Hidden link discovered connecting ancient Egypt and the Milky Way galaxy

When you think of the Milky Way that, you wouldn't be blamed if your head didn't connect the massive galaxy with the ancient Egyptians.

But their relationship is closer than you and many others previously might have thought, with a new study connecting what we see in the sky to that viewed thousands of years ago.

Space itself continues to be an unravelling ball of knowledge, with another supermassive black hole discovered just this week by NASA's $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope.

And don't get us started on the baffling 'question mark' spotted in deep space.

Humanity's relationship with what we see in the night sky goes way, way back, though.

When it comes to ancient Egypt, it's well documented that its people had strong religious beliefs and astronomical knowledge of the Sun, Moon, and planets.

But the relationship between the civilisation and the Milky Way was not known - until now.

A new study by a University of Portsmouth astrophysicist sheds light on the relationship between the Milky Way and a lesser known Egyptian sky-goddess called Nut.

Pyramids of Giza (Getty Stock Images)

We have to remember that ancient Egypt existed thousands of years ago; a time when light pollution simply wasn't a thing. No modern cities and no street lamps meaning they could see a whole lot more than most of us today.

In ancient artwork from the Egyptian civilisation, Nut is depicted as a goddess of the sky who you will regularly see depicted as a star-studded woman arched over her brother, the earth god Geb.

Her role was to protect Earth from being flooded. Ancient religious beliefs say she played an important role in the solar cycle, swallowing the Sun as it sets at dusk and giving birth to it once more as it rises at dawn. Of course this was a time where modern astronomy simply didn't exist, so this existed as a way to rationalise what we now know as the lunar cycle.

The new paper draws on ancient Egyptian texts and simulations to argue that the Milky Way might have shone a spotlight, as it were, on Nut’s role as the sky.

The work suggest that in winter, the Milky Way was portrayed by Nut’s outstretched arms. And then in summer her backbone portrayed the galaxy.

Have a look at the below image to see what we're on about a bit better:

Sky goddess Nut, covered in stars as the rising sun (the falcon-headed god Re) sails up before setting down her arms (E . A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, Vol. 2 (Methuen & Co., 1904))

Associate Professor in Astrophysics, Dr Or Graur, said: “I chanced upon the sky-goddess Nut when I was writing a book on galaxies and looking into the mythology of the Milky Way.

"I took my daughters to a museum and they were enchanted by this image of an arched woman and kept asking to hear stories about her.

“This sparked my interest and I decided to combine both astronomy and Egyptology to do a double analysis - astronomical and cross-cultural - of the sky-goddess Nut, and whether she really could be linked to the Milky Way.”

Dr Graur consulted ancient sources in his studies, including Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and the Book of Nut.

He then compared them alongside sophisticated simulations of the Egyptian night sky where he says he found strong evidence that the Milky Way was found in illustrations of Nut.

The Milky Way (Getty Stock Images)

He said: “My study also shows that Nut’s role in the transition of the deceased to the afterlife and her connection to the annual bird migration are consistent with how other cultures understand the Milky Way. For example, as a spirits' road among different peoples in North and Central America or as the Birds' Path in Finland and the Baltics.

“My research shows how combining disciplines can offer new insights into ancient beliefs, and it highlights how astronomy connects humanity across cultures, geography, and time. This paper is an exciting start to a larger project to catalogue and study the multicultural mythology of the Milky Way.”