Egyptian sky goddess ‘represented Milky Way’
THE ancient Egyptian sky goddess Nut is usually depicted as a woman bedecked in stars, arching her body high over the Earth.
Now scholars believe she may be the depiction of the Milky Way, which hung in the heavens like a white rainbow when the ancient myths were born.
Or Graur, an associate professor in astrophysics at University of Portsmouth, combined astronomical simulations of the ancient Egyptian sky and compared them with descriptions and images of the goddess.
Dr Graur found that the summer and winter orientations of the Milky Way aligned with Nut’s body. In winter, the Milky Way highlighted Nut’s outstretched arms, while in summer, it traced her backbone across the heavens.
“I chanced upon the sky goddess Nut when I was writing a book on galaxies and looking into the mythology of the Milky Way,” said Dr Graur. “I took my daughters to a museum and they were enchanted by this image of an arched woman and kept asking to hear stories about her. This sparked my interest and
I decided to combine both astronomy and Egyptology to do a double analysis – astronomical and cross-cultural – of the sky goddess Nut, and whether she really could be linked to the Milky Way.”
Nut, which is pronounced newt, appears significantly in The Book of Nut, one of the world’s first astronomical texts which records the cycles of stars and planets and dates back to at least 2,000 BC. Dr Graur added: “My study also shows that Nut’s role in the transition of the deceased to the afterlife and her connection to the annual bird migration are consistent with how other cultures understand the Milky Way.
“For example, as a spirits’ road among different peoples in North and Central America or as the Birds’ Path in Finland and the Baltics.”
The paper is published in the