Cult of Gods

Nut

Egyptian tradition. See the whole pantheon.

Domains
sky, stars
Symbols and attributes
Arched star-covered woman; sow
Parents (per the sources used)
Shu and Tefnut
Partner
Geb
Children
Osiris, Isis, Seth, Nephthys
Papyrus of Ani, British Museum (New Kingdom), a Book of the Dead.
Papyrus of Ani, British Museum (New Kingdom), a Book of the Dead.

Key myth

Nut swallows the sun at evening and gives birth to it at dawn. Plutarch adds a story that Thoth won extra days from the moon so that Nut could give birth to five children, but this comes from a later account.

Primary sources

  • Pyramid Texts
  • Plutarch, De Iside 12

All sources for the Egyptian pantheon

Lineage in the sources used: Shu, Atum, Nun, Tefnut.

Place in the family graph

Choose a deity to see where it comes from. Dashed lines are links the sources describe that are not parent and child.

NunAtumRaAmunShuTefnutMaatHathorSekhmetPtahGebNutAnubisThothSobekOsirisIsisSethNephthysHorus

More traditions

Odin rides to Hel, W. G. Collingwood, after the Poetic Edda.NorseA chaos monster and a sun god, drawn by L. Gruner for A. H. Layard's Monuments of Nineveh.MesopotamianVishvarupa Vishnu, Kashmir or Himachal, in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art collection.HinduFolio 309r of the Book of Kells (Trinity College Dublin), c. 800.Celtic (Irish)

Elsewhere in the world

Deities in other traditions who share a theme with Nut: sky, storm and thunder, death and the underworld. This is overlap in one area only.

Norse

Odin

wisdom, poetry, war

Norse

Thor

thunder, protection of gods and people, strength

Norse

Baldr

light, beauty, mercy

Norse

Hel

the dead who die of sickness or age

Norse

Freyr

peace, fertility, sunshine

Norse

Freyja

love, desire, magic (seiðr)

Norse

Rán

drowning, the sea's net

Compare across cultures