Tefnut held place in the Heliopolitan Ennead as the daughter of the Sun God Atum, later Atum-Re, and the sister and wife of his son, Shu. She was personified as the element of moisture, as in one variant of her creation story, she and her brother were spit out by the sun god Atum. On the walls of Ptolemaic temples, Tefnut’s name is written by the symbol of two lips spitting. In the Pyramid Texts, passages tell how the goddess creates pure water for the king’s feet from her vagina, perhaps, the morning dew. In addition, the Pyramid Texts describe her as a serpent rearing up on a scepter.

Tefnut was usually depicted in human form, wearing a sun’s disk, encircled by a cobra on her head. Like other goddesses, particularly Hathor or Het-hert, and Sekhmet, Tefnut was often called the Eye of Re. She bore the epithets ‘lady of flame’ and ‘the uraeus on the heads of all the gods.’ In Buto, Shu and Tefnut were worshipped in the form of the flamingO-like ‘children of the Lower Egyptian king.’

A very ancient legend, set in the time when Re lived on earth as the King of Egypt, recounts how Tefnut became estranged from the sun-god and fled into Nubia. The cause of the rifts is not reported, but once she reached Nubia, Tefnut transformed herself into a lioness and raged through the land, emitting flames from her eyes and nostrils, drinking blood and feeding on animal and human flesh. Re missed his Eye, and longed to see her again. He sent for Shu and for the messenger of the gods, Djehuty/Thoth, famed for his eloquence, and commanded them to go to Nubia and bring back his daughter. Shu and Thoth first disguised themselves as baboons and set off for Nubia.

Thoth found Tefnut in Bugem and tried to persuade her to return to Egypt. At first, she refused, she had begun to enjoy herself hunting in the desert. Thoth persevered, and described vividly for her the gloom that Egypt felt because of her absence. He promised that the animal prey she now hunted would be piled high on the altar that would be built high for her by the Egyptians upon her return.

Finally, Tefnut agreed to return with them, and was led back by the two baboons to great rejoicing, music, dancing.

In some versions of this story, Tefnut is replaced by Hathor, who retreats to Nubia in a sulk over being prevented from destroying mankind completely, and Shu takes over the role of the chief pacifier of the angry goddess. However, the original version of the story seems to have belonged to the god Anhur, better known by his Greek name of Onuris. Anhur means ‘He-who-brought-the-Distant-One.’ Linked with the estranged Distant One, Tefnut, Anuris was a manifestation of the legendary hunter who returns victorious after subduing some monstrous beast.