Who is Nut, the Egyptian goddess of the sky?

Nut was the goddess of the sky in ancient Egypt. She is shown as a woman covered with stars, arching over the earth, her hands and feet touching the horizons. Each evening she swallowed the sun, and each morning she gave birth to it again. She was the daughter of Shu, the air, and of Tefnut, moisture, and the wife of Geb, the earth. Her children were Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys.

Who she was in Egypt: In the creation story of Heliopolis, Shu lifted Nut away from Geb, so that the sky stood apart from the earth. In a tale told by the Greek writer Plutarch, she was forbidden to give birth on any day of the year, so Thoth won five extra days from the moon, and on those days her children were born. Nut is not Nun, the dark water that was there before creation.
Her signs and images: Paintings often add Shu, the air, holding her up, with Geb lying beneath. She can also be the great cow of the sky: in the Book of the Heavenly Cow she carries Ra on her back. In tomb paintings she leans from a sycamore fig to give the dead water and food.
How Gerald Massey read her in 1907: Massey writes Nut, and sometimes Nu, which he gives as the Egyptian name for heaven; his Nnu, or Nun, is the god of the heavenly water. He calls her the mother-heaven and the cow of heaven, set against Apt, the water-cow of the earth, and reads the Milky Way as her milk. For him Shu lifted Nut from Seb, his name for Geb, every dawn, and he argues that Genesis retells it. He makes her the bringer of the dead, his manes, to new life, and sets her beside the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven.
What scholars say now: Much of Massey’s picture matches the Egyptian sources: the sky as mother of the gods, lifted by Shu, the heavenly cow, and the goddess painted inside coffin lids to shelter the dead. Some scholars also suggest the Egyptians saw her in the Milky Way. His wider claims are not accepted. Many peoples told of sky and earth being parted, and scholars read Genesis against the whole ancient Near East, not Egypt alone. Nor do historians trace the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven to Nut.
Where you meet her today: Nut spreads her starry body across the inside of many coffin lids in museums. In the tomb of Ramesses VI in the Valley of the Kings, two great figures of her arch across the ceiling of the burial chamber, framing the Books of the Day and of the Night.
In Massey’s words: “Nut, the mother-heaven, was represented on the inner part of the coffin-lid arching over the mummy as bringer of the manes to new life above.” (Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (1907), Book VII, p. 448b)
In the app: Trainer › Word Trainer. In the app, the Word Trainer sets Massey’s Nu beside Nut and his Nnu beside Nun, and the Symbol Trainer’s sycamore shows the tree from which she gives the dead water.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

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