Neith

“Hail Great Goddess who lives in the Duat twice hidden!
Oh thou Unknown One!
Hail, thou Divine Great One, whose veil has not been loosened.
Oh, unloose thy veil for me!
Hail, Hidden One, no man knows the way of entrance to her.
Come, then, receive the soul of Osiris.
Protect it within thy two hands." - Hymn to Neith

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. 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.

Neith was called “the Eldest, the Mother of the Gods, who shone on the first face.” A text in the Roman Period temple of Esna describes how Neith created the world by speaking seven magical words.

On the wall of the Temple of Khnum at Esna, we see Neith emerging from the primeval waters as a goddess who creates land by simply saying the words: “Let this place be land for me.” The other deities acclaim Neith for having “separated for us the bright dawn from the night, made for us a ground upon which we may take support, and distinguish for us the units of time in the space of an instant.”

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 boat shrine, as 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 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 underworld. “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.

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." There is evidence of an Osiris-like cult of a woman dying and being brought back to life that was connected with Neith.

Neith was associated with the honeybee and her temple in the town of Sais was known as Per-bit ("House of the Bee.") Another sacred animal of hers was the click beetle.

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