Neith (Egyptian mythology)
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| short |
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| or with determinative |
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| transcription | Nj.t | ||||
| Greek | No | ||||
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Neith (Egyptian: "the terrible") was a goddess in the mythology of ancient Egypt . She is one of the oldest attested goddesses and was worshiped as the goddess of war, creator goddess, mother goddess, goddess of Lower Egypt and goddess of the dead in the course of Egyptian history .
presentation
Neith is often in human form with arrow and bow in his hands and the Red Crown represented Lower Egypt on his head. In the text Esna 427 there is a detailed description of the goddess:
“She forms Khnum in his temple and protects his body. She protects his majesty in his shrine. She is the uraeus serpent that burns his enemy. She becomes the mother through whom he makes his life. "
The "Neith emblem" is also characteristic of Neith
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The sign is the ideogram or determinative (Deutzeichen) of the goddess.
meaning
In the pyramid texts, Neith is considered to be the mother of the crocodile god Sobek . Seth is mentioned as the father of Sobek . Originally she was considered the war , hunting and patron goddess of the royal power. She was also credited with inventing the art of weaving . In the New Kingdom she became the creator goddess "who gave birth to Re " and in Memphis she was the protector of the king . When the Libyans invaded Egypt, she became Sai's main goddess. Later she was pushed into the underworld and was there, together with Isis , Nephthys and Selket, one of the four protective goddesses of the dead. She protected the son of Horus Duamutef .
rite
The service mainly consisted of priestesses dancing in front of the portrait of Neith.
astronomy
The Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini believed to have discovered a moon on the planet Venus in 1672 and gave it the name Neith . Belief in a moon of Venus was widespread until 1892, before it was discovered that apparently stars had been mistaken for a moon.
See also
literature
- Hans Bonnet : Neith. In: Lexicon of Egyptian Religious History. Nikol, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-937872-08-6 , pp. 512-517.
- Wolfgang Helck / Eberhard Otto : Neith. In: Small Lexicon of Egyptology. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-447-04027-0 , p. 200.
- Joe J. Heydecker : The Sisters of Venus. The woman in myths and religions. Nymphenburger, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-485-00643-2 .
- Kurt Sethe : The name of the goddess Neith . In: Adolf Erman , Georg Steindorff (Hrsg.): Journal for Egyptian language and antiquity . Forty-third volume. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1906, p. 144–147 ( digitized [accessed April 12, 2016]).
- Richard H. Wilkinson : The world of the gods in ancient Egypt. Faith - Power - Mythology. Theiss, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-8062-1819-6 , pp. 156-159.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Neith at isis.li ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ nemo.nu June 7, 2006
- ^ Hypothetical Planets