Tefnut

Creation began with a sneeze. The first god stood alone on the mound that had just pushed up through the dark still water, with nothing around him to name and nothing to breathe but himself, and something caught in his nose. What came out of him were twins: a son who was dry air, and a daughter who was everything wet, dew on stone before dawn, the damp in the mouth, rain that arrives over the Delta perhaps twice a year and behaves badly when it does. The Pyramid Texts state it without ceremony. Atum was creative in that he proceeded to sneeze while in Heliopolis, and brother and sister were born, that is Shu and Tefnut.

Other versions of the same moment prefer saliva. Atum spits, and the spittle becomes his daughter, which gives the Egyptian scribes a pun they clearly enjoyed, since the sound tef at the front of her name also carries the sense of spitting or expectorating. Late texts went further and wrote her name with the sign of a mouth in the act. The Coffin Texts split the difference, sneezing Shu out of Atum’s nose and spitting Tefnut out like saliva, and the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus and the Memphite Theology have Atum sneeze the saliva itself. No mother appears in any version. She has no certain etymology either, and the suggestions run from spitting to the moon to the passage of time, which is a polite way of saying the matter is open.

Egyptologists connect her with moisture on two grounds: a passage in the Pyramid Texts where she produces pure water from her own body, and the neatness of standing her opposite a brother who is dry air. The truth is that nobody is entirely certain what she was for. Her mythological function is less clear than Shu’s, and her most reliable role may simply have been to be his other half, in a religion with a deep appetite for pairs.

That does her an injustice, because when the theology gets serious she is not decorative at all. In Spell 80 of the Coffin Texts, Atum is still in the dark with Nun, still unformed, and he speaks about the two children he has lost and found again in the waters. He names Shu life and Tefnut order, and folds them into his own body, and it is her breath he draws in to come fully awake. Order, in Egyptian, is maat. The goddess of drizzle is also the principle that keeps the sky from falling in. From her union with Shu came Geb the earth and Nut the sky, and from them Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys, which makes her the second link in the whole Heliopolitan chain and a founding member of its Ennead.

She is a lion. As early as the Old Kingdom, she and Shu appear as a lion pair called Ruty, “the Lions”, two long tawny bodies lying back to back with the sun rising between them, and the pairing was so fixed that by the Roman period the two of them had drifted into the zodiac as the Twins. Later art gives her the lion side more often than him. Sometimes she is a full lioness. More often she is a woman with a lioness head, mane rendered as a heavy striated wig, a cobra rearing at her brow, a sun disk balanced above it, the muzzle broad and unsmiling. Craftsmen liked her face enough to set it back to back with her brother’s on the counterpoises that hung behind a broad collar. Under Akhenaten she turns up in wholly human form in a low flat headdress with plants sprouting from the top, an image Queen Tiye borrowed when she identified herself with Hathor-Tefnut, and which may lie somewhere behind the flat blue crown that made Nefertiti famous.

Her cult sat at Heliopolis and at Leontopolis in the Delta, where she and Shu were kept as lions. At Heliopolis she held a sanctuary called the Lower Menset, and her name belonged to the ritual of purification. A priest coming into the temple in the grey before sunrise would state his cleanliness in her words, and the formula survives on Papyrus Berlin 3055: I have passed by Tefnut, even while Tefnut was purifying me, and indeed I am a priest, the son of a priest in this temple. At Karnak she stood in the Ennead and was asked, along with the rest, to keep the king in good health.

Then there is the other story, the one everybody remembers. As the Eye of Ra she is the sun god’s daughter and his weapon, a thing of fire that goes out ahead of him and burns whatever it finds, and a weapon like that has opinions. She quarrelled, whether with her father or with the state of the world, and she went south into Nubia and would not come back. Egypt dried. In the demotic telling preserved on Papyrus Leiden 384 and Papyrus Lille 31, copies from the second century after Christ that were still popular enough to be translated into Greek, a baboon is sent after her, sometimes named as a son of Thoth. He finds her in the heat as a Nubian cat and talks. He tells her about the cat and the vulture, about the two vultures called Sight and Hearing, about the lion and the jackals, and about the lion who spared a mouse and was untied by it later. She listens, shifting shape as she goes, lioness and vulture and gazelle, and she comes home. Another version says she left out of simple jealousy that her grandchildren were getting the better worship, and that what finally moved her was Thoth granting her the title honourable.

Her powers follow from what she is. She makes water and withholds it. As the solar eye she spits fire instead of moisture and annihilates the enemies of the sun, and in that mode she is called mistress of the flame and stands close enough to Sekhmet to be confused with her, close enough to Bast to be confused with her too. She and Shu were also read as the two eyes of the sky falcon, his the sun and hers the moon, though texts do not always agree which of them holds which. She purifies. She is one of the few deities whose blessing takes the physical form of the water in the ground.

Her limits are the same equipment turned around. A goddess whose gift is moisture can starve a country simply by leaving, and the myth is honest that she does not need a plan to do damage, only a temper. She can be reasoned with, flattered and negotiated back, which no one ever managed with Apep, and a divinity who can be persuaded by a well-timed animal fable is not an absolute power. Her position, too, depends on the pair holding. When Shu grew tired of his son’s challenges and withdrew from the world, Geb took his own mother as chief queen, and the arrangement stood. She survives everywhere in the record and dominates almost none of it, always at someone’s shoulder, always half of something else.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Tefnut in Egyptian mythology?

Tefnut is the Egyptian goddess of moisture, dew and rain, and the first daughter of the creator god Ra-Atum. She is the twin sister and consort of Shu, the god of dry air, and together they are the parents of Geb the earth and Nut the sky. Tefnut is a founding member of the Ennead of Heliopolis.

How was Tefnut created?

Tefnut was produced by Atum alone, without a mother. Pyramid Text 527 says Atum sneezed at Heliopolis and Shu and Tefnut were born, while other versions have him spit her out, a play on the tef sound in her name, which also carries the sense of spitting. The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus and the Memphite Theology combine both and have Atum sneeze out saliva.

Why did Tefnut go to Nubia?

Tefnut left Egypt in a rage, in some accounts angry at her father Ra and in others jealous that her grandchildren were receiving greater worship. Her departure took Egypt’s moisture with her and the land suffered. In the demotic Myth of the Sun’s Eye, a baboon was sent south to coax her back with animal fables, and another version says Thoth won her over by granting her the title honourable.

What did Tefnut look like?

Tefnut is most often shown as a lioness, or as a woman with a lioness head wearing a heavy wig crowned with a rearing uraeus cobra and frequently a sun disk. She also appears fully human, and occasionally as a lion-headed serpent. With Shu she forms a pair of lions called Ruty, and during the Amarna period she was depicted in human form wearing a low flat headdress with plants sprouting from it.

Is Tefnut the same as Sekhmet or Bastet?

No, Tefnut is a separate goddess, but she was closely compared with both because all three could act as the Eye of Ra. In her furious lioness mode Tefnut resembles Sekhmet, and in her calmer feline aspect she was likened to the cat goddess Bast. The Egyptians moved fluidly between these leonine goddesses rather than keeping them strictly apart.

Related Entries

Shu, Atum, Ra, Geb, Nut, Maat, Thoth, Sekhmet, Bast (Bastet), Hathor, Wadjet, Isis, Nephthys, Apep/Apophis