Nephthys and Nut are recorded in a parent-and-child line within the Egyptian Pantheon.
At a glance
Egyptian Pantheon
tradition
Egyptian Pantheon
mourning, death, protection, night, childbirth
domains
the sky, the stars, the daily solar cycle, rebirth
house on head, wings, kite bird
symbols
arched, star-covered body, the solar disc she swallows and births each day
Nebet-Het, Lady of the Temple Enclosure
also called
—
Where they meet
The atlas records no shared domain or symbol between them. What connects them is elsewhere: Nephthys and Nut are recorded in a parent-and-child line within the Egyptian Pantheon.
Where they part
Nephthys alone
mourning, death, protection, night, childbirth
Nut alone
the sky, the stars, the daily solar cycle, rebirth
How each was worshipped
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.
Nut
Cult sites: No major independent state temple; honored chiefly through funerary art and coffin decoration.
Festivals: The five epagomenal days at year's end were associated with the births of her children.
Nut's presence in Egyptian religion is felt overwhelmingly through funerary art: her image, arched across coffin lids and tomb ceilings, was meant to receive the dead into her body each night just as she received the sun, promising the same daily rebirth to the deceased.
Nephthys
Egyptian Pantheon
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.
Goddess of the sky, daughter of Shu, consort of Geb, and mother of Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Nut's star-covered body arches over the earth, swallowing the sun each evening and giving birth to it again each dawn.
Nut was born to Shu and Tefnut and, with her brother and consort Geb, formed the third generation of the Ennead. Ra, angered by her secret pregnancy by Geb, forbade her from giving birth on any day of the calendar year, until Thoth won five extra days through which Nut bore Osiris, Horus the Elder, Set, Isis, and Nephthys.
Nut is the sky itself, depicted as a woman whose elongated, star-covered body arches over the reclining earth god Geb, held apart from him by their father Shu. Daughter of Shu and Tefnut, Nut forms, with Geb, the next generation of the Heliopolitan Ennead after Atum, Shu, and Tefnut.