Nephthys was the Egyptian goddess of death, mourning, the night and the protection of the dead — the sister of Isis and Osiris, the wife of Set, and the loyal companion who, despite her marriage to the murderer, helped Isis gather and mourn the slain Osiris. A goddess of the threshold between life and death, she is the great mourner and protectress of the deceased.
The Sister-Goddess
Nephthys (Egyptian Nebet-Het, “Lady of the House” or “Mistress of the Temple”) was a daughter of the earth-god Geb and sky-goddess Nut, one of the four children born to them — sister to Osiris, Isis and Set. She was the wife of Set, the god of chaos, but in character she was utterly unlike her violent husband: she was a goddess of quiet, of the night, of mourning and of the protection of the dead. She and Isis were the great sister-pair, almost always linked, the two goddesses who together watched over the dead and the rites of mourning.
The Mourner of Osiris
Despite being married to Set, the murderer of Osiris, Nephthys's loyalty lay with her slain brother and her sister Isis. When Osiris was murdered, it was Nephthys who joined Isis in searching all Egypt for the scattered pieces of his body, and the two sisters together mourned him with such grief that their lamentation became the model for all Egyptian funeral mourning. The image of Isis and Nephthys, the two kites (birds of prey), keening at the head and foot of the bier, watching and protecting the body of Osiris, became one of the central images of Egyptian death-ritual. Some traditions even held that Nephthys, longing for a child, had deceived Osiris into fathering Anubis with her, and that she then protected and helped raise the jackal-god of embalming.
The Protectress of the Dead
Nephthys became one of the great protective goddesses of the dead. With Isis, she watched over the deceased and the mummy, and the two sisters were depicted with their protective wings spread over the dead, guarding them on their journey through the underworld. Nephthys was especially associated with the head of the coffin and with one of the four sons of Horus who protected the organs of the dead. As a goddess of the threshold — of night, of death, of the edges of things — she was a guardian at the dangerous boundary between the living world and the realm of the dead, helping the deceased pass safely into the afterlife of Osiris.
The Lady of Mourning
Nephthys endures as the great mourning-goddess and protectress of the dead in ancient Egypt — the loyal sister who, though wed to the murderer Set, stood with Isis and Osiris; the keening mourner whose grief became the pattern of funeral lament; the winged guardian of the deceased. She embodies the Egyptian reverence for proper mourning and the protection of the dead, and the tender truth that even at the threshold of death and amid the chaos of her husband Set, there stood a faithful goddess of compassion, watching over the dead and weeping for the slain.
Married to the murderer but loyal to the slain, she keened with her sister over Osiris's body — the great mourner whose grief became the very pattern of how Egypt wept for its dead.