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| Geb below the air-god and sky-goddess.. |
Geb is the Earth-god and president of the divine tribunal on the kingship in ancient Egypt. He is well documented in the
Pyramid Era where he
is called the ‘eldest of SHU’. His sister consort is the sky-goddess NUT, their union producing the deities of the OSIRIS legend.
A description of the iconography of Geb occurs in a Pyramid Text where we read that he holds ‘one arm to the sky and the other to the earth’. However, the best visual
images of Geb are found much
later in New Kingdom religious papyri. In these vignettes Geb reclines partly on his side, usually with one arm bent at the elbow. Being a chthonic deity he can be coloured green, indicating the vegetation which sprouts from him. On the Papyrus of Tentamun (Dynasty XXI) Geb’s body is actually decorated with the symbols of the Nile reeds in flower. His phallus, when shown, can either be relaxed or stretching upwards towards the goddess Nut. He occasionally appears in the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings wearing the hieroglyph which writes his name, the white-fronted goose, upon his head.. In the Pyramid
Texts we read
that Geb actively supports the king in the role of Horus
victorious over Seth. The
king performs a dance celebrating the
belief that Geb will never allow harm to come
to the rightful heir of the throne, the
god putting his sandals on the heads of the sovereign’s enemies.
Towards the end of pharaonic civilisation in Dynasty XXX there is papyrical evidence of a reinterpretation of Geb’s connection with
the throne. This document
from Saft el-Hinneh in the
Delta says that Geb usurped the kingship from Shu and, in addition, violated the body of his mother Tefnut. Here, surely, the Egyptian tradition has become contaminated with the Greek myth of
the usurpation of Ouranos
by his son Kronos whom
the classical writers in fact identify
with Geb.
Geb and Nut
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| Nut as sky-cow. Tomb of Sety I,Dyn. XIX. |
The sky-goddess united with her brother the earth-god and as a result gave birth to the gods and goddesses really belonging to the Osirian cycle of myth, incorporated into the Heliopolitan pantheon in recognition of the
growing popularity of that
cult. These children of Nut are Osiris,Isis, Seth and Nephtys. In Egyptian iconography the sexual
union between Nut
and Geb is occasionally symbolised by the phallus of the prone earth-god reaching towards the
goddess’s body. However,
Nut is more frequently depicted
arching her body over the god, separated from him by the air-god Shu – either standing between
the couple supporting the
body of the goddess on his upraised
hands, or sailing between them in a boat.
Although in Egyptian art it appears as if Nut is stretching her body with her arms and legs tightly together, the actual
concept of
the sky-goddess is that her fingers
and her toes touch the four cardinal points. This visualisation of Nut
and Geb as
apart is the probable source of the Greek
interpretation of the myth of the difficult birth of the children of the sky-goddess, as related by Plutarch (AD 40–120).
Fearing an usurpation of his own power the sun-god (‘Helios’) utters a curse on the pregnant sky-goddess (‘Rhea’) to prevent her giving birth on
any day of the then
360-day year. Only by the moongod’s (‘Hermes’) winning sufficient light for five extra days
(the epagomenal days of
the Egyptian calender considered as
gods’ birthdays) was Nut able to go into labour and produce her children (with the addition in
this version of the god HORUS,
called ‘Apollo’). Probably from the
Egyptian idea that Nut
swallowed the solar god and his
entourage to give birth to them again at dawn, the notion arose that the earth-god Geb became angry with the sky-goddess for eating her ‘children’. In the cenotaph of Sety I at Abydos Nut’s swallowing of celestial deities is likened to a sow devouring her piglets.
Source: George Hart, The
Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses, 2005
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