Geb was the Egyptian god of the earth — the great god whose body was the land itself, the father of Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys, and one of the foundational gods of the Heliopolitan Ennead. Lying beneath the arched body of his sister-wife Nut the sky, he is the very ground of the world, the earth on which all life depends.
The God of the Earth
Geb was the personification of the earth — the land of Egypt and the solid ground of the world. He was a son of Shu (air) and Tefnut (moisture), of the third generation of the Heliopolitan creation, and the brother and husband of Nut, the sky-goddess. In Egyptian art he was often depicted as a man lying on his back beneath the arching body of Nut, his body forming the undulating surface of the earth — sometimes coloured green, with plants and vegetation growing from him, for it was from Geb's body that all crops and greenery sprang. He was the fertile ground, the source of growth, the earth that bears all life.
The Separation of Earth and Sky
Geb features in one of the great cosmological images of Egyptian myth: the separation of earth and sky. Geb (earth) and his wife Nut (sky) were so closely entwined in their love that they lay pressed together, leaving no space between them for the world to exist. To make room for creation, their father Shu (the god of air) stepped between them and lifted Nut high up into the heavens, holding her arched body aloft above the prone body of Geb. So the sky was separated from the earth, with the air (Shu) holding them apart, and the space of the world was created between them. The image of Geb reclining below, reaching up longingly toward the star-spangled body of Nut arched above him, is one of the most beautiful in all Egyptian art — the eternal separation of the earth and the sky.
The Father of the Gods
By Nut, Geb was the father of the four great gods of the Osiris myth: Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys. As their father, he stood at the head of the generation whose dramas — the murder of Osiris, the vengeance of Horus — would form the central myth of Egyptian religion. Geb was also associated with kingship: he was reckoned an early divine king of Egypt, and the throne of the pharaohs was sometimes called the “throne of Geb,” the rightful royal inheritance passing down from the earth-god himself. His laughter was said to be earthquakes, and he was a god of the underworld too, for the dead were buried in the earth that was his body.
The Ground of the World
Geb endures as the Egyptian god of the earth — the fertile ground, the father of the Osirian gods, the husband of the sky, the foundation of the world. He embodies the Egyptian vision of the earth as a living god, the source of all growth and the support of all life, lying beneath the arch of the sky; and he completes, with Nut and Shu, the great cosmological picture of the Egyptian world: the earth below, the sky above, and the air between, holding them eternally apart so that the world may exist in the space between earth and heaven.
His body is the earth itself, green with growing things, and he reclines forever reaching up toward the star-filled sky of his beloved Nut, held apart from him by the air so that the world may exist between them.