Domain: The sky, the heavens, the stars, the cycle of day and night Symbol: The arched star-covered body, the sun disk, the sycamore, the pot hieroglyph
Overview
Nut is the sky itself — a goddess whose body arches over the whole of the world, her fingertips touching one horizon and her toes the other, her belly the star-strewn vault of night. She is the great canopy under which everything happens. Daughter of Shu the air and Tefnut the moisture, sister and wife to Geb the earth, she is separated eternally from her beloved by their father Shu, who holds her aloft so that the space between sky and ground — the space where life is lived — can exist at all.
Each evening she swallows the sun; each dawn she gives birth to it again, and the daily death and rebirth of Ra plays out across her body. She does the same for the stars, and for the dead: to be painted on the underside of a coffin lid was to lie beneath Nut’s protection, to be taken up into her and reborn among the imperishable stars. She is the mother of the sky-gods, the vault of heaven, and the promise that every ending is only the far side of a beginning.
Key Myths
Swallowing and birthing the sun. Every dusk Nut swallows Ra, the sun, and he travels through the darkness of her body all night; every dawn she gives birth to him again at the eastern horizon. The perpetual cycle of day and night is her endless act of consuming and delivering the light — the sky as a mother who eats and bears the sun without end.
The five days out of time. Ra forbade Nut to give birth on any day of the year, cursing her when he learned she was pregnant by Geb. The god Thoth outwitted the curse by winning five extra days from the moon in a game, days belonging to no month — and on those five days Nut bore her children: Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. The whole drama of the Egyptian gods begins with a loophole in the calendar.
Separated from Geb. Nut and Geb loved so completely that their embrace left no room for creation. Shu, the air, forced himself between them and lifted Nut high, holding sky apart from earth forever. Their eternal separation is the very structure of the world — the gap they can never close is the space in which everything lives.
Related
- Geb — Her husband and counterpart, the earth she is forever held above
- Ra — The sun she swallows at dusk and births at dawn
- Nephthys — Her daughter, born in the five days out of time
- The Star — The Major Arcana card of the star-clad heavens, hope, and cosmic renewal she embodies
- Egyptian Mythology Index
- Mythology