On an ancient Egyptian coffin lid painted more than 3,000 years ago, the sky goddess Nut arches over the dead. Her naked body, covered in stars, stretches protectively from foot to fingertip. But in this particular image, belonging to a woman named Nesitaudjatakhet, there’s a striking detail: a thick, undulating black curve snakes across her body, dividing the stars above from those below.
You wouldn’t think too much of this if the same artwork style hadn’t appeared on dozens of other coffins.
To Dr. Or Graur, an astrophysicist at the University of Portsmouth, the curve wasn’t some artistic device. It was all too familiar.
“It could be a representation of the Great Rift — the dark band of dust that cuts through the Milky Way’s bright band of diffused light,” he said. “Comparing this depiction with a photograph of the Milky Way shows the stark similarity.”
Graur’s study draws from an extensive visual analysis of 125 depictions of Nut from 555 ancient Egyptian coffins. The goddess — pronounced “Noot” — was often portrayed as a cosmic figure: an arched woman, stars on her skin, sometimes with solar disks. She symbolized the sky and played a central role in Egyptian cosmology, swallowing the sun each evening and birthing it at dawn.
The Celestial Woman and the River of Stars
In Egyptian belief, Nut shielded the earth god Geb and guided the sun’s daily journey across the heavens. But Graur’s work suggests the goddess may also have helped guide the eyes of stargazers.
In his earlier research, published in 2024, Graur analyzed ancient texts — the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and the Book of Nut. Using simulations of the night sky, he proposed that the Milky Way illuminated Nut’s figure: outlining her arms in winter, tracing her back in summer. “The texts, on their own, suggested one way to think about the link between Nut and the Milky Way,” he said. “Analyzing her visual depictions… added a new dimension that, quite literally, painted a different picture.”
Most coffin depictions showed Nut covered in stars, without additional markings. But on five occasions — including Nesitaudjatakhet’s coffin and in four royal tombs — Graur observed the same feature: a winding, dark curve splitting Nut’s figure. The ceilings of Ramesses IV, VI, and IX show twin figures of Nut — representing day and night — separated by the sinuous line.
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To Graur, this wasn’t a coincidence
“These depictions . . . include the thick, sinuous rope of dust threaded through the stream of stars that pours across the night sky,” he wrote.
Still, he urges caution in how far we interpret these depictions.
“Nut is not a representation of the Milky Way,” he clarified. “Instead, the Milky Way, along with the Sun and the stars, is one more celestial phenomenon that can decorate Nut’s body in her role as the sky.”
A Broader Cosmic Puzzle
Why do only a few Nut images bear this celestial curve? Graur argues that this precisely supports his nuanced interpretation. “The rarity of this curve reinforces the conclusion… that although there is a connection between Nut and the Milky Way, the two are not one and the same.”
Still, the resemblance is uncanny. The photograph below, taken in Egypt’s Western Desert, shows the Milky Way arcing over the sands, its central band cleaved by a dusky void — the Great Rift.
This motif isn’t unique to Egypt, either. Cultures as distant as the Navajo and Zuni in North America used curving forms to depict the Milky Way in their own mythologies. It looks like the cross-cultural urge of a shared human impulse: to see stories in the stars.
What sets Graur’s research apart is its interdisciplinary method, combining astronomy with Egyptology. And, he says, it highlights the need for open access to cultural data.
“The catalogs assembled here underline the importance of fully digitizing museum catalogs and providing free access to them,” he writes in his paper.
Indeed, it was thanks to such accessible collections that he first encountered Nut, not in a library, but in a museum visit with his daughters. They were entranced by the goddess’s image — an arched woman painted with stars — and kept asking to hear her story.
Overall, Graur’s research suggests that the ancient Egyptians, as they wrapped their dead in art and meaning, may have also wrapped them in a galaxy. Not as mere decoration, but as a map of myth, sky, and spirit.
The findings appeared in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage.