Seb" is a familiar term for the earth. Seb is also the Egyptian name for a certain species of goose, and in accordance with the homonymous tendency of the mythological period of all nations, the god and the bird were identified; Seb was called "the great cackler," and there are traces of the myth of a "mundane egg" which he "divided" or hatched. Nut is the name of a female goddess,[1] frequently used synonymously with the other names of the sky, and she is as frequently pictured with her arms and legs extended over the earth, with the stars spread over her body. The marriage of Heaven and Earth is extremely common in mythologies; what is peculiar to the Egyptian myth is that Earth is not represented as the Mother of all things, Θεῶν μήτηρ, ἄλοχ' Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος, but the Father,[2] and Heaven is here the Mother; though, as we have seen in speaking of Rā, Heaven was also conceived as a male power, like the Indian Varuna and the Greek Uranos. From the union of Seb and Nut sprung the mild Osiris, the Sun, and Isis, the Dawn, wedded before they were born, and the fruit of their marriage
- ↑ In the legend of the Destruction of Mankind, Nu and Nut address each other as father and daughter. But in the Book of the Dead, 42, 20, Unbu (one of the names of Osiris) issues from Nu, his mother being Nut.
- ↑ There is indeed a passage (Duemichen, Hist. Inschr. II. 44 e) in which Seb seems to be called the mother of Osiris. But as the words are immediately followed by "whom Nut brought forth," I suspect an error in the text.
