NUT THE MILKY WAY GODDESS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

NUT’’S ROLE AS A SKY GODDESS

THE BOOK OF NUT: ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ASTRONOMY

THE LAND OF MILK & HONEY

THE BOOK OF THE HEAVENLY COW & THE DESTRUCTION OF MANKIND.

PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOXES  & THE 26,000 YEAR CYCLE



INTRODUCTION

Nut (Nuit) is one of those Ancient Egyptian deities, that arouses a high degree of fascination for many people.  Perhaps because of that amazing image of Nut as a nude woman, whose star studded body is  bent over on her tiptoes with a collection of human and other figures on the earth  below her.  One of whom seems to be holding her up in place. It’s an unforgettable image. What were the Egyptian  thinking when they created it?. Nut was the goddess who symbolized the sky and all the stars and planets in it.   She was associated with the universe in Ancient Egyptian astronomy.

NUT’’S ROLE AS A SKY GODDESS

In her arched position, Nut represented the sky. And as such, the Egyptians often portrayed her with stars covering her body and in particular, her hands and feet.. It was said that Nut protected the earth and swallowed the sun each evening, which travelled through her body, giving birth to the renewed sun the next morning. Nut was  the barrier that separated the order that existed in the created  world from the forces of chaos, therefore making her an essential part of the story of the snake. And  Atum the god of creation was Nut’s grandfather, which ties her even further into the story.  Nut’s star studded body suggests her association to not only the night sky, also the Milky Way.

Nut was supported by Shu who was the God of air. However it was Geb her brother and the god of the earth who she was married to.

The Ancient Egyptians  had a recorded interest in astronomy that dates all the way back to the 5th millennium BCE back to the predynastic period. How they accomplished this incredible feat 7000 plus years ago is not known. The Dynastic period of the pharaohs did not begin until  the 3rd Millenium BCE and by then, the 365 day Egyptian calendar was already in use!. By the mid 15th century  BCE, they had figured out and lived by a 24 hour day.

There are of course the structures that were aligned based on astronomical knowledge. Such as the fact that the Giza Pyramids were almost perfectly aligned to the Pole star, and that there are other astronomically aligned structures. Even stone circles found in Nabta Playa, from the predynastic period, seemed to have made use of astronomical alignments.

THE BOOK OF NUT: ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ASTRONOMY

Then there is a document called The Book of Nut, which was said to be known as The Fundamentals of the Course of The Stars during ancient Egyptian times, going all the way back to 2000 BC. The book is a collection of Egyptian Astronomical Texts that describe the cycles of stars and the movement of other heavenly bodies, including the sun, moon and planets. Nut as the primary sky goddess is featured prominently in the book which bears her name. Among the subjects covered in this ancient document, was the cycle of the stars and planets and time keeping.

What the book of Nut makes obvious, that the Egyptians were engaged in a serious pursuit of astronomy that was more advanced than would normally be expected at that time in human history. And their pursuit seemed to have produced  more than just observing the night sky with their naked eyes. And at the center of their descriptions was the sky Goddess Nut.

Juxtaposed with this surprising and unexpected amount of knowledge that the Ancient Egyptians possessed, they nevertheless built up often an impenetrable amount of mythology around this knowledge.

As far as our story of the snake is concerned, on the surface, it would seem that Nut herself had no readily obvious contribution. At least not according to the template that I’ve previously told you about. Yet Nut’s representation as the skies or the Milky Way Galaxy itself,, is exactly where the story of the snake unfolds. Nut is therefore key to the snake’s story.

THE LAND OF MILK & HONEY

The Milky Way, is at the very center of the snake’s story, because of the potential of what can happen due to  the 26,000 year cycle known as the precession of the Equinoxes. While there seems to have been no direct evidence that the Egyptians knew about the Milky Way apart from the association suggested by Nut’s star filled body. There’s plenty of  indirect evidence that they did.  The Ancient Egyptians by deduction must have known about the “Milky Way’ as suggested by their elevation of cows to the status of heavenly cows. Even depicting them with stars. Because cows were the primary domestic animals associated with milk. Human females were also equally associated with breastfeeding milk as sustenance and they also became the symbol of feeding this milk to the gods.

The image of Isis suckling the God Horus is and obvious out picturing of a belief that contributing  milk to that special feature in the heavens that had an appearance of milk, would be beneficial and was perhaps was a way through which to appease the forces of chaos. The Egyptians must also have been aware of the other very special feature of the Milky Way; the one which connects it to the idea of bees and honey.

Make it stand out

The Egyptians used milk and honey in many of their religious rituals and in the funeral ceremony. And there’s even  a mention in the pyramid text in which it is said that the sky goddess Nut could take the form of a bee. In the Salt Magical Papyrus, it was said that when Re wept, his tears turned to bees when they touched the ground.

The bees then toiled among the flowers and trees to produced honey. And honey was also part of the ‘Opening of the Mouth ritual’ which confirms that it had certain relevance for the resurrection of the soul

The word honey, shoes an etymological root with the word honey. Now we have both the milk and the honey of the Milky Way.

This may just be coincidence that has nothing to do with the metaphor of The Land of Milk and Honey. However when all the various details are stacked together, then  at some point, to believe that these are all just coincidences, becomes becoming deliberate blindness and fear of the truth. . What is most likely is that the Ancient Egyptians had their own  way of referencing the Milky Way that did not translate well or directly into Greek.  Ancient Egypt’s penultimate, conquerers, as so many countless other details about Egypt’s civilization that has come down to us today via the Greek and or Latin languages.

I’m going to go as far as to say that the Egyptians most likely gave the Milky Way a name that referenced either a snake or a river.  We already know that they thought of the heavens (If not the entire Milky Way) as a river, seeing that the pharaoh was said to travel across the sky in a barque built specifically for that purpose. And the snake, well, came from the sky.

In the Akkadian language of Ancient Mesopotamia,  the Milky Way was known as: Serret šamê "the snake of the skies.” This is important detail because of the fact that they like many Middle Eastern civilizations the Mesopotamians borrowed from, and shared many Egyptian beliefs for a variety of reasons, some linked to actual historical events.

THE BOOK OF THE HEAVENLY COW & THE DESTRUCTION OF MANKIND.

The Milky Way which as I’ve already stated, is how and where the story of the snake unfolds. The book of the Heavenly Cow, is an Egyptian document that was composed probably during the Middle Kingdom. It  tells of mankind’s rebellion against the Sun God Ra and how he subsequently destroyed them using a second sky goddess called Hathor. The survivors having to suffer being separated from Ra.

After the destruction of mankind, Ra  lived in the sky on Nut’s back, with her being named the heavenly cow. The text of the Book of the Heavenly Cow is divided in two sections by an image of Nut the cow and the figures below her who support her. The lower part of Nut’s  belly is decorated with a series of thirteen stars,

Naturally some of you reading this will come to the conclusion that this is just one more instance of Egyptian mythology. However as the story of the snake s progresses you will discover the truth of what this mythology was based on.

There’s a second (though not so directly related ), yet stunning detail that you will definitely give you pause for thought.  And I can’t wait to share with it you, so keep reading. In any case, Nut our sky goddess and quite possible Egyptian representative of the Milky Way, beckons to us, to take into account of her role in the story of the snake. So let’s continue to learn a little more about the Milky Way.

NUT PORTRAYED AS A COW

The sky goddess Nut being supported by the 8 Heh gods. The idea of this sky goddess being associated with a cow points to the ‘Milk’ of the Milky Way

PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOXES  & THE 26,000 YEAR CYCLE

Here’s just a little of what Wikipedia entry has to say about our Milky way, and I’m paraphrasing as I quote; : “The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. The term "milky" is derived from the appearance from Earth of the galaxy is seen  as a band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye.  The Greeks called the Milky Way “Galaxias Kyklos,”  which translates into “milky circle.” That gave rise to the Latin ‘via lactea’ which means road of milk.” End of quote

And as you can see from the image: The spiral arm of The galaxy appears “milky” in comparison to the central glow of the bar shaped area in the center which appears golden in color.  Surprisingly, the etymology of the word gold or golden,  shares a common etymology root with the word honey.  And it is here that  another of those secrets hiding in plain sight becomes apparent.

“Until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. And if modern man with the benefit of advanced scientific knowledge and instruments, made this error, then it’s understandable how the Ancient Egyptians would have made the same exact error. Using  a telescope called  in the early 1920s Edwin Hubble was able to show that our Milky Way galaxy, is only one of several galaxies.  showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies as can be seen in the banner image above..

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy that has a diameter of between 100,000 and 180,000 light-years. It is estimated to contain between 100–400 billion stars.  And it has also been estimated that there are probably at least 100 billion planets in the Milky Way.  The Solar System is located within the disk, about 26,000 light-years from the Galactic Center, on the inner edge of the Orion Arm, one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas and dust.  The stars in the innermost 10,000 light-years form a bulge and one or more bars that radiate from the bulge.”

Now to the real meaning of the Biblical Land of Milk and Honey. It wasn’t a place on earth. It was the place in the ky or heavens that the Ancient Egyptians assumed that the pharaohs returned to after their deaths. The use of the metaphor by the Israelites makes for an even more compelling case that the Ancient Egyptians not only knew of the milky way, they knew of its appearance of milk and honey. .Remember this is knowledge that they were given.

Because the Israelites early on in the Exodus knew about the land flowing with Milk and honey, the only place that they could have learned that was back in Egypt. This will make more sense when we meet The Hyksos

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