Geb and Nut – The Forbidden Love of Earth and Sky
Geb and Nut, the twins of Shu and Tefnut and grandchildren of Atum were in a relationship that upset the gods so much that they needed to be separated, because they needed to fulfill their duties. Shu was not happy about the relationship (Simon, 2001) and It was Shu who separated his children, Geb and Nut, so that air, and the possibility of further creation, could exist between earth and sky (Leeming, 2005).
Geb – The Earth God
Geb Was so upset about the separation that he cried so much that his tears formed The oceans (Simon, 2001).
He is well documented in the pyramid era where he is called the “eldest of Shu“ (Hart, 2005).
Geb is the earth personified and vegetation grows from him. (Simon, 2001).This made him a fertility god. As a god of fertility, he is coloured green (Oakes and Gahlin, 2006). The Egyptians viewed the earth as masculine (Fletcher, 2009).
While Geb was a fertility God, he also so had a dark side with the idea that he imprisons the dead within him, preventing their free movement in the afterlife (Hart, 2005).
Geb is often depicted as a Green man, sometimes with an erect penis (Oakes and Gahlin, 2006) lying on his back under his sister Nut. He also depicted as traveling on the solar barge that carries Atum through the underworld (Simon, 2001). In the tomb of Ramses VI, he is depicted riding on the solar boat with the head of a rabbit (Hart, 2005).
Geb had four children with his sister (Simon, 2001), Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys.
Geb, Nut, their father Atum, and their four children were members of the Heliopolitan Ennead* (Darvill, 2008).
Nut – The Sky Goddesses
She personified the vault of heaven, and representations show her as a woman standing bent over with the tips of her fingers brushing the ground (Darvill, 2008).
Unlike many other great deities, Nut had no particular cult center (Lesko, 2001). The cult of Nut appears to have been relatively modest, with evidence of few sanctuaries and priests (Hollis, 1987). She is an anomaly in the world of mythology, for, as is well known, sky deities are almost universal (Hollis, 1987).
The Pyramid Texts mention that Nut could appear as a bee (Sagrillo, 2001). In Spell 548 of the Pyramid Texts, Nut the Great is described as a long-horned celestial cow who suckles the king and takes him to herself in the sky (Lesko, 2001).
Bibliography:
Darvill, T. (2008). The concise Oxford dictionary of archaeology. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Fletcher, J. (2009). The Egyptian book of living & dying. London: Duncan Baird.
Hart, G. (2005). The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. New York: Routledge.
Hollis, S. (1987). Women of Ancient Egypt and the Sky Goddess Nut. The Journal Of American Folklore, 100(398), 496. doi: 10.2307/540908
Hornung, E. (1996). Conceptions of God in ancient Egypt. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Leeming, D. (2005). The Oxford companion to world mythology. [Oxford]: Oxford University Press.
Lesko, L. (2001). Nut. In D. Redford, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Oakes, L., & Gahlin, L. (2006). Ancient Egypt. London: Hermes House.
Sagrillo, T. (2001). Bees and Honey. In D. Redford, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Simon, C. (2001). Geb. In D. Redford, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
*In Egyptian mythology the Ennead (“the Nine”) is the name given to the pantheon of the great theological center Heliopolis. (Leeming, 2005) It was made up of nine God’s, Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys.
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