Nephthys- Egyptian GodDeity"Lady of the House"

The Fifth Day

Nephthys was the last of five children born to Geb and Nut on the epagomenal days, the five intercalary days that fell outside the regular 360-day calendar. Osiris was born first. Nephthys came last, on the fifth day. Plutarch notes that the Egyptians considered these days dangerous, unprotected by the calendar's order, and called the fifth at once a conclusion and a beginning.

Her name, Nebet-Het, means "Lady of the House." The hieroglyphs appear as her headdress in every depiction: a basket atop a house sign. She was married to Set, but it was Isis she went to in every crisis, not her husband.

Mother of Anubis

According to Plutarch, Nephthys disguised herself as Isis and lay with Osiris. Whether Osiris was deceived by the resemblance or clouded by wine, the result was the same: Nephthys conceived a child. Fearing Set's violence, she abandoned the infant in the wilderness after birth. Isis found him, guided by hunting dogs, and raised him as her own. The child was Anubis, who grew to become lord of embalming and guide of the dead. The Pyramid Texts preserve older traditions naming Ra or Hesat as his parent, but the story of Nephthys and Osiris became dominant by the New Kingdom.

The Search for Osiris

When Set killed Osiris, dismembered him, and scattered the fourteen pieces across Egypt, Nephthys made her choice. She left her husband and went to her sister. The two goddesses wandered the length of the Nile Valley, searching for each fragment. The Pyramid Texts describe Nephthys gathering the limbs of Osiris. Later texts expanded the journey, and each discovery site became a cult center for the dead god. Together the sisters reassembled the body, and through their combined power Osiris rose. Not as a living king. As sovereign of the underworld. When Horus later fought Set for the throne, Nephthys sided with her nephew against her own husband.

The Two Kites

Isis and Nephthys were called "the two kites" after the small hawks whose piercing cries sound like human weeping. In tomb paintings spanning three thousand years, they kneel at the head and foot of the dead, wings spread over the mummy. The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys, preserved in the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus and performed at the annual Khoiak festival, gives voice to their grief in antiphonal poetry: the two goddesses calling to Osiris, begging him to return. At Egyptian funerals, two women took the ritual names "Isis" and "Nephthys." Their wailing replicated the goddesses' original mourning. Every corpse ritually became Osiris. Every funeral replayed the myth.

Friend of the Dead

Four goddesses guarded the canopic jars that held the deceased's organs. Nephthys stood over Hapy's jar, which held the lungs. Their images appeared on the sides of canopic chests, wings outstretched, and Spell 151 of the Book of the Dead prescribed the exact words each goddess spoke over the body.

In the Amduat and the Book of Gates, Nephthys rides the solar barque through the twelve hours of the night alongside Isis. She receives the dying soul and walks beside it through the Duat to the place of judgment.

Nephthys never had the great temples Isis commanded. No Philae, no Dendera. Ptolemaic-era records name Diospolis Parva in Upper Egypt as a center of her worship, and she was honored at Heliopolis as part of the Great Ennead. But her domain was every burial in Egypt. Every coffin bore her wings. Every funeral echoed her cry.