シュー

シュー（Shu）は、エジプト神話における大気の神。ヘリオポリス九柱神に数えられる。

シュー（Egyptian šw、「空虚」または「立ち上がる者」、コプト語：Ϣⲟⲩ）は、エジプトの原初神の一人で、女神テフヌトの配偶者で兄弟、ヘリオポリスの宇宙観のエネアドの九神の一人である。平和、ライオン、空気、風に関する神である^{（要出典、3/2020）}。

家族

ヘリオポリス神学では、アトゥムは自慰行為や唾を吐くことによって、エネアッドの最初のカップルであるシューとテフヌトを作った。シューはヌトとゲブの父であり、オシリス、イシス、セト、ネフティスの祖父である。その曾孫がホルスとアヌビスである。

神話

大気として、シューは冷やす、つまり落ち着かせる、影響を与える、なだめ役とされていた。

As the air, Shu was considered to be a cooling, and thus calming, influence, and pacifier. Due to the association with dry air, calm, and thus Ma'at (truth, justice, order, and balance), Shu was depicted as the dry air/atmosphere between the earth and sky, separating the two realms after the event of the First Occasion. Shu was also portrayed in art as wearing an ostrich feather. Shu was seen with between one and four feathers. The ostrich feather was symbolic of lightness and emptiness. Fog and clouds were also Shu's elements and they were often called his bones. Because of his position between the sky and earth, he was also known as the wind.

In a much later myth, representing a terrible weather disaster at the end of the Old Kingdom, it was said that Tefnut and Shu once argued, and Tefnut left Egypt for Nubia (which was always more temperate). It was said that Shu quickly decided that he missed her, but she changed into a cat that destroyed any man or god that approached. Thoth, disguised, eventually succeeded in convincing her to return.

The Greeks associated Shu with Atlas, the primordial Titan who held up the celestial spheres, as they are both depicted holding up the sky.

According to the Heliopolitan cosmology, Shu and Tefnut, the first pair of cosmic elements, created the sky goddess, Nut, and the earth god, Geb. Shu separated Nut from Geb as they were in the act of love, creating duality in the manifest world: above and below, light and dark, good and evil. Prior to their separation, however, Nut had given birth to the gods Isis, Osiris, Nephthys (Horus) and Set. The Egyptians believed that if Shu did not hold Nut (sky) and Geb (earth) apart there would be no way for physically-manifest life to exist.

Shu is mostly represented as a man. Only in his function as a fighter and defender as the sun god and he sometimes receive a lion's head. He carries an ankh, the symbol of life.

See also

• Anhur-Shu

Further reading

• Hans Bonnet: Lexikon der ägyptischen Religionsgeschichte, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-937872-08-6, S. 685-689 → Shu
• Adolf Erman: Die Aegyptische Religion, Verlag Georg Reimer, Berlin 1909
• Wolfgang Helck: Kleines Lexikon der Ägyptologie, 1999 ISBN 3-447-04027-0, S. 269f. → Shu
• Francoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche: "Gods and Men in Egypt 3000 BCE to 395 CE", Cornell University Press 2005, ISBN 0-8014-8853-2
• Jacobus Van Dijk, Myth and Mythmaking in Ancient Egypt, ed. J.M. Sasson, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1995.

概要

創造神アトゥムを親に持ち、アトゥムの自慰によって生まれた（ラーと習合されたため、ラーともされる）。配偶神は妹でもある湿気の女神テフヌト。彼との間に大地の神ゲブと天空の女神ヌトを成した。

子供たちが抱き合っているところをシューが無理矢理引き離し、天と地とが分かれたとされる。この神話はエジプト神話の中でも特に有名で、横たわったゲブの上にシューが立ち、ヌトを支える図像はよく知られている。

参考文献

• Wikipedia：シュー (エジプト神話)（最終閲覧日：23-03-02）
  • ステファヌ・ロッシーニ他『エジプトの神々辞典』矢島文夫・吉田春美訳、河出書房新社（1997年）

関連項目

• テフヌト…妻にあたる女神。
• ゲブ、ヌト…子にあたる神。
• アトゥム…親にあたる神。