Neith

**Neith**


 * Other Names:**

Nit, Net


 * Meaning of Name:**

Her name is linked to the root of the word for “weave” (//ntt//.)


 * Hieroglyphics:**

or


 * Titles:**

“Mistress of the Bow”

“Great Cow Who Gave Birth to Ra”

“Ruler of Arrows”

"Mistress of Sais" (the main center of her worship)

"The Highest Judge"

“Nurse of Crocodiles”

"Seamstress of the Cloth of Life"

“Mother of All”

**Family:**

Neith was the mother of Ra, Shu, and Sobek, and the creator of Apophis. She was sometimes considered to be the wife of Khnum or Set.

A very ancient creator goddess, Neith guarded the deceased, and made sacred warriors’ weapons. Neith was originally worshiped as an ancient war goddess, who led the charge in battle. She had a special significance for warrior kings and their wives. Neith was called “the Eldest, the Mother of the Gods, who shone on the first face.” Neith was by far the favorite deity acknowledged in the personal names of the earliest dynasties, for she appears in almost 40 percent of all theophoric names. The pharaoh Nectanebo II claimed Neith as his mother.

A text in the Roman Period temple of Esna describes how Neith created the world by speaking seven magical words. Everything Neith conceived with her heart came into being, including thirty gods, and then she went on to create the sun-god Ra, who himself created mankind. During her festival a statue of the goddess Neith was placed in the sunlight, to reunite her with her son. The statue was then sailed down the river on a barque shrine, as the celebrants danced and feasted.

Neith was thought to be the mother of every pharaoh, and a text dating from the 6th century B.C.E. states that it was she who invented birth. Plutarch says her temple (of which nothing now remains) bore the inscription: “I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised.” As “The Highest Judge,” Neith was thought to help judge the dead in the Duat. “Judgment has been made in the presence of Neith” was a common refrain from the Coffin Texts.

In the “Contendings of Horus and Set” Neith appears as a wise counselor to whom Ra himself appeals for help, though her aggressive nature is seen in her threat that she will grow angry and make the sky fall to the earth if her advice is not followed. A myth states that the serpent Apophis came into being when Neith became angry and spat into the primeval waters of Nun. Neith was thought to be the protector of Duamutef.

Neith was pictured as a woman wearing the Red Crown atop her head, holding a bow and arrows, a woman with the head of a lioness, or as a cobra, a fish, or a cow. Sometimes Neith was shown as a woman nursing a baby crocodile (her son, the crocodile-god Sobek). One of her titles was “Nurse of Crocodiles.” In rare instances she was pictured with a crocodile’s head. In the eleventh hour of the night Neith appears in four forms – as a child, as a queen of Upper Egypt, as a queen of Lower Egypt, and as a pregnant goddess.

It was in the funerary mode that Neith was depicted at her most fierce, shooting arrows at the demons that would attack the deceased, either in the tomb or during the passage through the Duat. During the earliest times, weapons were placed around the grave to protect the dead, and so her nature of a warrior-goddess might have been a direct link to her becoming a mortuary goddess. Amulets of Neith, made of gold, faience, and lapis lazuli, were popular.

Neith was also known as a goddess of weaving and the domestic arts, and she was said to have woven the world on her loom. As the divine patron of weavers, the linen wrappings of the mummy were produced by the “weavers of Neith” - bandages were the "gifts of Neith." Thus Neith protected the dead in yet another way. She was called the "Seamstress of the Cloth of Life, whose thread is gold, whose needles are fire." Despite being a goddess and mother, Neith was considered to so powerful that she was described as androgynous, two-thirds of her person being male, and one-third female.

A great festival, called the Feast of Lamps, was held annually in her honor, and according to Herodotus her devotees burned a multitude of lights in the open air all night during the celebration. Lamps, torches, and tapers were set in every corner of the house, burning until dawn. In a single room in the Temple of Neith the remains of fifty-eight lamps have been found. Tiny barques made of papyrus and carrying candles were floated on Neith’s sacred lake. Herodotus claims that an image of the goddess in the form of a kneeling cow with the sun disk between its horns was carried in public procession, covered by a purple robe. There is evidence of an Osiris-like cult of a woman dying and being brought back to life that was connected with Neith.

Neith’s sacred animal was the click beetle – her most ancient symbol was two click beetles, head to head, over two crossed arrows. Protective golden amulets of click beetles have been found. The cult of Neith is so ancient that the Egyptians themselves forgot that the symbol of Neith represented two beetles, for later in history this central image was interpreted as a shield. The image of the insect is clear on the early objects, however. Neith was also associated with the honeybee and her temple in the town of Sais was known as //Per-bit// ("House of the Bee.")

An inscription on a statue of Udjahorresne states: "I let His Majesty know of the greatness of Sais, the seat of Neith-the-Great, the Mother who bore Ra and inaugurated birth when birth had not yet been. The King came to Sais and went in person to the Temple of Neith. He made a great prostration before Her Majesty, as every king has done. He made a great offering of every good thing to Neith-the-Great, the Mother of God, as every beneficent king has done. His Majesty did this because I had let His Majesty know the greatness of Her Majesty Neith, that she is the Mother of Ra herself."


 * Feast and Holy Day****s:**

September 7 (Neith Goes Forth)

September 13 (Festival of Lighting the Fires of Neith) December 8 (Brilliant Festival of Lights as Neith Goes Forth)

December 26 (Feast of Neith)

January 19 (Feast of Lamps)

May 10 (Going Forth of Neith Along the River)


 * Quotes from t****he Book of the Dead and other sources:**

Hymns of Neith


 * Egyptian Names Honoring This Deity:**

Neith-ikret, Peftuaneith, Neferneith ("Beautiful of Neith"), Padineith ("He Whom Neith Gave"), Meritneith (“Beloved of Neith”), Ahaneith ("Neith the Fighter"), Mer-Neith (“Neith is My Mistress”), Neith-hotep (“Neith is Satisfied”), Nakhtneith (“The One Whom Neith Protects”)


 * Outside of Egypt:**

The Greeks identified Neith with their own goddess of war and wisdom, Athena.

Egyptian Deities - N