Which traditions do they belong to?

Both belong to the Egyptian Pantheon.

Side by sideParent and child

Anubis vs Nephthys

Anubis and Nephthys are recorded as parent and child in the Egyptian Pantheon.

At a glance

Anubis and Nephthys compared
	Anubis	Nephthys
Tradition	Egyptian Pantheon	Egyptian Pantheon
Domains	mummification, death, cemeteries, embalming, judgment	mourning, death, protection, night, childbirth
Symbols	jackal, black color, flail, crook, embalming tools	house on head, wings, kite bird
Also called	Anpu, Inpu, Anup	Nebet-Het, Lady of the Temple Enclosure

Where they meet

Both are associated with death.

Where they part

Only Anubis

Associated with mummification, cemeteries, embalming, and judgment.

Only Nephthys

Associated with mourning, protection, night, and childbirth.

How each was worshipped

Anubis

Cult sites: Cynopolis; Embalming workshops attached to necropolises
Festivals: Opening of the Mouth; Mummification rites

The jackal on the tomb and the priest in the jackal mask. He weighs, wraps, and guards. Cult is the funeral industry of Egypt, not a city-god's procession first.

Nephthys

Cult sites: Rarely given a major temple of her own; she is housed with Osiris, Isis, and Anubis in funerary complexes.; Heliopolis and the Osiris cult at Abydos keep her in the night watch over the dead god.
Festivals: Khoiak Osiris rites; Night watches for Osiris

Nephthys is a wailing woman and a guard. Coffin texts and Book of the Dead spells station her at the head or the corners of the bier with Isis. Priests recite her as protector of the lungs and of the hidden body, not as a city goddess with her own procession.

The two figures

Egyptian Pantheon

Anubis

God of mummification and the afterlife. Guardian of tombs and guide of souls to judgment. He oversees the weighing of the heart ceremony.

Anubis's parentage varies across Egyptian traditions. In older myths, he was the son of Ra and Hesat, or of Ra alone. The most well-known version makes him the illegitimate son of Osiris and Nephthys. When Nephthys bore Anubis, she abandoned him in the desert, fearing Set's wrath. Isis discovered the infant and raised him as her own, and he became fiercely loyal to the Osirian family. This connection explains why Anubis assisted Isis in mummifying Osiris and why he serves as protector of the dead king.

Anubis is the jackal-headed god who presided over mummification, embalming, and the passage of souls to the afterlife. In the earliest periods of Egyptian religion, he was the supreme lord of the underworld before Osiris rose to prominence.

Read the full Anubis entry

Egyptian Pantheon

Nephthys

Goddess of mourning and protector of the dead. Sister-wife of Set but loyal to Isis. She aided Isis in gathering Osiris's body and mourned him.

Nephthys (Nebet-Het) is the sister of Isis, Osiris, and Set. Temple lists pair her with Set as his wife, yet the Osiris cycle repeatedly puts her on Isis's side. She helps gather the pieces of Osiris's body, mourns with Isis in the kite-form of the two wailing sisters, and in several versions is the mother of **Anubis**. Egyptian religion is comfortable with that tension: a goddess can belong to the household of disorder and still nurse the dead back toward order.

Read the full Nephthys entry

About this comparison

Comparisons pair figures that play a similar role across traditions, or that the myths connect within one. A shared role does not, by itself, establish a shared origin.