Geb

geb

egyptian: Gb

Definition

Geb (Egyptian Gb) is the Egyptian earth-god — the male, earth half of the canonical sky-earth pair Nut and Geb. He is shown lying flat beneath his consort Nut, who arches above him as the sky; between them stands Shu, the god of air, who keeps sky and earth apart. In funerary and astronomical-papyrus imagery, Geb's reclining body is the inhabited ground of the world, the plane from which the daily and decanal cycles of Re and Sothis are watched.

In Tradition

In Egyptian cosmology Geb completes the sky-earth pair on which the whole star-clock and decanal-rising system rests. Re rises from beyond the horizon, "sees Geb when first rising," then crosses Nut's body through the day; the decans rise from Geb's eastern horizon and set into his western one. The standard handbooks — Wilkinson, Faulkner, Hornung — treat Geb and Nut together as the cosmic frame inside which Egyptian sky-watching is done.

In Practice

In Egyptian-tradition glossary work, Geb turns up wherever the sky-earth pair is in view: the ascensions of the Pyramid Texts, the *Book of Nut* passages on the Re-cycle, the Ramesside ceiling decoration of the diagonal star clocks, the framing of the Dendera Zodiac. For an Egyptian-revival approach to chart-reading, Geb grounds the lower half of the chart — the houses below the horizon — as the "earth" zone of the figure. This runs parallel to the Hellenistic idea of the subterranean houses, but it is framed within Egypt's own sky-earth opposition. Take care to keep the pre-Hellenistic Egyptian Geb-Nut frame distinct from later Greco-Egyptian blended readings.

Historical Origin

Geb is attested already in the Old Kingdom *Pyramid Texts* of Pepi II (Dyn 6, late Old Kingdom; Faulkner 1969), and continues through the *Coffin Texts*, the New Kingdom *Book of the Dead*, and the Ramesside *Book of Nut* — Clagett, *Ancient Egyptian Science* Vol II, Doc III.12, Texts K-O: "Re comes into being when his heart comes into being; sees Geb (earth) when first rising; later in the morning he is the sun-disk." Standard reference: Richard H. Wilkinson, *The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt* (Thames & Hudson 2003).

Further Reading

  • Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
  • R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts
  • Marshall Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science, Volume II: Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy