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Geb

AlsoGeb

God of the Earth, Source of the Pharaoh’s Throne

The Beginning of Chaos and Order · Primordial Creators

EarthFertilityEarthquakes

Who they are

Geb is the god of the earth — in Egyptian myth the earth is male and the sky female, opposite to many other cultures. He is often shown as a man reclining or crouched, his body the green or brown earth with plants growing from it. He loved the sky goddess Nut and was forced apart from her by his father Shu, left forever to gaze up at the beloved lifted on high. Geb is the laughter of Geb (by one account an earthquake is his laughing) and the source of the earth's fertility; the dead must pass through his body to be buried. As a member of the Ennead, he was seen as the first "king on earth," and so the pharaoh's throne was called the "throne of Geb" — kingship drew its sanctity from the earth itself.

Key stories

The Beloved Lifted to the Sky

Geb and Nut held each other tightly, and their father Shu forced himself between them, raising Nut on high, so that sky and earth were sundered forever. The myth says Geb's grief was uncontainable, his heaving body forming the mountains and valleys; by another account his laughter is the earthquake. At night, Nut's star-strewn body arches over him, and the two gaze at each other from afar without touching — the Egyptians used a pair of parted lovers to explain why the sky is above and the earth below, and why the land rises and falls.