Shu was the god of sunlight and air. He was the son of Atum the creator god, one of the oldest cosmic deities. He was God of Air and Light and generally represented as a man wearing a feather on his head, which was also the hieroglyphic symbol for his name.

Shu’s main function was to support the heavens, which he accomplished, by kneeling on the earth with his arms raised above his head, holding up Nut the Sky goddess his daughter and keeping her separate from her brother-husband Geb.

Apart from the feather, the hieroglyphic symbol for his name, with which he was usually depicted as wearing on his head, Shu’s other symbol represented the four supports of heaven that supposedly stood at the four corners of the earth and helped Shu with his task.

In the Pyramid Texts, the bones of Shu, perhaps represented by the clouds in the sky, are used by the king in his ascent to heaven. The lakes of Shu, perhaps represented by the mist that gathers over the Nile, purify the monarch.

Shu’s chief sanctuary, which he shared with his sister-wife Tefnut, was to the northeast of Heliopolis, at Nay-ta-hut, or Leontopolis as the Greeks called it, City of the Lion. Here Shu was worshipped in the form of a Lion and Tefnut was worshipped as a lioness. The local version of the Heliopolitan creation story, which recounted how Atum had self-engendered Shu and Tefnut, told how the two gods first took shape as a pair of lion cubs who grew into the Two Lions who guard the eastern and western horizons. Lions lived in the deserts where the ancient Egyptians thought the sun died each evening, in the west, and was reborn each morning in the east, so the connection of lions with the sun on the horizon follows. Lions were also thought to be able to see in the dark as well as in the light. So the Lion of the Western Horizon guarded the sun by night, while the Lion of the Eastern Horizon supervised the rising of the sun each morning.

Headrests on beds were decorated with lion motifs, expressing the belief that man needed to be guarded while he slept at night, that he might rise like the sun the next day. One of the finest examples of such a headrest was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. It is made of ivory, with a carved figure of Shu kneeling at the base, holding the neck-support in his outstretched arms, and flanked by the Lions of the Eastern and Western Horizons.

Legend says that Shu reigned as King of Egypt for many years. A late version of his story was inscribed during the Ptolemaic Period on a black granite shrine, erected in the capital of the 20th nome of Lower Egypt. According to the inscriptions, Shu reigned as a good king upon the throne of his father – Re-Harmakhis, in his palace at Memphis. When Geb, the son of Shu, asked the gods what his father had accomplished during his reign, he was told that Shu had slain all the enemies of Atum and Re, and had irrigated the towns, the settlements and the nomes of Egypt, erected walls to protect her, and built temples throughout the Two Lands.

After many years of unchallenged rule, Shu became weak in body and diseased in his eyes. His followers quarreled among themselves. Even Geb became disaffected, partly because he was envious of Shu’s position, and partly because Shu had separated Geb from his sister-wife Nut. Shu finally then went up into heaven with his followers. Darkness fell upon the land, the wind howled, and for nine days neither man nor god could see the face of his neighbor. Then the wind died down, darkness receded, and Geb appeared, upon the throne with all in the palace making obeisance to him. Geb thus became King of Egypt, while Shu took a place in the Company of Gods attending upon Re, the Sun God.