"Nut, whom
the Greeks sometimes identified with Rhea, was goddess
of the sky, but it was debatable if in historical times
she was the object of a genuine cult. She was Geb's twin
sister and, it was said, married him secretly and
against the will of Ra.
Angered, Ra
had the couple brutally separated by Shu and afterwards
decreed that Nut could not bear a child in any given
month of any year. Thoth, Plutarch tells us, happily had
pity on her. Playing draughts with the Moon, he won in
the course of several games a seventy-second part of the
Moon's light with which he composed five new days.
As these
five intercalated days did not belong to the official
Egyptian calendar of three hundred and sixty days, Nut
was thus able to give birth successively to five
children: Osiris, Haroeris (Horus), Set, Isis and
Nepthys." (Larousse) |