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Depictions of the Milky Way found in ancient Egyptian imagery

An interest in understanding the role that the Milky Way played in Egyptian culture and religion has led University of Portsmouth Associate Professor of Astrophysics, Dr. Or Graur to uncover what he thinks may be the ancient Egyptian visual depiction of the Milky Way.

Various Egyptian gods are either associated with, symbolize, or directly embody certain celestial objects. In his study, Dr. Graur reviewed 125 images of the sky-goddess Nut (pronounced "Noot"), found among 555 ancient Egyptian coffins dating back nearly 5,000 years.

Combining astronomy with Egyptology, he analyzed whether she could be linked to the Milky Way and his are now published in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage.

In scenes reflecting the day and night sky, Nut is shown as a naked, arched woman, sometimes covered with stars or with solar disks. Nut's arched posture is seen as evoking her identification with the sky and its protection of Earth below.

As the goddess of the sky, Nut is often depicted as a star-studded woman arched over her brother, the earth god Geb. She protects the earth from being flooded by the encroaching waters of the void and plays a key role in the solar cycle, swallowing the sun as it sets at dusk and giving birth to it once more as it rises at dawn.

However, on the outer coffin of Nesitaudjatakhet, a chantress of Amun-Re who lived some 3,000 years ago, Nut's appearance deviates from the norm. Here, a distinctive, undulating black curve crosses her body from the soles of her feet to the tips of her fingers, with stars painted in roughly equal numbers above and below the curve.

Dr. Graur said, "I think that the undulating curve represents the Milky Way and could be a representation of the Great Rift—the dark band of dust that cuts through the Milky Way's bright band of diffused light. Comparing this depiction with a photograph of the Milky Way shows the stark similarity."

He added, "Similar undulating curves appear in four tombs in the Valley of the Kings. In the tomb of Ramesses VI, for example, the ceiling of the burial chamber is split between the Book of the Day and the Book of the Night. Both include arched figures of Nut displayed back-to-back and separated by thick, golden undulating curves that issue from the base of Nut's head and travel above her back all the way to her rear."

"I did not see a similar undulating curve in any of the other cosmological representations of Nut and it is my view that the rarity of this curve reinforces the conclusion I reached in a study of ancient texts last year, which is that although there is a connection between Nut and the Milky Way, the two are not one and the same. Nut is not a representation of the Milky Way. Instead, the Milky Way, along with the sun and the stars, is one more celestial phenomenon that can decorate Nut's body in her role as the sky."

In a study published last year (April 2024), Dr. Graur drew from a rich collection of ancient sources, including the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and the Book of Nut, to compare them alongside sophisticated simulations of the Egyptian night sky and argue that the Milky Way might have shone a spotlight on Nut's role as the sky in Egyptian mythology.

It proposed that in winter, the Milky Way highlighted Nut's outstretched arms, while in summer, it traced her backbone across the heavens. Dr. Graur's conclusions about Nut and the Milky Way have evolved since that initial paper. He said, "The texts, on their own, suggested one way to think about the link between Nut and the Milky Way. Analyzing her visual depictions on coffins and tomb murals added a new dimension that, quite literally, painted a different picture."

Both the current and previous studies are part of a larger project by Dr. Graur to catalog and study the multi-cultural mythology of the Milky Way. He said, "I chanced upon the sky-goddess Nut when I was writing a book on galaxies and looking into the mythology of the Milky Way. My interest was piqued after a visit to a museum with my daughters, where they were enchanted by the image of an arched woman and kept asking to hear stories about her."