Geb

Geb is the personification of the firm earth in the cosmogony of Heliopolis. From Atum, arisen from the waters of Nun, were born Shu (the air) and Tefnut (the moisture); from them, Geb and his sister Nut, the sky. The Pyramid Texts call him prince of the gods and present him as the soil from which all life springs. Geb and Nut lay embraced until Shu interposed himself between both and raised the sky above the earth: only then was there space for creation and for the daily journey of the sun. Together with Atum, Shu, Tefnut, his four children and himself, Geb integrates the Heliopolitan Ennead, the group of nine deities that orders the world.

Egyptian art represents Geb as a man reclining under the vault of Nut, whose back draws the reliefs of the terrain and from whose body sprout plants and crops. His green skin evokes the vegetation that covers the black soil of the Nile. His emblem is the goose, a bird whose name shares with the hieroglyphic sign of Geb and which usually perches on his head; some funerary texts nickname him the Great Cackler and attribute to him the laying of the cosmic egg. He may carry the was scepter and the crown of Lower Egypt. A late magical tradition explains earthquakes as the laughter of Geb, who shakes the earth from within.

Husband of Nut, Geb begets with her Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys, the generation that stars in the great Egyptian mythic cycle. His decisive role arrives in the dispute between Horus and Set: as father of the contenders and legitimate lord of the earth, Geb presides over the divine tribunal and awards the throne of Egypt to Horus. That is why the Egyptian monarchy is defined as the throne of Geb, and each pharaoh reigns as his heir. Separated forever from Nut, Geb sustains the world of the living while his son Osiris governs that of the dead, dividing between both the dominion of existence.