The Ancient Egyptian Cosmological Vignette: First Visual Evidence of the Milky Way and Trends in Coffin Depictions of the Sky Goddess Nut

TL;DR

This study examines ancient Egyptian coffin depictions to provide visual evidence that Nut represents the Milky Way, revealing insights into Egyptian cosmology and the goddess's role in the sky and afterlife.

Contribution

It identifies visual features in coffins that likely depict the Milky Way, clarifying Nut's representation and her association with celestial phenomena in ancient Egyptian art.

Findings

The undulating black curve on coffins resembles the Milky Way and supports its identification as the Winding Waterway.

Nut's body is star-decorated in only a quarter of vignettes, indicating a preference for daytime sky.

Nut's cosmological and eschatological roles are interconnected in coffin imagery.

Abstract

Here, I test the long-held assumption that the ancient Egyptian sky goddess Nut represented the Milky Way by examining Nut's visual depictions on ancient Egyptian coffins. I assemble a catalog of 555 coffin elements, including 118 cosmological vignettes from the 21st/22nd Dynasties, and report several observations. First, the cosmological vignette on the outer coffin of Nesitaudjatakhet bears a unique feature: a thick, undulating black curve that bisects Nut's star-studded body and recalls the Great Rift that cleaves the Milky Way in two. Similar undulating curves bisect the astronomical ceiling in the tomb of Seti I and appear as part of depictions of Nut in the tombs of Ramesses IV, VI, and IX. Moreover, the undulating curve resembles similar features identified as the Milky Way on the bodies of Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni spiritual beings. Hence, I argue that the undulating curve is a visual representation of the Milky Way and that it supports a previously suggested identification of the Winding Waterway as the Galaxy's Egyptian name. However, the rarity of this feature strengthens the conclusion reached by Graur (2024a): Though Nut and the Milky Way are linked, they are not synonymous. Instead of acting as a representation of Nut, the Milky Way is one more celestial phenomenon that, like the Sun and the stars, is associated with Nut in her role as the sky. Second, Nut's body is decorated with stars in only a quarter of the cosmological vignettes, suggesting that the Egyptians of the 21st/22nd Dynasties may have had a marked preference for the day sky over the night sky. Finally, I discuss the interplay between Nut's cosmological vignette and full-length portraits inside coffins from the New Kingdom to the Roman Period in the context of Nut's combined cosmological and eschatological roles as an embodiment of the coffin.