Before the sun first rose over the sands of Egypt, there was only the infinite, silent expanse of the Nun—the primordial waters of chaos. These waters were dark, directionless, and filled with the potential for all things but possessed no form. Within this watery void, the creator god Atum, or Ra-Atum, brought himself into being through the power of his own will and thought. Emerging upon the Benben stone, the first solid mound of earth that rose from the chaos at Heliopolis, Atum looked out upon the emptiness and realized he was alone. From his own essence, he produced the first divine pair: Shu, the god of air and dryness, and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture and mist. These two deities represented the first breath of life and the first substance in the world, beginning the process of bringing order, or Maat, to the universe.
As time began to flow, Shu and Tefnut united, and from their union were born two children who would define the physical boundaries of the Egyptian world: Geb, the god of the Earth, and Nut, the goddess of the Sky. Unlike their parents, who moved freely through the void, Geb and Nut were deeply and inextricably entwined in an eternal embrace. Nut lay stretched over Geb, her body a canopy of darkness and her skin pressed against his rocky surface. Because they were so closely joined, there was no space between the earth and the heavens. The world was a cramped, dark place where nothing could grow, no wind could blow, and the light of Ra-Atum could not penetrate the shadows. The potential for life existed, but it was suffocated by the heavy intimacy of the sky and the earth.
Ra-Atum, observing the cosmos from his celestial throne, saw that this state of affairs could not continue if the world was to flourish. The creator god decreed that there must be a space for the living and the divine to inhabit. He commanded Shu, the god of air, to intervene. Shu was the principle of 'emptiness' and 'he who rises up,' and it was his cosmic duty to provide the medium in which life could move. Though he loved his children dearly, Shu understood that for the sake of the universe and the fulfillment of Maat, the lovers had to be parted. He approached the reclining Geb and the overarching Nut and prepared for the most significant act in the history of creation.
With a strength that defined the very nature of the atmosphere, Shu moved between his children. He placed his feet firmly upon the body of Geb, who represented the foundation of the world. Then, reaching upward with his powerful arms, he grasped the belly of Nut and began to lift her. The separation was not easy, for Geb and Nut clung to one another with the desperation of true lovers. Geb reached up with his hands, his fingers forming the peaks of the mountains as he tried to pull Nut back down to him. Nut, for her part, arched her back, her fingers and toes touching the four corners of the horizon as she was forced upward into the heights. As Shu pushed higher and higher, the atmosphere began to fill the vacuum. The first winds began to howl across the newly exposed surface of the earth, and the first light of the sun touched the soil of Geb.
As Nut was lifted into the high firmament, her body underwent a magnificent transformation. She became the starry vault of heaven, her skin shimmering with the light of a billion celestial bodies. Her arched back became the path through which the sun god Ra would sail his solar barque during the day. Beneath her, Geb remained as the verdant and stony earth, his body providing the fields for grain and the bedrock for temples. Between them stood Shu, the invisible but ever-present support, holding the sky aloft with his uplifted arms. To assist him in this eternal task, Shu was sometimes aided by the eight Heh deities—the personifications of infinity—who helped steady the legs and arms of the sky goddess to ensure she would never fall back to the earth and crush the life below.