Nut

"O Great One who became sky,
You are strong and mighty.
Every place fills with your beauty.
The whole world lies beneath you.
As you enfold earth and all creation in your arms,
So you have uplifted me, a child of the goddess,
And made me an indestructible star within your body." - Hymn to Nut

Nut was the goddess of the sky, a symbol of resurrection and rebirth. According to the ancient Egyptians, the heavenly bodies would enter her mouth, traverse her body, and be reborn with dawn out of her womb. The red dawn sky was the blood of this birth - the rejuvenated sun-god “swims in the redness, swims in the flood of blood.”

The sky of Nut was thought of as a watery region in which the stars and planets swum like fish or sailed in boats. Nut was seen as a friend and protector of the dead, who appealed to her as a child appeals to its mother: “O my Mother Nut, stretch yourself over me, that I may be placed among the imperishable stars which are in you, and that I may not die.”

Nut was said to draw the dead into her star-filled sky, and refresh them with food and wine: “I am Nut, and I have come so that I may enfold and protect you from all things evil.” Nut was thought to be the barrier separating the forces of chaos from the ordered cosmos in the world.

Nut was often painted on the inside lid of the sarcophagus, protecting the deceased; the vault of the tomb was often painted dark blue with stars as a representation of Nut. Nut’s sacred stone was lapis lazuli, which was likened to a dark, star-filled sky. In texts the stars were the spirits of the dead, nursing from the sky-goddess in order to be reborn. Nut welcomed the deceased as a mother does a newborn child.

Nut was thought to be the daughter of Shu and Tefnut, the sister-wife of Geb, and the mother of Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Occasionally she was thought to have given birth to Horus. Sometimes Nut was considered to be the daughter-wife of Ra.