Sun

Nut's most enduring cosmic role is her daily cycle with the sun: each evening she swallows the solar disc, which travels through her body during the night, and each dawn she gives birth to it anew in the east. This cycle, illustrated in detail in funerary texts such as the Book of Nut and the Book of the Day and Night found on temple and tomb ceilings, made Nut central to Egyptian ideas of rebirth, since the dead hoped to be reborn just as the sun was reborn from her body each day.

Protector of the Dead

Because of this daily rebirth, Nut was frequently painted on the interior of coffin lids, positioned directly over the deceased so that the dead would rest, in effect, within her body, sharing in the sun's own promise of renewal.