The ancient Delta city of On or Ionu (near modern Cairo), which the Greeks called Heliopolis (City of the Sun), had a very old cosmogony. The Heliopolitan account of creation crops up here and there, like in the texts written on coffins which illustrates the separation of the Sky (Nut) from the Earth (Geb) by their father Shu (a personification of air): “I am the soul of Shu, for whom Nut was placed above him and Geb beneath his feet; and I was between them.”
