Neith

Neith

Neith is a warrior or a hunter. Human-form and bald, she wears a crown and carries a bow and arrows. Her linen sheath dress is so tight that, in an age before lycra, she would have had difficulty moving around the battlefield. Her title ‘mother of the gods’ identifies her with the creative force present at the beginning of the world, and it is possible that she is credited with inventing childbirth. On the wall of the temple of Khnum at Esna, in southern Egypt, we see Neith emerging from the primeval waters as a cow-goddess who creates land by simply saying the words: “Let this place be land for me.”

Neith was worshipped throughout Egypt, but was particularly associated with the western Delta town of Sais (modern Sa el Hagar) where her temple became known as the ‘house of the bee’. During the 26th dynasty (664-525 BCE), a time when Sais was Egypt’s capital city, she became the dominant state god, and the kings were buried in the grounds of her temple. Her temple and the royal tombs that it contained are now lost.