generation after the creator deities. He is dryness,
and he and his sister and wife, Tefnut, have two
children, Geb and Nut, representing the Earth and
sky. Some have claimed that Shu was more related
to the solar deities than the lunar deities. Indeed, it
is thought that Tefnut was more a lunar deity than
Shu, whose association with the lunar deities
Khonsu and Tehuti was simply because of his activ-
ities. However, Shu was also the deity who sepa-
rated Heaven and Earth, standing between them
with two lions flanking him. Thus, the idea of Shu
was associated with Maat and its notions of truth,
justice, righteousness, harmony, balance, order, and
reciprocity in bringing about morality and ethics in
the universe. Shu, therefore, was often portrayed as
a man wearing an ostrich feather on his head as a
symbol of his power to punish the deceased or allow
them to climb to Heaven.
Ana Monteiro-FerreiraSee alsoGod
Further Readings
Armour, R. A. (1986).Gods and Myths of Ancient
Egypt. Cairo, Egypt: American University in Cairo
Press.
Budge, E. A. W. (1969).The Gods of the Egyptians:
Studies in Egyptian Mythology(Vol. 1). New York:
Dover.
Shaw, I., & Nicholson, P. (Eds.). (1995).The Dictionary
of Ancient Egypt. London: The British Museum and
Harry Abrams.
SKY
The sky, as well as the Earth, plays a central role
in African functional systems of beliefs. The sky,
like any other place or natural entity in the world,
possesses its own ancestral spirit who, like every
creative spirit, watches over the daily needs of the
African people to promote social harmony and a
sense of accountability among them.
Many creation narratives, beginning with the
Kemetic civilization, conceive of the sky as the
abiding place of the creative force of the universe
that in Kemet was Ra, the sun.
Because African ontological systems revolve
around the core concept of spirits as the vital uni-
versal energy that embodies all living and nonliv-
ing things, humans and nature alike, their holistic
concept of balance and harmony demands a sense
of agency on the part of every human being as
well as his or her own responsibility toward the
community that gives a sacred or religious dimen-
sion to his or her respect for these spirits.
The spiritual dimension of traditional African
cultures and religions that refers to a first creator
as a carver among the Akan or as a carpenter
among the Tiv of Nigeria also conceives of this
first creative moment as a generative power or the
first coming into being of a great, great, great
ancestor or Unkulunkulu as among the Zulu peo-
ples, who created the universe and everything in
it, and the human beings whom he gave every-
thing for them to have a pleasant life on Earth and
live in harmony with nature.
Although cosmological and spiritual interpre-
tations of the world greatly vary according to
the diversity of the people who professes them,
African cosmological and religious interpretations
of the world show commonalities that conceive
the spirits and even the first creator as sharing the
same life experiences, needs, and attributes as
those of the average human being.
Therefore, the sky and the Earth, respectively,
the masculine and the feminine concepts of origin,
as well as the metaphor of the two halves of a cal-
abash, are also powerful symbols of creation in
the traditional African systems of beliefs and are
conceived exactly as any African compound. In
the case of the sky, whose chief is often called the
lord of the sky, associations of its spirit with nat-
ural phenomena that create havoc in the commu-
nity, such as thunder and lightning, storms, and
rain, are common and often seen as a result of
the regular activities going on in that particular
environment.
In some cases, this functional interpretation
overlaps with the concept of the abiding place of
the great, great ancestor and, as a consequence, a
place for the ancestors’ world.
The fact that Semitic and Islamic religions have
been impacting African peoples for more than 700
years, as well as the Arab, Jewish, and Christian
influences in Africa since the 1st century, in such a
persistent mode that they have transformed,Sky 619