She is often depicted as a nude woman covered with stars and arching over the Earth;[4] and sometimes as acow. Alternatively, she is identified with a water-pot (nw) above her head.
The pronunciation ofancient Egyptian is uncertain because vowels were long omitted from its writing, although her name often includes the unpronounceddeterminativehieroglyph for "sky". Her nameNwt, itself also meaning "Sky",[5] is usually transcribed as "Nut" but also sometimes appears in older sources asNunut,Nenet,Nuit orNot.[6]
She also appears in the hieroglyphic record by a number ofepithets, not all of which are understood.
Nut is a daughter ofShu andTefnut. Her brother and husband isGeb. She had four children – Osiris,Set,Isis, andNephthys – to which is addedHorus in a Graeco-Egyptian version of the myth of Nut and Geb.[7] She is considered one of the oldest deities among the Egyptian pantheon,[8] with her origin being found on the creation story ofHeliopolis. She was originally the goddess of thenighttimesky, but eventually became referred to as simply the sky goddess. Her headdress was the hieroglyph of part of her name, apot, which may also symbolize theuterus. Mostly depicted in nude human form, Nut was also sometimes depicted in the form of acow whose great body formed the sky and heavens, asycamore tree, or as a giantsow, suckling many piglets (representing the stars).
Some scholars suggested that the Egyptians may have seen the Milky Way as a celestial depiction of Nut.[9]
A sacredsymbol of Nut was the ladder used byOsiris to enter her heavenly skies. This ladder-symbol was calledmaqet and was placed intombs to protect the deceased, and to invoke the aid of the deity of the dead. Nut and her brother, Geb, may be considered enigmas in the world of mythology. In direct contrast to most other mythologies which usually develop asky father associated with anEarth mother (orMother Nature), she personified the sky and he the Earth.[10]
Nut appears in the creation myth ofHeliopolis which involves several goddesses who play important roles:Tefnut (Tefenet) is a personification of moisture, who mated withShu (Air) and then gave birth to Sky as the goddess Nut, who mated with her brother Earth, asGeb. From the union of Geb and Nut came, among others, the most popular of Egyptian goddesses,Isis, the mother ofHorus, whose story is central to that of her brother-husband, the resurrection god Osiris. Osiris is killed by his brother Set and scattered over the Earth in 14 pieces, which Isis gathers up and puts back together.
Nut swallows the Sun, which travels through her body at night to be reborn at dawn.
In his De Iside et Osiride, the Greek philosopherPlutarch, who lived in the first century CE, presents a narrative likely inspired by real Egyptian mythology regarding the birth of Nut's children. In this work, Plutarch draws parallels between Egyptian and Greek deities.The early EgyptologistE. A. Wallis Budge argued that Plutarch's description of Ancient Egyptian beliefs incorporated elements that appear to be either imaginative embellishments or are based on misinformation. The account describes howRhea, secretly consorting withSaturn, was cursed by the sun-godHelios to never give birth during any day of the year.Mercury, enamored with Rhea, intervened by gambling with the moon-goddessSelene and winning a seventieth portion of her moonlight, creating five additional days. These days were added to the 360-day calendar and became known in Egypt as the "Epact" orintercalary days, celebrated as the birthdays of the gods. Plutarch likely equated Rhea with the Egyptian goddess Nut.[11][12] She had five children on each of the five days:Osiris, later ruler of the gods and then god of the dead,Horus the Elder,Set (equated withTyphon),Isis andNephthys. The first two children were fathered by Helios, Isis by Mercury, and Set and Nephthys by Saturn. The third of the additional days, considered Sets birthday, was deemed to be an omen of bad luck. According to Plutarch, Set married Nephthys, while Isis and Osiris married even before birth, and conceived Horus the Elder in some traditions.[13] The Ancient Egyptian texts 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. Another ancient Egyptian text describes the moment as occurring "when the sky was full with gods, unknown to men, while the great Ennead slept."[14]
Coverer of the Sky: Nut was the goddess of the visible sky which is why she's depicted on all fours arching her back upward in a "covering" position that encompasses the semi-sphere of the visible sky as it can be observed from the perspective of the earth; and beneath her lies her brother Geb as the earth itself at her feet thus simulating the ground. As such she "covers" the rest of the sky which is not visible from the earth with her presence because of her role as the visible sky. During night time her body was believed to be covered in stars which were projected on her since she encompassed the earth shielding it from the open sky, and as such the stars would touch her instead and become visible on her body.
She Who Protects: Among her jobs was to envelop and protectRa, the sun god.[8]
Mistress of All or "She who Bore the Gods": Originally, Nut was said to be lying on top ofGeb (Earth) and continually havingintercourse. During this time she birthed four children:Osiris,Isis,Set, andNephthys.[15] A fifth child named Arueris is mentioned byPlutarch.[16] He was the Egyptian counterpart to the Greek godApollo, who was made syncretic with Horus in the Hellenistic era as 'Horus the Elder'.[17] ThePtolemaic temple ofEdfu is dedicated to Horus the Elder and there he is called the son of Nut andGeb, brother of Osiris, and the eldest son of Geb.[18]
She Who Holds a Thousand Souls: Because of her role in the re-birthing ofRa every morning and in her son Osiris' resurrection, Nut became a key goddess in many of the myths about the afterlife.[8]
The sky goddess Nut depicted as acowNut depicted as a naked woman with stars on her body forming an arc
Nut was the goddess of the sky and allheavenly bodies, a symbol of protecting the dead when they enter the afterlife. According to theEgyptians, during the day, the heavenly bodies—such as theSun andMoon—would make their way across her body. Then, at dusk, they would be swallowed, pass through her belly during the night, and be reborn at dawn.[19]
Nut is also the barrier separating the forces ofchaos from the orderedcosmos in the world. She was pictured as a woman arched on her toes and fingertips over the Earth; her body portrayed as a star-filled sky. Nut's fingers and toes were believed to touch the fourcardinal points or directions of north, south, east, and west.
Because of her role in saving Osiris, Nut was seen as a friend and protector of the dead, who appealed to her as a child appeals to its mother: "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." Nut was thought to draw the dead into her star-filled sky, and refresh them withfood andwine: "I am Nut, and I have come so that I may enfold and protect you from all things evil."[20]
The godShu (the air) separating to the goddess Nut (the Sky) and the godGeb (the Earth).
She was often painted on the inside lid of thesarcophagus, protecting the deceased. Thevaults oftombs were often painted darkblue with many stars as a representation of Nut.TheBook of the Dead says, "Hail, thou Sycamore Tree of the Goddess Nut! Give me of thewater and of theair which is in thee. I embrace that throne which is in Unu, and I keep guard over the Egg of Nekek-ur. It flourisheth, and I flourish; it liveth, and I live; it snuffeth the air, and I snuff the air, I the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, in peace.''
TheBook of Nut is a modern title of what was known in ancient times asThe Fundamentals of the Course of the Stars. This is an important collection of ancient Egyptian astronomical texts, perhaps the earliest of several other such texts, going back at least to 2,000 BC. Nut, being the sky goddess, plays the primary role in theBook of Nut. The text also tells about various other sky and Earth deities, such as the star deities and thedecans deities. The cycles of the stars and planets, as well as time keeping are also covered in the book.[21]
^Cavendish, Richard (1998).Mythology, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of the Principal Myths and Religions of the World. Tiger Books International.ISBN1-84056-070-3.
^Erman, Adolf; et al., eds. (1957),Wörterbuch der Ägyptischen Sprache [Dictionary of the Egyptian Language] (in German), p. 214
^Griffiths, J. Gwyn, ed. (1970).Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride. University of Wales Press, pp.135-137
^Meeks, Dimitri; Favard-Meeks, Christine (1996) [French edition 1993].Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods. Translated by G. M. Goshgarian. Cornell University Press.p.78. ISBN 978-0-8014-8248-9
^Clark, R. T. Rundle.Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt. London:Thames and Hudson, 1959.
^Emma Swan Hall, Harpocrates and Other Child Deities in Ancient Egyptian Sculpture, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt Vol. 14, (1977), pp. 55–58, retrieved fromJSTOR.org
^"Papyrus of Ani: Egyptian Book of the Dead", Sir Wallis Budge, NuVision Publications, page 57, 2007,ISBN1-59547-914-7
^Alexandra von Lieven:Grundriss des Laufes der Sterne. Das sogenannte Nutbuch. The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Ancient Eastern Studies, Kopenhagen 2007.
Hollis, Susan Tower (1987).Women of Ancient Egypt and the Sky Goddess Nut.
Willems, Harco (1988).Chests of Life: A Study of the Typology and Conceptual Development of Middle Kingdom, Standard Class Coffins. Ex Oriente Lux.ISBN978-90-72690-01-2.
Billing, Nils (2002).Nut, the Goddess of Life: In Text and Iconography. Department of Archaeology and Ancient History,Uppsala University.ISBN91-506-1653-6.
Billing, Nils (2004). "Writing an Image—The Formulation of the Tree Goddess Motif in the Book of the Dead, Ch. 59".Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur.32:35–50.JSTOR25152905.
Roberts, Alison (2000).My Heart My Mother: Death and Rebirth in Ancient Egypt. NorthGate Publishers.ISBN0-9524233-1-6.
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