Ennead

Shu

šw

AirLightSeparation

How it changed

His entire function is a posture. Geb and Nut, earth and sky, were locked together, and Shu forced them apart and holds them apart, which is why there is a space for anything to happen in. Egyptian cosmology is unusual in making the void between earth and sky a person, and in making the maintenance of it an act of continuous effort rather than a settled fact.

Cult centre

Heliopolis

Best attested

Old Kingdom onward

Family

Son of Atum; brother-husband of Tefnut; father of Geb and Nut.

Epithets

“He who lifts up”

How to recognise the figure

A man with an ostrich feather on his head, kneeling with both arms raised, holding the sky up off the earth.

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

Nut

Heliopolis

Geb

Heliopolis

Tefnut

Heliopolis, and Leontopolis