Ennead

Nut

nwt

The skyRebirth

How it changed

Painted inside coffin lids so the dead lay within her body and could be born again as the sun is each dawn. She swallows the sun at dusk and gives birth to it at sunrise, which makes the daily cycle a birth rather than a journey.

Cult centre

Heliopolis

Best attested

Old Kingdom onward

Family

Daughter of Shu and Tefnut; sister-wife of Geb; mother of Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys.

Epithets

“She who bore the gods”

How to recognise the figure

A woman arched over the earth, body starred, touching the ground with fingers and toes.

Appears in

c. 2400 BCE, in the Pyramid Texts

Creation at Heliopolis

One god alone on a mound in the water, producing the first pair from himself.

Worshipped at

Iunu

now Cairo, under the suburb of Ain Shams

Others in this group

Geb

Heliopolis

Shu

Heliopolis

Tefnut

Heliopolis, and Leontopolis