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Nut

Nut, my beloved Goddess of the Sky. Now I am a little biased about Nut––She is the main Goddess that I worship––but I will do my best to retain some semblance of professionalism when it comes to discussion about Her. And remember these are unedited essays. Fact-checked, yes, but I'm not going for journal/publication quality.

For the most part, discussions and essays surrounding Nut focus solely on Her role as the night sky and rarely delve into the deep lore and meaning behind Her role and appearance within Egyptian mythology. However, for the purposes of this essay, I will begin with the basics.

Nut, also spelled as Nuit, is an ancient Egyptian Goddess most easily recognizable by either the pot atop Her head or the stars decorating Her body as She arches over the earth. In this latter form, it appears as though Her arms and legs are kept tightly together; in reality, Her hands and feet touch each of the four cardinal points of the horizon, representing the four pillars of heaven.

Her name comes from the hieroglyph W24, the pot, which stands for the sound nw. The t is added as a feminine suffix pronoun, thus creating the name Nwt. Why Nut bears a pot atop Her head has been debated, but the general consensus is that it represents the womb; a carrying object, filled with water and sustenance.

Contrary to a great deal of ancient civilizations who depicted the earth as female and the sky as male (think Mother Earth and Father Sky), the ancient Egyptians conceived of the sky as feminine, and Her counterpart, the earth, as male, in the male God Geb, often depicted below Nut in a reclined position. The two Gods were siblings; the children of Shu and Tefnut, representing air and moisture, and who Themselves were the direct children of the sun God Ra.

Some epithets (titles that reveal nature) of Nut:

One-who-gives-birth-to-the-Gods

Mother of All

She the Great One

She Who Protects

She Who Holds A Thousand Souls

Great Encloser

Perhaps the most well-known of myths that Nut is associated with is that of the birth of the Ennead. I discussed this myth in my Osiris post, but I will recite it in short terms here.

Nut and Geb were conceived from the sibling-union of Shu and Tefnut and, in similar fashion, Nut and Geb were joined together in a loving embrace. However, since the sky was joined to the earth, there was no space for humans or any living thing to walk or exist. Because of this (though the reason in the variations of the myth can differ), Ra decided to have Geb and Nut separated, and had Their father, Shu, hold up Nut; thus Shu fulfilled His role as the atmosphere, the air. But this was not the only reason Ra took this course of action; Ra had fear of a prophecy which stated that the children of Nut would one day overthrow him. Due to His fear, Ra forbade Nut from giving birth on any day of the year. Nut asked Thoth, the God of wisdom and writing, for help, and Thoth went to the moon God Iah (a more archaic version of the moon God Khonsu) and gambled with the moon God for some of His light. Thoth and Iah played the game senet, and each time Thoth won, He earned a sliver of moonlight. Eventually, Thoth had earned enough to have five extra days in the year––the Epagomenal days––and on those days, Nut gave birth to Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys, and in some versions, Horus the Elder.

This story is a rather late telling and comes mainly from the Moralia of Plutarch. Plutarch is not the best and most reliable source for Egyptian history and mythology, and it does not help that his own sources were skewed by the time in which he lived; that being a much later era of Egyptian history in which the original myths of the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms had been changed and altered over time. Still, it gives us some idea of Nut and tells us that She is the mother of some of the greatest and most revered Gods of Egypt.

Another myth that is found in the Book of the Heavenly Cow details another version of how Nut came to be the sky, tying into the myth of the rampaging Goddess Sekhmet who was eventually pacified with beer.

The importance of Nut tends to be underplayed by both modern scholars and modern practitioners of Kemeticism, the revival of the ancient Egyptian religion. Usually, She is relegated to being the mother of the 'main Gods', and simply the sky of the earth. People lack knowledge, or perhaps the desire to find the knowledge, of Her role as a funerary deity. Fortunately, there are still a number of historians and scholars who have devoted some section of their research into Nut and Her roles.

Arching over the earth, Nut was considered as 'the vault of the sky,' and the body through which Ra travelled in both the day and the night. During the day, Ra in His day barque would sail across Nut's body, and in the evening, with Nut's head oriented in the west and Her legs in the east, Ra was swallowed by Nut to be regenerated through rebirth in Her womb, come the next morning. This, of course, gives a somewhat contrasting idea to the fact that Ra is said to pass through the Duat, the ancient Egyptian 'underworld', every night.

Thus we come to a very interesting discussion that I have found a lot of joy in reading about: the argument of whether or not the Duat is a chthonic or celestial afterlife. After all, the word 'underworld' was applied by Western scholars and the Duat itself, as a word, does not denote anything 'underground'. For an in-depth study of this, I highly recommend Silvia Zago's Conceptualizing Life after Death: The Evolution of the Concept of Duat and Related Notions in Egyptian Funerary Literature, a fascinating look into funerary literature throughout the eras of ancient Egypt. She comes to the conclusion that, in the Old Kingdom at least, the Duat is a place in the sky, a definitive region within Nut's body. The body of Nut is described geographically in some sections of the Pyramid Texts, and among those regions, the Duat is named. The deceased is described as ascending to the Duat region in PT U271 390;

"Unas ascends on that ladder* which his father Re has made for him. Horus and Seth seize the arm of Unas and take him to the Duat Region."

*The ladder was often used as a symbol of Nut, representing steps to ascend to Heaven, to Her body.

But this is not a solitary region as Heaven in Abrahamic religions is; the afterlife, as conceived by the ancient Egyptians, was the ability to join the cycle of regeneration that the sun took each night and day.

"... it (is) more appropriate to regard these early funerary texts as expressing a multi-faceted yet somewhat coherent vision of the afterlife, one granting the deceased access to both parts of the cosmic cycle – day and night – in order to be reborn at dawn with the sun and achieve immortality." (Silvia Zago, 2019)

"May you cross the sky, united with darkness (i.e. in the Nun or Duat), so that you may you rise from the horizon, the place in which you have become akhs." (PT 217 §152c-d)

In this way, the deceased joined the eternal cycle in the presence of the Gods, and this regeneration took place within the body of Nut––conceivably inside Her womb, where Ra would rest before dawn when He was born as the rising sun.

"...the caption by Nut’s vulva in the monumental versions of the Book of Nut (Osireion and tomb of Ramses IV) labels her vulva as being the Axt iAbtt, “eastern horizon” (text P, EAT I: 81; von Lieven 2007: 51 §7), namely the point of the sky where the sun reappears (i.e. is “born”) into the world at dawn." (Silvia Zago, 2019)

Additional evidence for Nut and the Duat being related is seen in Pyramid Text 442:

“See, he has come as Orion. See, Osiris has come as Orion... ‘Good One’, said his mother, ‘Heir’, said his father, whom the sky has conceived, to whom the Duat has given birth. Oh king (NN), may the sky conceive you/King (NN) together with Orion, may the Duat give birth to you and Orion.”

Whether the impersonal 'sky' (pt) and the personal Nut (the Goddess) are one and the same as literary subjects, or if they are separate as a physical thing and a divinity is somewhat up for debate. The hieroglyphs used to spell pt and nwt are very similar. But considering how consistently the ancient Egyptians attributed personality to natural phenomena and used little distinction between the two, this stands as evidence that it is Nut, as the sky, as the Duat, conceiving Osiris/Orion.

Altogether, what we can take from this is that Nut plays a large role in the afterlife as a place of regeneration and of rebirth, acting as both the day and night sky. She protects, holds, and revitalizes the thousands of souls under Her care, including those of the Gods. There is a lot more discussed in Silvia Zago's publication and I highly recommend reading through it. Personally, this is something I find very auspicious; the idea that, in death, you will return to the stars. And this is a very clear idea in the Pyramid Texts, that the Pharaoh will ascend to become an 'imperishable star'.

PT 139, Utterance 214: The (glorified) humanity bewail you after the Imperishable Stars have carried you. Enter then into the place where your father is, where Geb is! PT 141, Utterance 215: "Look at me! you have seen the forms of the children of their fathers, who know their spell, who are now Imperishable Stars". (Referring to past Pharaohs) PT 380, Utterance 269: The father of Unas, Atum, seizes the arm of Unas and He assigns Unas to those Gods who are quick and clever, the Never-setting Stars (Circumpolars).

Due to Her nature as a funerary deity, it is not uncommon to see Her represented on the inner lids of coffins, especially in the New Kingdom and later periods of Egypt, symbolically covering and protecting the deceased with Her star-covered body. Here, the sarcophagus is symbolic of a maternal uterus, thus why the coffin and Nut were connected; Her epithet Great Encloser refers to this connection.

(From the coffin of Peftjauneith, 26th Dynasty)

An important book from the New Kingdom, which I previously mentioned, is the Book of the Heavenly Cow, found on the outermost part of the four gilded shrines of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, the tomb of Ramses VI (KV9), the tomb of Seti I (KV17), the tomb of Ramses II (KV7), and the tomb of Ramses III (KV11). The Heavenly Cow is a form of Nut, just as the falcon may be a representation of Horus just the same as His human form.

Here, Her belly is covered in stars, and She is held and supported by Shu and the Infinite Ones, a group of Gods mentioned in the Book of the Heavenly Cow.

To put it briefly, Ra is betrayed in some way by mankind––interpretation differs, as always––and decides that His presence in the earthly realm is no longer needed nor safe for Him. He has Nut, as the Heavenly Cow, lift Him up into the sky to separate Him from humanity.

This God (Ra) then said to Nut, "It is in order that I may be uplifted that I have placed myself on Your back." "What's this?" asked Nut. And so She is the person that came to be there in both the heavens. (of night and day) The Majesty of this God said, "Stay far away from them (humanity)! Lift me up (so I am visible)! Look at me!" And so She became the sky. (Chapter 3, Divisions 61-65)

Then Nut started trembling because of the height. So the Majesty of Re said, "If only I had millions supporting her!" And so the Infinite Ones were brought into being. (Chapter 3, Divisions 70-71)

For further reading on the Book of the Heavenly Cow, I recommend this study: https://escholarship.org/content/qt2vh551hn/qt2vh551hn.pdf?t=rzuech

And the whole text of the Book can be read and downloaded here:

https://www.academia.edu/36107603/the_ancient_Aegyptian_book_of_the_Heavenly_Cow

Something else of note in Silvia Zago's book is Nut's relationship to Nunet, the feminine counterpart of the primeval God Nun. This connection is somewhat obscure and came as somewhat of a surprise to me but I found it immensely interesting. It begins with the fact that the sky was conceived of as a watery expanse; hence the use of boats to cross it, and the verbs used describing the journey: 'to row', 'to ferry', or 'to cross'.

"Besides these indirect clues, the most direct piece of evidence of the watery nature of the sky is the very same fact that its regions are imagined as marshlands, separated from one another by a “winding canal” (the ecliptic), and both possessing shores and lakes: to the south was the sxt iArw “Field of Rushes,” and to the north the sxt Htp(w) “Field of Offerings"." (Silvia Zago, 2019)

The reason why the sky was thought of as a watery expanse is, however, rather easily explainable: the sky was thought of as an interface or barrier between the expanse of Nun (the primordial ocean) outside and the earthly world inside. Nut, held up by the atmosphere of Shu, protected the world from these waters rushing in. As an interesting piece of side evidence, Beaux (1998) found that the determinative sign for star (N14) derived from the starfish, likening these 'lower stars' of the earth's oceans to the upper stars of the cosmos. This is mostly conjecture but has some basis in reality, and if true, would explain later funerary text's allusion to stars swimming across the sky.

Nun stands as the third piece of the puzzle in the Pyramid Text's conception of the universe: earth, sky, and the Abyss. This abyss, in the form of Nun, represents everything opposite to what is imagined on Earth: "... where the world is finite, the Nun is infinite, limitless; while the sun brightens existence on earth, the universe outside is immersed in perpetual, uniform darkness. Where the world is characterized by daily life activity ad continual change, the Nun is inert." (Silvia Zago, 2019) This space has negative and positive energy. In essence, it is pure potential. So while Nun can be possibly dangerous, it also contains the full creative potential, and thus the ability to regenerate. As stated in later funerary texts, it is impossible to undergo regeneration in the ordered world––regeneration must take place when submerged in the potential energy of Nun. (Evidenced by Hornung 1982 and J.P. Allen 1988)

This expanse of potential energy is detailed geographically in the Pyramid Texts, and placed above, or on the outer side, of Nut, but also existing underground beneath the earth. Evidence of this is shown by the hieroglyphic determinative for 'sky' (N1) being used upside down. However, when speaking of these underground waters, it is far more common for the name Nunet (also spelled Naunet) to be used––the feminine counterpart of Nun. This phrase translates to 'lower sky' or 'nether sky', and is clearly contrasted with not only Nun but Nut as well.

"The seemingly ambiguous contradiction lying in the fact the Nunet could be thought to represent both the underground waters, as a feminine counterpart of Nun, and a nether-sky, as a counterpart of Nut herself in an underworld, is due to the fact that, once again, according to the Egyptian mindset, more than one explanation was possible." (Silvia Zago, 2019)

A section of the Pyramid Texts that refers to these two heavens––the upper sky and lower heaven––is shown here and again represents the duality and the cycle through which the deceased passes in their afterlife:

"... your arms are (those of) Hapy and Duamutef, which you need to ascend to heaven, and you ascend, your legs are (those of) Imsti and Qebehsenuf, which you need to descend to the lower heaven, and you descend. All your members are (those of) the twins of Atum, o Imperishable One! You did not pass away, your ka does not pass away. You are a ka!" (PT 215 §149)

The idea for a 'lower sky' likely originated in the need to explain what happened to the stars during the day, and what became of the day sky during the night. Thus the 'inverted' sky served as a nether-region counterpart, nearly identical to the heavenly sky down to its' watery nature. When personalized, this means that Nunet and Nut can be seen as counterparts of one another.

"Denn offenbar gehörte Nut ursprünglich als weibliches Gegenstück zu Nun, griechisch Νουν, dem Urgewässer, wobei die Namen altägyptisch als Njw und Njwt zu umschreiben wären und mit dem Wort für Wasser nwjt zusammenhängen könnten, das uns schon in den Pyramidentexten begegnet. Daβ beide Götter eng verbunden gewesen sein müssen, zeigen mehrere Texte, darunter der bekannte Götterhymnus des Alten Reiches, die Nun und Nut als Eltern eines solaren Gottes bezeichnen. [...] Das Urgewässer, das sich sowohl in der Unterwelt wie über den Himmel erstreckte, fungierte dabei als Muttergottheit. Seine Aufspaltung in das Götterpaar Nun/Nut und die damit verbundene Spezialisierung der Nut zum Himmelsozean wären dann ebenso sekundäre Erscheinungen, wie die Existenz der Göttin Naunet, die erst als Nachfolgerin der Nut das weibliche Komplement zum Nun gebildet hätte, und deshalb auch synonym zu Nut verwendet werden konnte." (Barta, 1973)

For your ease of reading, I've run this through Google Translate for you: "Apparently Nut originally belonged as the female counterpart to Nun, Greek Νουν, the primordial water, although the names could be described in ancient Egyptian as Njw and Njwt and could be related to the word for water nwjt, which we already encounter in the Pyramid Texts. Several texts show that both gods must have been closely connected, including the well-known hymn to the gods of the Old Kingdom, which describe Nun and Nut as the parents of a solar god. […] The primordial waters, which stretched both in the underworld and across the sky, functioned as a mother deity. Its splitting into the pair of gods Nun/Nut and the associated specialization of Nut into the celestial ocean would then be just as secondary phenomena as the existence of the goddess Naunet, who only as Nut's successor would have formed the female complement to Nun, and therefore also synonymous with Nut could be used."

Nut and Nun, both functioning as a place of regeneration and rebirth and imagined as a watery expanse, carry a lot of similarities. With this in mind it is much easier to see how the two could be related and, in this logic, how Nut and Naunet can be seen as both opposites and reflections of one another.

Another object of both celestial and funerary importance that is associated with Nut is the Akhet. For those who don't know, the Axt is the horizon, evident in the name Horakhty, which means Horus (Hor) of the Horizon (akht), and it is the final place where regeneration and rebirth are possible, as it is the area where the sun is born each day.

"Throughout the Pyramid Texts, (the Akhet) seems indeed to be meant as the liminal zone through which the night sun passes coming from the Duat, and from which it rises in the morning, thus an interface between two spheres of existence... So the Akhet was both a point of juncture of cosmic realms (Duat, earth, and sky) and a region in itself, endowed with regenerative significance and symbolism." (Silvia Zago, 2019)

Some sections of the Pyramid Texts even mention Nut guiding the deceased towards the Akhet, describing a 'path of the horizon' where the Goddess leads the dead. This path conceivably led from the western horizon, where the sun sets, to the eastern horizon, where the sun is born again. Where exactly the roads are is unclear; they could be underground or within Nut's body. Which one it is is mostly up to personal speculation.

This has been, of course, mostly an analysis of the Pyramid Texts. Later on, the Duat does take on more of a chthonic nature separate from the earlier celestial conception. The afterlife became associated more with Osiris, an earthly figure of fertility and soil, rather than Ra, the solar celestial figure. However, how it is presented in the Pyramid Texts gives a rather good idea of the Duat being something varying and dependable.

"... the use of the sign (N31) (path) could suggest the idea the Duat was regarded as a path of sorts, while the sign (O49) (township) may indicate that it was imagined to be a defined locale in the cosmos... The signs (N1) (sky) and (N37) (pool) also appear in conjunction with the word Duat, pointing to the idea of the (diurnal) sky or more generically a celestial domain and to its watery nature, respectively." (Silvia Zago, 2019)

The use of the hieroglyphic O49 is interesting, denoting that the Duat could be thought of as a city; this city existing within Nut. Nut, being a holder and protector of thousands of souls, can be easily seen as a city in and of Herself, and is referred to as such by Nils Billing:

"The goddess Nut is characterized as "city" as early as the Pyramid texts. 'Make nni, make nni, O Nut; Geb has commanded that you make nni, in this your name of City.' (Pyr. 1596a-b [587]) The passage is found in the longer spell 587 which describes the creation and establishment of Egypt in terms of a city... The earth, i.e. the kingdom of Egypt, is treated in the symbolic form of the Eye of Horus. After being damaged by Seth, the Eye/Egypt/Kingship is reconstituted by Horus. 'It is he who sets you in order in this your name of Settlement; it is he who comes and he makes nni behind you in this your name of City.' (Pyr. 1595a-b, cf. 1597b-c) This description is directly followed by the Nut passage cited above. The path to a correct understanding of these passages is somewhat hampered by the uncertainty of the meaning of the verb nni... Kuhlmann (1991:219) sees movement as the common denominator of (these interpretations), an interpretation supported by the occurrence of the legs as determinative. The type of movement intended is, however, more difficult to grasp." (Nils Billing, 2002)

The final text of gross importance to Nut is the Book of Heaven, also known as the Book of Nut and the Book of the Celestial Cow, but in ancient times referred to as The Fundamentals of the Course of the Stars. This is an astrological text that contains some references to myth but, in general, concerns itself with the course of the stars. It is not a flat text as the term 'book' might insinuate; instead, it is the image of the Goddess stretched out in Her form as the sky, surrounded by extensive hieroglyphs detailing the nocturnal voyage of Ra and the 36 decans through Nut's body. This paper goes into some detail about the contents of the Book of Nut and where it has been found, although it does not contain the text of the book itself.

For further reading on Nut here are some papers and websites I recommend:

A Cosmography of the Unknown. The qbḥw (nṯrw) Region of the Outer Sky in the Book of Nut by Silvia Zago

Cosmic Space and Archetypal Time: Depictions of the Sky-Goddess Nut in Three Royal Tombs of the New Kingdom and Her Relation to the Milky Way by Amanda-Alice Maravelia

Nut, the Goddess of Life in Text and Iconography by Nils Billing (this is not available for free but I highly recommend it)

A Timeline of the Decans by Theresa Ainsworth

Again I recommend Silvia Zago's book The Evolution of the Concept of Duat and Related Notions in Egyptian Funerary Literature, and to read the entirety of the Pyramid Texts you can visit this website or this one to read the Pyramid Texts of Pharaoh Unas, where the first edition of the Pyramid Texts was found.

I have gone over a handful of the more simple subjects regarding Nut but if you truly have any interest in Her I suggest reading some of the above links. She is a fascinating Goddess and, in my religious opinion, one of the most powerful and beautiful of Them all. She is highly underappreciated and I love discussing Her. If anyone has any other links or comments to make on this Netjeret, please add them in the comments.

#my writing #alt account #Nut #goddess Nut #Nwt #kemetic

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