Mythology

The goddess Nut was primarily the personification of the vault of the heavens, though her character included many different aspects within this role. As a member of the great Ennead of Heliopolis she was the daughter of Shu and Tefnut - the deities of air and moisture who were the first offspring of the primeval demiurge Atum; and she herself represented the firmament which separated the earth from the encircling waters of chaos out of which the world had been created. Nut thus fulfilled an important cosmogonic role - she was not only the great sky whose ‘laughter’ was the thunder, and

Whose ‘tears’ were the rain, but she M'as also the ‘mother’ of the heavenly bodies who were believed to enter her mouth and emerge again from her womb each day. The sun was thus said to travel through the body of the goddess during the night hours and the stars travelled through her during the day. This cosmic imagery was the basis of the assertion that the goddess was ‘the female pig who eats her piglets’. Nut was nevertheless viewed in a positive manner, and the myth of the birth of her children was recorded by Plutarch who states that, fearing the usurpation of his own position, the sun god placed a curse on the sky goddess stopping her giving birth on any day of the 360-day year. The god Hermes (Thoth) came to Nut’s aid, however, and won five extra days for the year enabling the goddess to bear her children.

Several scholars have suggested that Nut may originally have represented the Milky Way, as Spell 176 of the Book of the Dead refers to this broad band of stars which crosses the night sky and the following spell begins with an invocation of Nut, and some representations of the Ramessid Period show stars around the figure of the goddess as well as on her body. There is astronomical evidence which may support the equation. Ronald Wells has shown that in the predawn sky at winter solstice in predynastic Egypt the Milky Way would have looked remarkably like a stretched out figure with

Arms and legs touching the horizons in exactly the manner in which the goddess was often later depicted. Furthermore, at the time of the winter solstice the sun would have risen in the area of the goddess’s figure - her pudendum - from which it would be imagined to be born, just as nine months earlier, at the spring equinox, the sun would have set in the position of the goddess’ head - suggesting it was being swallowed.

Nut also became inextricably associated with the concept of resurrection in Egyptian funerary beliefs, and the dead wei'e believed to become stars in the body of the goddess. According to Heliopoli-tan theology Nut united with her brother Geb, the earth god, to produce Osiris and those deities associated with him in the great mythic cycle of resurrertion. In this way the priests of Heliopolis were able to incorporate the important netherworld god into their own solar religion and at the same time to strengthen the association of Nut with the concept of resurrection and rebirth. Nut is therefore an important deity in the Pyramid Texts, appearing there almost 100 times. She fulfilled a central role in the resurrection of the deceased king both as heavenly cow (PT 1344) - and as a funerary goddess who addresses the king as his ‘mother Nut in her name of “sarcophagus”...in her name of “Coffin” and...in her name of “tomb”’ (PT 616). In the later Coffin Texts similar ideas are elaborated for the non-royal deceased. Not surprisingly, in later times the roles of Nut and Hathor - also a cow deity and funerary goddess - were sometimes conflated. Hathor was thus sometimes viewed as a sky goddess and Nut sometimes replaces Hathor as the goddess of the divine sycamore tree who nourishes the deceased, although the connection of Nut herself with the coffin may have led to her association with wood and thus the sycamore tree.

(Beioiv left) The outstretched figure of Nutivas carved on the lids of some royal sarcophagi to unite until the deceased. 19th dynasty. Sarcophagus of Merenptah, reused by Psusennes I, from Tams Egyptian Museum,

(Beloiv) The goddess Nut until wings outstretched in a protective pose adorns this pectoral of Tulankhamun.

18th dynasty. Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

The figure of Nut from the second gilded shrine of Tutankliamun. 18th dynasty. Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

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