Nut

Nut is the sky goddess in the cosmogony of Heliopolis: daughter of Shu, the air, and Tefnut, the moisture, and therefore granddaughter of Atum, the creator emerged from the Nun. United with her brother Geb, the earth, she formed with him an undivided mass until Shu interposed and raised her, arched, over the world. The Pyramid Texts invoke her as the mother who welcomes the deceased, and her starry body delimits the space in which creation exists: all that is under her belongs to order; all that remains outside, to the primordial chaos from which everything came.

She is represented as a naked and elongated woman who arches over Geb, touching the ground only with the tips of her fingers and feet, while Shu supports her by the belly. Her blue or black skin appears sown with stars and constellations. This image presides over the ceilings of tombs and the interior of sarcophagus lids, where Nut leans over the deceased: lying in the coffin is equivalent to returning to the mother's body. She also adopts the form of a celestial cow that carries the sun between her horns, and that of the sycamore that offers water and shade to the dead.

Each evening Nut swallows the sun, which travels through her body during the night, and at dawn gives birth to it again in the east: the cycle that guarantees that the world continues to exist. Plutarch records why her children were not born in the year: Ra cursed her not to give birth in any month, and Thoth won from the Moon five days added to the calendar; in them Osiris, Horus the Elder, Set, Isis and Nephthys came into the world. Wife of Geb and mother of that generation, Nut is also grandmother of Horus. Her separation from Geb is not a sterile punishment: it is the act that opens the space where life fits.