Shu

Shu came into being in the first moment of the world, when Atum, the self-created god who had risen alone from the dark waters of Nun, the endless ocean that existed before creation, stood upon the primordial mound at Heliopolis, the city of the sun. Finding himself alone in the emptiness, Atum created the first pair of gods from his own body: he sneezed out Shu, the air, and spat out Tefnut, the moisture. The Egyptians delighted in the wordplay, for the ancient words for sneeze and spit sounded like the names of the twin gods. Shu's name meant both emptiness and he who rises up, and he was the invisible substance that filled the void between all things, the breath that makes life possible. But the newborn twins wandered into the waters of Nun and were lost, and Atum sent his burning Eye, his own divine radiance in female form, to search the darkness. When the Eye returned with the lost children, Atum wept with relief, and the tears that fell from his face became the first human beings.

From the union of Shu and Tefnut came the next generation of gods: Geb, the god of the solid earth, and Nut, the goddess of the starry sky. The two young gods fell instantly in love and lay locked in such a tight embrace that nothing could grow between them, no creature could move, and no light could pass. Ra, the sun god who had succeeded Atum as ruler of creation, saw that the world could not continue while the lovers clung together, and he commanded Shu to end the embrace. Shu obeyed with brutal strength. He planted his feet upon the body of his son Geb, seized his daughter Nut in his arms, and heaved her high above his head. Nut arched over the world, her fingers and toes touching the four points of the horizon, her naked body spangled with stars. Geb groaned beneath, his spine rising into mountains and his flesh hardening into stone. And Shu remained between them forever, the layer of air that keeps heaven and earth apart, his arms raised to bear the weight of the sky.

The separation of Geb and Nut was not the last time Shu was called upon to hold the heavens. In the great myth of the Destruction of Mankind, carved on the walls of the tomb of Seti I, the warrior pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty, the sun god Ra grew weary of humanity's rebellion and resolved to abandon the earth altogether. He mounted the back of Nut, who transformed into a giant celestial cow, and ordered her to carry him up into the heavens. But as the cow rose higher and higher, she grew dizzy and staggered, and the whole of creation threatened to crash back into chaos. Ra called out to Shu, and the god of air rushed to stand beneath the belly of the cow, supporting her trembling body upon his shoulders while the gods of the four pillars steadied her legs. From that day Shu has never left his post. Every dawn he lifts the newborn sun onto the body of the sky, and every night he catches it as it falls, and the air we breathe is the labour of his eternal holding.

Because he is the air, Shu is also the breath of life itself, and the Egyptians believed he could give that breath to whomever he chose. In the spells of the Book of Going Forth by Day, the great collection of funerary texts that guided the soul through the underworld, Shu promises the dead the very breath that Atum first exhaled, so that their bodies may live again in the Field of Reeds, the Egyptian paradise. His emblem was the ostrich feather, the feather of maat, the principle of truth and right order, the same feather laid upon the scales in the Hall of the Two Truths when the heart of every dead Egyptian was weighed by Anubis, the jackal-headed god of mummification. But Shu had a terrible side. Among his titles was slaughterer of the enemies of Ra, and he was said to hunt down the damned, bind them, and cut out their hearts with his own knife. The gentle breeze and the executioner's blade were the same god.

Shu's long service did not go unrewarded. In the later theology of Egypt, when Ra withdrew to the heavens he made Shu king in his place, and the god of air ruled the earth until his own strength failed and he passed the throne to his son Geb, beginning the line of divine kings that ended with the pharaohs themselves. Shu never had a great temple of his own, no Dendera or Karnak, because his worshippers needed only to feel the wind on their faces to stand in his presence. The Greeks who came to Egypt compared him to their own Atlas, the Titan condemned to hold up the sky, and travellers in Egyptian tombs still see his kneeling figure painted on coffin lids, arms raised, bearing the star-covered body of the goddess above the mummy. To the end of Egyptian civilisation, every sunrise, every breath, every drifting feather was proof that Shu was still at his post.