Nephthys

Neftis is the youngest of the children of Geb and Nut, born according to Plutarch on the last of the five days that Thot added to the year. Her Egyptian name, Nebet-Het, means lady of the house or of the enclosure, and that hieroglyph crowns her head in art. The Pyramid Texts always place her next to her sister Isis, forming with her an inseparable couple: if Isis is the day, the word and visible magic, Neftis is the night, silence and the hidden. Married to Set, she does not however share his destructive nature, and in the conflict over Osiris she takes sides against her own husband.

When Set dismembers Osiris, Neftis accompanies Isis in the search and reconstruction of the body: the two sisters, in the form of kites, hover over the corpse and mourn it until they restore its breath. That ritual lament was reproduced for centuries by two priestesses in Egyptian funerals, embodying the goddesses before the deceased. Neftis guards the canopic jar of Hapy, which holds the lungs, and protects the coffin from the headboard while Isis watches at the feet. The Coffin Texts invoke her to shelter the soul in its nocturnal journey through the Duat.

The most famous myth of Neftis explains the birth of Anubis. According to Plutarch, the goddess impersonated Isis and conceived from Osiris himself the jackal that would embalm him; fearing Set's wrath, she abandoned the newborn, and Isis found him and raised him as her own son. Other Egyptian traditions make Anubis a son of Ra or Set, but Plutarch's version is the one that links the embalmer's lineage with the body he embalms. Sister of Osiris and Isis, wife of Set and mother of Anubis, Neftis is related to the four vertices of the conflict and betrays none except her husband.