Geb

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Geb (formerly erroneously read as Seb) or Keb (meaning probably: 'lame one', spelled with k-point e.g. once in the Coffin Texts) was i.a. the personification of the earth, amongst the priestly group who believed in the Ennead, a form of Egyptian cosmology centred in Heliopolis, Since the Egyptians held that their underworld was literally that (beside being an abode in and beyond the sky) under the earth, Geb was sometimes seen as containing the dead, or imprisoning those not worthy to go to the heavenly Field of Aaru--reeds.

In the Heliopolitan Ennead, he is the husband of Nut, the sky or visible firmament, the son of the primordial elements Tefnut ("'female orphan, later also moisture ('tef') and Shu ('emptiness'), and the father to the four lesser gods of the system - Osiris, Seth, Isis and Nephthys. In this context, Geb was said to have originally been engaged in eternal sex with Nut, and had to be separated from her by Shu, god of the air. Consequently, in early depictions Geb was shown reclining, with his phallus pointed towards the sky goddess Nut.

As time progressed, the deity became more associated with the habitable land of Egypt and also as one of its early godly rulers. As a chtonic deity he (like e.g. Osiris and Min) became associated with vegetation, with barley being said to grow upon his ribs, and was depicted with plants and other green patches on his body.

Some Egyptologists stated, that Geb was associated with a mythological creator-goose who had laid a cosmic egg from which the sun and/or the world had sprung. This is certainly wrong and brought about by a regular spelling of the name Geb with the help of an image of a Whitefronted Goose, also called originally gb(b))'lame one, stumbler' (cf. C.Wolterman, On the Names of Birds..., in "Jaarbericht van Ex Oriente Lux 32 (Leiden). It is beyond any doubt, that said creator goose, called mythologically the Great (or Oldest)Honker, appeared solely in the shape of a Nile Goose (=Egyptian Goose = Fox Goose), both within texts and vignets. Geb himself was never depicted as a Nilegoose, as later was the great god Amun. The only clear pictorial confusion between the hieroglyphs of a Whitefronted Goose(in normal spelling) and a Nilegoose in the (painted) spelling of the name Geb occurs in the rock cut tomb of the province governor Sarenput II (Middle Kingdom) at the Qubba el-Hawa desert-ridge (opposite Aswan), namely on the left (=southern) wall near the open doorway, in the first line of the funerary offering formula. (Checked on location in May 2008 by drs. Carles Wolterman, Amstelveen, Holland; the dark spot on the breast of the brown goose-hieroglyph, as well as the black-and-white mirror on its wing was clearly painted here)

His association with vegetation, and sometimes with the underworld, also brought him the occasional interpretation that he was the husband of Renenutet, a minor goddess of the harvest, who was the mother of Nehebkau, a snake god associated with the underworld, who was on the same occasions said to be his son by her. He is also equated by classical authors as the Greek titan Kronos.