Ancient Egyptians may have seen their goddess in the Milky Way

The Milky Way was the last thing a scientist expected to think about during a museum visit with his children. But when his daughters became fascinated by an image of a woman arched across the sky, their curiosity sparked an unexpected journey.

The children’s questions about the story led Dr. Or Graur deep into ancient Egyptian mythology – and possibly to a new understanding of how the Milky Way was portrayed in ancient art.

The research comes from the University of Portsmouth, where Dr. Graur’s team explored how the Milky Way might have been represented by the ancient Egyptians.

The focus was on the sky-goddess Nut, a figure commonly found on Egyptian coffins, and her connection to stars, the sun, and maybe even our galaxy.

Nut: Goddess of the sky

In ancient Egyptian culture, many gods and goddesses are tied to celestial bodies. Nut (pronounced “Noot”) is one of the most important. She represents the sky and is often painted as a naked, arched woman.

Sometimes Nut is covered with stars or marked by sun disks, showing her role in the solar cycle. In mythology, Nut swallows the sun at night and gives birth to it again at dawn.

Her protective posture – arching over the Earth god Geb – is a symbol of how the sky shelters the world. On hundreds of ancient coffins, dating back as far as 5,000 years, Nut appears in this iconic pose. But not all images are the same.

Did Egyptians paint the Milky Way?

One coffin, belonging to Nesitaudjatakhet, a chantress of Amun-Re who lived around 3,000 years ago, stands out.

On it, Nut’s body is crossed by a bold, wavy black line. It stretches from her feet to her hands, with stars spread evenly above and below. This unusual feature caught the scientist’s attention.

“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,” explained Dr. Graur, professor of astrophysics at the University of Portsmouth.

This curved design isn’t isolated to one coffin. Similar lines can be seen in several other tombs.

“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,” noted Dr. Graur.

“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.”

Nut is not the Milky Way

Despite the visual similarity, Dr. Graur doesn’t believe Nut is a direct stand-in for the Milky Way. The curve is rare in Egyptian art, and that, he believes, is significant.

“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,” explained Dr. Graur.

“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.”

Visualizing the sky goddess

In a previous study, published in April 2024, Dr. Graur examined ancient texts like the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts, and the Book of Nut. He compared them with simulations of the night sky to argue that the Milky Way might have drawn attention to Nut’s role in the heavens.

According to this view, the galaxy’s arc might have highlighted Nut’s arms during the winter and traced her spine during the summer. But after studying more visual depictions, the picture began to change.

“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.”

Egyptians’ depiction of the Milky Way

The work is part of a larger project studying the mythology of the Milky Way across cultures. And it all began with a family outing.

“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,” said Dr. Graur.

What started as a curious moment with children turned into a new way of thinking about how people once looked at the night sky.

For the ancient Egyptians, it seems the Milky Way may have been more than just a band of light – it was another stroke in the sky goddess’s painted body, a bridge between myth and stars.

The full study was published in the journal Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage.

Image Credit: E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, Vol. 2 (Methuen & Co., 1904)

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