Deity · Egyptian · c. 2600 BCE
Nephthys
Also called Nebet-Het · also recorded as Nebthet, Neber-Het (per Wikidata)
Set's wife who sides with her sister Isis against him, and mourns Osiris at the head of the bier.
Deep source base
The sister who is present at every stage and has no myth of her own. In the oldest material she and Isis are the two kites who find the body, keep watch over it and mourn — an office rather than a character, and Set's wife siding wholly against Set is stated from the beginning without ever being explained. It takes a Greek, a thousand years later, to give her a story: Plutarch has her deceive Osiris into fathering Anubis on her, and reads her allegorically as the barren desert against Isis' cultivated ground. Neither element has Egyptian warrant, and both are what most later reference works repeat.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
No temple of her own. She appears beside Isis at the bier and at the corners of the coffin, always as the second mourner.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- The Pyramid Texts · c. 2350–2100 BCE
- Rank
- Lady of the House
- Pantheon
- Egyptian
- Order
- Egyptian pantheon
- Base of operations
- No temple of her own. She appears beside Isis at the bier and at the corners of the coffin, always as the second mourner.
- Era
- c. 2600 BCE
- Traditions
- Egyptian
Traits
- Domain
- Mourning, the funerary rites, protection of the dead
- Traditional form
- A woman with the hieroglyph of a house and basket on her head
4 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 4 offices attributed to Nephthys, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- martial1
- material1
- social1
- transformation1
3 texts
Which texts say so?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 3 texts that names Nephthys, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
3 texts spanning roughly 2,450 years
The second mourner, and never anything else in the oldest material — she is the sister who is present at every stage of the recovery and has no myth of her own. Set's wife siding wholly against Set is stated, not explained, from the beginning.
Stands at the head of the bier as Isis stands at the foot; the two of them together are the model for Egyptian mourning.
Given a story at last, and by a Greek. Plutarch has her deceive Osiris into fathering Anubis on her, and makes her the desert and the barren land to Isis' cultivated ground — an allegorical scheme with no Egyptian warrant that nonetheless supplies the parentage most later reference works repeat.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Nephthys?
What rank is Nephthys?
How else is Nephthys spelled?
What is Nephthys said to do?
How old is Nephthys?
Nearest in the corpus
If Nephthys is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Khepri
The Morning Sun · Egyptian
The sun at dawn, in the form of a scarab beetle rolling it up over the horizon — one of the three daily aspects of the sun, and a pun on the word for coming into being.
Anubis
Guide of the Dead · Egyptian
Embalmer and psychopomp, who leads the dead to the scales — the office Western tradition eventually gives to Michael and to Azrael.
Horus
Falcon King · Egyptian
Son of Osiris, who contends eighty years with Set for the throne. Every living pharaoh was understood to be his incarnation.
Isis
Great of Magic · Egyptian
The great magician who reassembles Osiris and tricks Ra into surrendering his secret name. Her cult eventually reached as far as Roman Britain.
Osiris
Lord of the Dead · Egyptian
Murdered by Set, reassembled by Isis, and installed as judge of the dead. He is the earliest fully developed dying-and-rising sovereign we have.
Set
God of Storms and Disorder · Egyptian
Murderer of Osiris and defender of the sun-barque — a god who was worshipped as a royal patron for two millennia before being recast as the enemy.
The books behind Nephthys
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
The Pyramid Texts
Anonymous; carved for the kings and queens of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties · c. 2350–2100 BCE · Old Egyptian
Read The Pyramid Texts in full ↗The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Anonymous; tr. E. A. Wallis Budge · c. 1550 BCE onward · Egyptian
Read The Egyptian Book of the Dead in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Hunefer · Wikimedia file page
On Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride)
Plutarch of Chaeronea; tr. from the Moralia · c. 100 CE · Ancient Greek
Read On Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride) in full ↗
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.