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51-455: No original example of a khepresh has yet been found. Based on ancient artistic representations, some Egyptologists have speculated that the khepresh was made of leather or stiffened cloth covered with a precise arrangement of hundreds of sequins, discs, bosses, or rings. Given that the deshret (red crown) and hedjet (white crown) were apparently woven of some sort of plant fiber, the circles or rings decorating ancient artistic representations of

102-815: A deity of Lower Egypt, her worship was not consistently located in that delta region. Her cult reached its height in Saïs and apparently in Memphis in the Old Kingdom, and remained important, although to a lesser extent, through the Middle and New Kingdom. Her cult regained cultural prominence again during the Twenty-sixth Dynasty when worship at Saïs flourished again, as well as at Esna in Upper Egypt. Neith's symbol and part of her hieroglyph also bore

153-469: A pair and so, she often is represented without one. Later triad associations made with her have little or no religious or mythological supporting references, appearing to have been made by political or regional associations only. Some modern writers assert that they may interpret that as her being ' androgynous ', since Neith is the creator capable of giving birth without a partner ( asexually ) and without association of creation with sexual imagery, as seen in

204-477: A psychopomp for the dead. The main imagery of Neith as Wepwawet was as the deity of the unseen and limitless sky, as opposed to representations of Nut and Hathor, who respectively represented the manifested night and day skies. Neith's epithet as the "Opener of the Sun's paths in all her stations" refers to how the sun is reborn (due to seasonal changes) at various points in the sky, under Neith's control of all beyond

255-676: A representation of a barque bearing her crossed arrow standards in the Predynastic Period, as is displayed in the Ashmolean Museum , Oxford. Her first anthropomorphic representations occur in the early dynastic period, on a diorite vase of King Ny-Netjer of the Second Dynasty. The vase was found in the Step Pyramid of Djoser (Third Dynasty) at Saqqara. That her worship predominated the early dynastic periods

306-455: A resemblance to a loom , and so in later syncretisation of Egyptian myths by the Greek ruling class of that time she was conflated with Athena , a Greek deity of war and weaving. Sometimes Neith was pictured as a woman nursing a baby crocodile, and she then was addressed with the title, "Nurse of Crocodiles", reflecting a southern provincial mythology in Upper Egypt that she served as either

357-647: A significant shrine at the capital, Memphis . In subsequent eras she lost her preeminence to other goddesses, such as Hathor , but she remained important, particularly during the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (664–525 BC), when Sais was Egypt's capital. She was worshipped in many temples during the Greek and Roman periods of Egyptian history, most significantly Esna in Upper Egypt , and the Greeks identified her with their goddess Athena . In her usual representations, she

408-606: A water goddess, she was viewed as the mother of Sobek , the crocodile . It was because of this association with water, i.e. the Nile , that during pairing of deities she sometimes was considered the wife of Khnum and sometimes was associated with the source of the River Nile. In that cult center, she also was associated with the Nile Perch as well as being the goddess of the triad. As the goddess of creation and weaving, she

459-498: Is demonstrated by a preponderance of theophoric names (personal names that incorporate the name of a deity) within which Neith appears as an element. Predominance of Neith's name in nearly forty percent of early dynastic names, and particularly in the names of four royal women of the First Dynasty, clearly emphasizes the importance of this goddess in relation to the early society of Egypt, with special emphasis on association with

510-554: Is it used as a non-preposition. It averages once per line usage in the 36 line Decree of Memphis (Ptolemy V) -(Rosetta Stone). Neith Neith / ˈ n iː . ɪ θ / ( Koinē Greek : Νηΐθ , a borrowing of the Demotic form Ancient Egyptian : nt , also spelled Nit , Net , or Neit ) was an ancient Egyptian deity , possibly of Libyan origin. She was connected with warfare, as indicated by her emblem of two crossed bows, and with motherhood, as shown by texts that call her

561-607: Is mentioned in texts and depicted in reliefs and statues. An early example is the depiction of the victorious pharaoh wearing the deshret on the Narmer Palette . A label from the reign of Djer records a royal visit to the shrine of the Deshret which may have been located at Buto in the Nile delta. The fact that no crown has ever been found buried with any of the pharaohs, even in relatively intact tombs, might suggest that it

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612-512: Is one of the beetles depicted in ancient Egyptian art. The shape of the beetle resembles the shape of some ancient Egyptian shields, and necklaces with beads shaped like the beetle have been found. Additionally, the beetles have been found depicted as part of a symbol of Neith. This association appears as early as the Protodynastic period, and may be the origin of one of Neith's stylized cult signs. An analysis of her attributes shows Neith

663-464: Is portrayed as a fierce deity, a woman wearing the Red Crown, occasionally holding or using the bow and arrow , in others, a harpoon . Neith also is a goddess of war and of hunting and that is the symbolism depicted most often. Her symbol was two arrows crossed over a shield. The hieroglyphs of her name usually are followed by a determinative containing the archery elements, with the shield symbol of

714-418: Is represented at times as a cow goddess with a line of stars across her back (as opposed to representations of Nut with stars across the belly) [See el-Sayed, II, Doc. 644], and maintained this indicated that Neith represents the full ecliptic circle around the sky (above and below), and is seen iconographically in ancient texts as both the regular and the inverted determinative for the heavenly vault, indicating

765-600: Is shown wearing the Red Crown. The Red Crown would later be combined with the White Crown of Upper Egypt to form the Double Crown , symbolizing the rule over the whole country, "The Two Lands" as the Egyptians expressed it. No Red Crown has been found. Several ancient representations indicate it was woven like a basket from plant fiber such as grass, straw, flax, palm leaf, or reed. The Red Crown frequently

816-408: Is taller than the cap crown and more angular than later forms of the khepresh . This crown continued to evolve during the early Eighteenth Dynasty, attaining its best-known form in the reigns of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III . After Amenhotep III 's reign – and particularly during the 18th and 19th Dynasties – it came into fashion and was even adopted by some pharaohs as a primary crown. The crown

867-648: Is used on the famous palette of Pharaoh Narmer as the "Red Crown of the Delta" , the Delta being Lower Egypt . The first usage of the Red Crown was in iconography as the symbol for Lower Egypt with the Nile Delta , horizontal letter 'n', Gardiner no. 35, Later it came to be used in the Egyptian language as an alphabetic uniliteral , vertical form for letter "n" as a phoneme or preposition . It became functional in running hieroglyphic texts, where either

918-457: The Four sons of Horus , specifically Duamutef , the god who protected the stomach. Through her role as a goddess of weaving, she was associated with the wrappings of mummies. B C D F G H I K M N P Q R S T U W In some ancient Egyptian creation myths , Neith was identified as the mother of Ra and Apep . When she was identified as

969-736: The Hedjet (White Crown) of Upper Egypt , it forms the Pschent (Double Crown), in ancient Egyptian called the sekhemti . The Red Crown in Egyptian language hieroglyphs eventually was used as the vertical letter "n". The original "n" hieroglyph from the Predynastic Period and the Old Kingdom was the sign depicting ripples of water. The word Deshret also referred to the desert Red Land on either side of Kemet (Black Land),

1020-548: The Second Intermediate Period . In this and other examples from the same era, the word is written with a determinative that represents the cap crown, a lower and less elaborate type of crown. The earliest known depiction of the khepresh is on the stela Cairo CG 20517 which dates to the reign of Snaaib , during the Second Intermediate Period . The stela shows him wearing the Khepresh crown and adoring

1071-546: The Veil of Isis in his On Isis and Osiris. The veiled Isis is a motif which associates her with mystery and ceremonial magic . Plutarch described the statue of a seated and veiled goddess in the Egyptian city of Sais . He identified the goddess as "Athena, whom [the Egyptians] consider to be Isis." However, Sais was the cult center of the goddess Neith, whom the Greeks compared to their goddess Athena , and could have been

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1122-526: The Egyptian citizens of Sais in Egypt worshipped Neith. In his dialogue Timaeus , the Greek philosopher Plato has Critias say that the Greek name of Neith is Athena. The English Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge suggested that the Christian biblical account of the flight into Egypt as recorded in the apocryphal gospels was directly influenced by stories about Isis and Horus; Budge argued that

1173-422: The First Dynasty, in an effort to placate the residents of Lower Egypt by the ruler of the unified country. Textual and iconographic evidence indicates that she was a national goddess for Old Kingdom Egypt, with her own sanctuary in Memphis, indicating the high regard held for her. There, she was known as "North of her Wall", as counterpoise to Ptah 's "South of his Wall" epithet. While Neith is generally regarded as

1224-508: The Royal House. In the very early periods of Egyptian history, the main iconographic representations of this goddess appear to have been limited to her hunting and war characteristics, although there is no Egyptian mythological reference to support the concept that this was her primary function as a deity. It has been theorized that Neith's primary cult point in the Old Kingdom was established in Saïs (modern Sa el-Hagar) by Hor-Aha of

1275-660: The archaeological record; the earliest signs of her worship date to the Naqada II period ( c. 3600–3350 BC). Her main cult center was the city of Sais in Lower Egypt, near the western edge of the Nile Delta , and some Egyptologists have suggested that she originated among the Libyan peoples who lived nearby. She was the most important goddess in the Early Dynastic Period ( c. 3100–2686 BC) and had

1326-459: The beginning and caused everything to come to be. The divine mother of Ra, who shines on the horizon... Proclus (412–485 AD) wrote that the adyton of the temple of Neith in Sais (of which nothing now remains) carried the following inscription: I am the things that are, that will be, and that have been. No one has ever laid open the garment by which I am concealed. The fruit which I brought forth

1377-482: The cosmos below the horizon. St. Clair maintained it was this realm that Neith personified, for she is the complete sky that surrounds the upper (Nut) and lower (Nunet?) sky, and who exists beyond the horizon, and thereby, beyond the skies themselves. Neith, then, is that portion of the cosmos that is not seen, and in which the sun is reborn daily, below the horizon (which may reflect the statement assigned to Neith as "I come at dawn and at sunset daily"). Since Neith also

1428-407: The daily "re-creation". As protectress of Ra or the king, she is represented as a uraeus . In time, this led to her being considered as the personification of the primordial waters of creation . Neith is one of the most ancient deities associated with ancient Egyptian culture. Flinders Petrie noted the earliest depictions of her standards were known in predynastic periods, as can be seen from

1479-439: The end of hieroglyph blocks ; when they are at the end, a simple transition to start the next block is a vertical separator, in this case the preposition, vertical n, (thus a space saver). Since the start of the next hieroglyphic block could also be started with a horizontal "n" at the bottom of the previous block, it should be thought that the vertical "n" is also chosen for a visual effect; in other words, it visually spreads out

1530-446: The fertile Nile river basin. In mythology, the earth deity Geb , original ruler of Egypt, invested Horus with the rule over Lower Egypt . The Egyptian pharaohs , who saw themselves as successors of Horus, wore the deshret to symbolize their authority over Lower Egypt. Other deities wore the deshret too, or were identified with it, such as the protective serpent goddess Wadjet and the creator-goddess of Sais, Neith , who often

1581-587: The god Min During the New Kingdom , pharaohs were shown with this crown in military circumstances. However, some scholars think that the crown was also meant to evoke the divine power of the pharaoh, and was thereby worn to religiously situate kings as manifestations of gods on earth. Images of the khepresh from the reign of Ahmose I , first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty , show a headdress that

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1632-521: The horizontal or vertical form preposition satisfied space requirements. Both the vertical and horizontal forms are prepositional equivalents, with the horizontal letter n, the N-water ripple (n hieroglyph) being more common, as well as more common to form parts of Egyptian language words requiring the phoneme 'n'. One old use of the red crown hieroglyph is to make the word: 'in'!, (formerly an -(a-with dot)-(the "vertical feather" hieroglyph a, plus

1683-404: The khepresh may instead indicate the regular array of hexagonal holes in an open triaxial weave. As with many other royal crowns, a uraeus (cobra) was hooked to the front of the khepresh. The Blue Crown, or War Crown, was represented in hieroglyphs. The earliest known mention of the khepresh is on the stela Cairo JE 59635 [CG 20799] which dates to the reign of pharaoh Neferhotep III , during

1734-427: The mother of particular deities, such as the sun god Ra and the crocodile god Sobek . As a mother goddess, she was sometimes said to be the creator of the world . She also had a presence in funerary religion , and this aspect of her character grew over time: she became one of the four goddesses who protected the coffin and internal organs of the deceased. Neith is one of the earliest Egyptian deities to appear in

1785-475: The mother of the crocodile god, Sobek. As the mother of Ra, in her Mehet-Weret form, she was sometimes described as the "Great Cow who gave birth to Ra". As a maternal figure (beyond being the birth-mother of the sun-god Ra), Neith is associated with Sobek as her son (as early as the Pyramid Texts), but in later religious conventions that paired deities, no male deity is consistently identified with her in

1836-746: The myths of Atum and other creator deities; which in turn led to her being accredited as the creator of birth itself. However, her name always appears as feminine. Erik Hornung interprets that in the Eleventh Hour of the Amduat , Neith's name appears written with a phallus. In reference to Neith's function as creator with both male and female characteristics, Peter Kaplony has said in the Lexikon der Ägyptologie : "Die Deutung von Neith als Njt "Verneinung" ist sekundär. Neith ist die weibliche Entsprechung zu Nw(w ), dem Gott der Urflut (Nun and Naunet)." She

1887-410: The name being explained as either double bows (facing one another), intersected by two arrows (usually lashed to the bows), or, by other imagery associated with her worship. As she is connected with weaving, the symbol is sometimes suggested to be a shuttle . Her symbol also identified the city of Sais. This symbol was displayed on top of her head in Egyptian art. In her form as a goddess of war , she

1938-445: The red crown). Egyptian "in" is used at the beginning of a text and translates as: Behold! , or Lo! , and is an emphatic. The Red Crown is also used as a determinative , most notably in the word for deshret. It is also used in other words or names of gods. In the 198 BC Rosetta Stone , the 'Red Crown' as hieroglyph has the usage mostly of the vertical form of the preposition "n". In running text, word endings are not always at

1989-462: The running text of words, instead of piling horizontal prepositions in a more tight text. Visually it is also a hieroglyph that takes up more 'space'-(versus a straight-line type for the horizontal water ripple ); so it may have a dual purpose of a less compact text, and a better segue -transition to the next words. The Red Crown hieroglyph is used 35 times in the Rosetta Stone; only 4 times

2040-469: The titles of women serving as priestesses of the goddess. Such epithets include: " Priestess of Neith who opens all the (path)ways ", " Priestess of Neith who opens the good pathways ", " Priestess of Neith who opens the way in all her places ". (el-Sayed, I : 67-69). el-Sayed asserts his belief that Neith should be seen as a parallel to Wepwawet, the ancient jackal god of Upper Egypt, who was associated in that southern region with both royalty in victory and as

2091-473: The vignette in The Contendings of Horus and Seth when, as the most ancient among them, Neith is asked by the deities to decide who should rule. She was appealed to as an arbiter in the dispute between Horus and Seth. In her message of reply, Neith selects Horus, and says she will "cause the sky to crash to the earth" if he is not selected. The click beetle (likely specifically agrypnus notodonta )

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2142-413: The visible world, of which only a glimpse is revealed prior to dawn and after sunset. It is at these changing points that Neith reigns as a form of sky goddess, where the sun rises and sets daily, or at its 'first appearance' to the sky above and below. It is at these points, beyond the sky that is seen, that Neith's true power as the deity who creates life is manifested. Georges St. Clair noted that Neith

2193-468: The writers of these gospels ascribed to Mary, the mother of Jesus , many peculiarities which, at the time of the rise of Christianity , were perceived as belonging to both Isis and Neith, for example, the parthenogenesis concept shared by both Neith and Mary. Neith has been speculated by some scholars, such as J. Gwyn Griffiths and Jan Assmann , to be the actual goddess depicted in the first and second century Greek historian Plutarch 's description of

2244-512: Was a goddess with many roles. From predynastic and early dynasty periods, she was referred to as an "Opener of the Ways" (same as Wepwawet), which may have referred, not only to her leadership in hunting and war but also as a psychopomp in cosmic and underworld pathways, escorting souls. References to Neith as the "Opener of Paths" occurs in Dynasty Four through Dynasty Six, and Neith is seen in

2295-565: Was considered to be eldest of the Ancient Egyptian deities. Neith is said to have been "born the first, in the time when as yet there had been no birth". In the Pyramid Texts, Neith is paired with the goddess Selket as the two braces for the sky, which places these goddesses as the supports for the heavens (see PT 1040a-d, following J. Gwyn Griffths, The Conflict of Horus and Seth , (London, 1961) p. 1). This ties in with

2346-404: Was goddess of war, she thus had an additional association with death: in this function, she shot her arrows into the enemies of the dead, and thus she began to be viewed as a protector of the dead, often appearing as a uraeus snake to drive off intruders and those who would harm the deceased (in this form she is represented in the tomb of Tutankhamun ). She also is shown as the protectress of one of

2397-472: Was not seen depicted in the Kushite Dynasty (747 to 656 BCE). However, depictions of the crowns returned in the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt . Some of the early Roman pharaohs are also depicted wearing it. Deshret Deshret ( Ancient Egyptian : 𓂧𓈙𓂋𓏏𓋔 , romanized :  dšrt , lit.   'Red One') was the Red Crown of Lower Egypt . When combined with

2448-518: Was passed from one reign to the next, much as in present-day monarchies. Toby Wilkinson has cited the iconography on rock art in the Eastern Desert region as depicting what he interpreted to be among the earliest representations of the royal crowns and suggested the Red Crown could have originated in the southern Nile Valley. Deshret, the ancient Egyptian Red Crown, is one of the oldest Egyptian hieroglyphs . As an iconographic element, it

2499-404: Was said to make the weapons of warriors and to guard their bodies when they died. As a deity, Neith is normally shown carrying the was scepter (symbol of rule and power) and the ankh (symbol of life). She is associated with Mehet-Weret , as a cow who gives birth to the sun daily, whose name means "Great Flood." In these forms, she is associated with the creation of both the primeval time and

2550-525: Was said to reweave the world on her loom daily. An interior wall of the temple at Esna records an account of creation in which Neith brings forth the Nun , the first land, from the primeval waters. All that she conceived in her heart comes into being, including all thirty deities. Having no husband she has been described as "Virgin Mother Goddess": Unique Goddess, mysterious and great who came to be in

2601-521: Was the sun. It was said that Neith interceded in the kingly war between Horus and Set , over the Egyptian throne , recommending that Horus rule. A great festival, called the Feast of Lamps , was held annually in honor of Neith and, according to the Greek historian Herodotus , her devotees burned a multitude of lights in the open air all night during the celebration. The Greek historian Herodotus ( c.  484  – c.  425 BC ) noted that

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