5.1.3: Nut, The Egyptian Sky Goddess

The Sky Goddess Nut [nOOt], the goddess who held up the heavens with the arc of her body (Lesko 6), was often affiliated with the sacred cow, an image that hardly feels important or complementary to modern humans. However, if we apply Lens theory, focusing on what the people of ancient southern Egypt would have valued, we see that as an agrarian society, now fixed in place, they depended upon herding alongside farming to feed their people. Cattle in particular provided an unending supply of milk, a substance that can be cultured into a variety of uses, making these creatures incredibly valuable. At a time when tempestuous weather gods would destroy an entire wheat crop, cows provided a dependable means of survival. Cows, along with dogs that guarded against intruders, and sheep that also provided milk were so treasured that upon their death, they were wrapped in shrouds and buried in graves (8).

The mothering qualities of cows whose milk sustains both their young and human young draws parallels to a divine mother or fertility goddess, but we can further the link by turning our lens to the night sky of the ancient world, a sky undisturbed by light pollution. The white swath of the Milky Way would’ve painted the sky in a nightly show. An Ancient Egyptian might have asked, “what produces so much whiteness, so like milk?” For a herding culture, the answer would be obvious: a celestial cow. Yet, even primitive people wouldn’t have been so literal. Elizabeth and Paul Barber, in their essential book, When They Severed Earth from Sky, using lens theory to explain how early human minds shaped myths, cite “The Analogy Principle” to explain that ancient people used analogy much like we do to explain phenomena but after a while, the comparative words “like” or “as” are often dropped, so the night sky transforms from “a sky like the milk from a celestial cow” to “a celestial cow’s milk” (Barber and Barber 34-40).

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): The Sky goddess Nut, represented as the Celestial Cow, who holds up the heavens, represented by the stars on her underbelly which connect to form the Milky Way. The sun and moon are carried in the boats that sail near her front and rear legs. (From The Gods of the Egyptians Volume 1 by E. A. Wallis Budge, circa 1904. Public Domain Wikimedia)

Sustaining human life and the ability to procreate rapidly forever tied cows to Nut, especially as the need for a greater workforce grew alongside the success of the agricultural revolution, leading to the need to venerate the appropriate fertility deities. But life is always accompanied by the eventuality of death, and the Mother Goddess is intrinsically linked with chthonic aspects. The earliest female deities, as mentioned before, intertwined both life and death, evidenced by female figurines found within graves. Prehistorian Elise Baumgartel and author Barbara Lesko cite the emergence of seedlings from the earth as rationale for the chthonic qualities. If seeds planted could return with new life, the force that generated such life must come from an earthly goddess. Using analogy, we can discern “that people felt the grave was a conduit for communicating with deities of fecundity” (Lesko 10). Rather than viewing death with abject fear, early people likely saw it as a necessary component for renewal, and the goddess a chief factor in that process.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): The goddess Mehet-Weret [me-HET-where-et], the embodiment of the Great Flood, predates Nut and is considered the first being brought into existence. In Ancient Egypt two elements ruled the wellbeing and survival of humans, the sun which produced the long dry summer months and water, which came as floods rather than rain, and which brought renewed life to the Fertile Crescent. Lesko explains that the Egyptians saw the world of the dead in the sky; therefore, “the earth represented life, and the sky was the domain of the dead. The watery abyss on earth engendered life, and the sky goddess received the dead . . . . placing Mehet-Weret in heaven vacated space below, so that the theologians could hand it over to a male deity” (Lesko 24). (CC BY Wikimedia)