- Naunet redirects here.
Not to be confused with Nanuet, a hamlet in New York.
In Egyptian mythology, Nu is the deification of the primordial watery abyss. In the Ogdoad cosmogony, the name nu means "abyss".
Nu, being a concept, was viewed as not having a gender, but also had aspects that could be represented as female or male as with most Egyptian deities. Naunet (also spelt Nunet) is the female aspect, which is the name Nu with a female gender ending. The male aspect, Nun, is displayed with a male gender ending. As with the other three four primordial concepts of the Ogdoad, Nu's male aspect was depicted as a frog, or a frog-headed man. In Ancient Egyptian art, Nun also appears as a bearded man, with blue-green skin, representing water. Naunet is represented as a snake or snake-headed woman.
As with the other Ogdoad concepts, Nu did not have temples or any center of worship. Even so, Nu was sometimes represented by a sacred lake, or, as at Abydos, by an underground stream.
Nu is depicted with upraised arms holding a "solar bark" (or barque, a boat). The boat is occupied by eight deities, with the scarab deity Khepri standing in the middle surrounded by the seven other deities. Other groupings include Naunet and Nun, Amaunet and Amun, Hauhet and Heh, and Kauket with Kuk.
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