Goddesses of Ancient Egypt ~ N

Neb-Ti
The ruling goddesses of the north (Uadgit) and south (Nekhebet, the protector of childbirth).

Neith
(Net, Neit) Ancient Egyptian Warrior Goddess who was also skilled in domestic arts. It was She who wove the world on Her loom. The oldest of Egyptian Deities, Acacia is Her sacred tree.
Neith was a goddess of the hunt. She may have also been a war goddess. Her worship dates from pre dynastic history. In early times she was called 'mother of the gods' and 'Great Goddess'. She was considered the guardian of men and gods.
Later, Neith was seen as a protector of the dead. She is often seen standing with Nephthys at the head of coffins, or assisting Isis, Nephthys, and Serqet to guard the Canopic jars. As 'Opener of the Ways', she was a guide in the underworld, a female Anubis. In the Eighteenth Dynasty she took on the attributes of Hathor, as a protector of women. As a creative deity she was said to be the wife of Khnum at Elephantine. She was appealed to for her wisdom as an arbitrator during the great quarrel of Horus and Seth.
Neith assumed the role of state deity during the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, when the kings of Sais repeled the invading Assyrians and reunited Egypt. This period lasted for about a century and a half and the tendency in art and religion was to try to regain the glories of the past. This was a suitable time for the worship of an ancient goddess.
Neith was pictured as a woman wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt, holding a bow and crossed arrows. Her cult sign was a shield and crossed arrows. Occasionally she was represented as the great cow, mother of Ra.
Her relations varied with time period: Mother of Sobek, Isis, Horus and Osiris, or mother of Ra. The pharaoh Nectanebo II of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty claimed her as his Mother. Wife of Khnum.
A very ancient goddess of war, she was worshiped in the Delta; revered as a goddess of wisdom, identified with Athena by the Greeks; in later traditions, the sister of Isis, Nephthys, and Selket, and protectress of Duamutef, the god of the stomach of the deceased.
A primordial Goddess, self-created and self-creating; in some tales She is the Tracer of the Nile's course and the foundress of the city of Sais, established when She brought the Nile to the sea. She has many functions in addition; one of the most prevalent is that of Patroness of the Loom, and of spinning.

Nekhebet
Protectress of women in childbirth, this Egyptian Vulture Goddess suckled the royal children and the Pharaoh. She is the protectress of ancient Upper Egypt, a goddess of Death & Rebirth. Egypt's oldest oracle was the shrine of Nekhebet. The Egyptian word for Mother was the sign of the vulture.
Tutelary Goddess of Upper Egypt, regarded as a protectress and ministrant to childbirth.

Nephthys
(Neb-hut, Nebthet, Nebet-het, Nebt-het) Patron of: the dead, funerals, the house, and women. Depicted as a woman with the symbols for "basket" and "house" on her head.
Nephthys is the sister of Osiris and Isis and the wife of Set. She is a very ancient goddess, first found in Old Kingdom writings. She is often depicted riding in the funeral boat accompanying the dead into the Blessed Land. She is not exactly the personification of death, but she is the closest thing to it in Egyptian belief.
Though she was the wife of Set, she did not support him in his bid for power in the Osiris Legend. In fact, she does the opposite, aiding her sister Isis in finding the pieces of Osiris' body. She is believed to be the mother of Anubis, and thus stands at the head of an entire family of funerary deities.
She is also revered as the head of the household of the gods, and her protection is given to the head woman of any house. In fact her name is given as a title to such women (literally translated it means "head of the house"). She also stands at the head of the bed to comfort women in childbirth while the dwarven god Bes dances.
Worshipped widely throughout all of Egypt, though she had no formal temple or cult.
Among her titles, Nephthys was known as: Lady of the Body (of the Gods), Dweller within Senu, Lady of Heaven, Mistress of the Gods, Great Goddess, Lady of Life, Sister of Isis, Mistress of the House...
Nephthys is one of the Egyptian goddesses who seems to have been ignored or pushed into the background. She didn't become a major cult figure, like her sister Isis, but one must remember that Nephthys, too, was a sibling of the most famous gods of ancient Egypt - Isis and Osiris. She was also the sister-wife of the god Set, the god of storms and the desert, and aunt to the god Horus. Her Egyptian name means "Mistress of the House". By the word "house" we must understand that portion of the sky which was supposed to form the abode of the Sun-god Horus; in fact "het" in the name of Nebt-het is used in exactly the same sense as "het" in the name "Het-Hert," or Hathor, i.e., the "House of Horus."
Despite being the wife of Set, she was seen as a loyal sister to her other siblings, helping Isis to gather Osiris' scattered limbs (after Set cut him into pieces), and helped her revive the dead god. She thus became associated with the dead, becoming a friend of the deceased. She offered guidance to the newly dead, and comfort to the family of the one who died.
She was depicted as a woman with the hieroglyphs of her name (a basket and a house on top of each other) on her head, though she was also sometimes given wings or the form of a bird (the kite), making her a solar deity, as well as a deity of the dead. In the later period, she became the mother of Anubis (the god of the dead) through Osiris. As comforter, she stood at the birth-bed to offer comfort and help with the birth of new born children - Isis was seen as the midwife. The two sisters were often together, only being able to be told apart by the hieroglyph on their heads. Also, like her sister, she was thought to have great magical powers - she was the Mighty One of Words of Power.
Yet, originally, where Isis was visible, birth, growth, development and vigour, Nephthys was invisible, death, decay, diminution and immobility. She was the darkness to Isis' light. Isis was the day, her twin sister the night.
The goddesses were personified by two priestesses who were virgins and who were ceremonially pure; the hair of their limbs was to be shaved off, they were to wear ram's wool garlands upon their heads, and to hold tambourines in their hands; on the arm of one of them was to be a fillet inscribed "To Isis," and on the arm of the other was to be a fillet inscribed "To Nephthys." On five days during the month of December these women took their places in the temple of Abydos and, assisted by the Kher Heb, or precentor, they sang a series of groups of verses to the god. Nepthys is closely aligned with Isis as her dark twin. She is also the wife of Set, & mother of Anubis. Nepthys is the bringer of dreams, & associated with the outer edges of territory, night & the unknown. Nepthys personifies the Yin force of an Isis/Nepthys duality. She possesses tremendous magick powers like her sister Isis, whom she helped to find the scattered parts of her brother Osiris' body. She can be called during the practices of invocational magick, the assumption of god forms, & the devotional practices described in the A.'. A.' document 'Liber Astarte vel Berylli'.
She was the female counterpart of Seth. Isis, Osiris, Seth, Nepthys and Horus the Elder were the five siblings of Nut the sky goddess and Geb the earth god. They were brothers and sisters but the relationship between Isis and Osiris was one of pure love, the divine essence of love that existed even before their birth. There was no love between Seth and Nepthys. She did not follow the evil ways of her husband and upon the murder of Osiris, mourned with her sister Isis and helped her search for his body.
Nephthys conceived no children with her husband Seth. Her son, Anubis was conceived from a union with Osiris. It is said that she tricked Osiris into this union by making him drunk, or by disguising herself as Isis. Fearing Seth's anger, Nephthys hides the infant in the Delta marshes shortly after his birth. Seth murders Osiris and Nephthys flees in fear. She finds her sister, Isis, and helps in the search for Osiris' body. Nephthys tells her sister about the infant. During the search for Osiris, Isis finds Anubis and adopts him. After finding the body of Osiris, she helps Isis embalm him. The two sisters turn into birds and fly about mourning over the dead body. She is often rendered on the head of coffins, as Isis is rendered at the foot, with long wings spread to protect the deceased.
Sometimes depicted as a kite guarding funeral bier of Osiris.
She abandoned Set when he killed Osiris, and assisted Isis in the care of Horus and the resurrection of Osiris. She was, along with her sister, considered the special protectress of the dead, and she was the guardian of Hapi, the protector of the lungs of the deceased.
She is given the title "Friend of the Dead" and is seen as a personification of darkness (in a non-evil sense) as Isis is a goddess of light. Her primary function is that of mortuary protectress, in which role She serves as guide to the spirits of deceased Pharoahs.

Nut
(Nuit) Ancient Egyptian Sky Goddess with Her body arched over the world forming the vault of the heavens, protecting the Earth beneath. Often represented as a woman with elongated body, touching the Earth with only toes and fingertips, while her star-spangled belly forms the arch of the heavens. Mother Goddess personifying the Night Sky. Patron of: the sky, the firmament.
Depicted as a naked woman painted with stars bending over the world, her hands and feet touching the four cardinal points. She is often shown being held up by Shu and standing over her husband-brother Geb.
Nut is the incredibly ancient sky-goddess. She is the daughter of Shu and Tefnut and the mother of Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Nut protects the world from the darkness outside it and all the demonic creatures that dwell in that darkness. The sun god (Ra, Khephri, others depending on the myth) would travel along her body each day and at night enter the entrance to the underworld near her fingers.
To the ancient Egyptians Nut was the personification of the sky (originally she was a goddess of just the sky at day, where the clouds formed) and the heavens. She was believed to be the daughter of the gods Shu and Tefnut, the granddaughter of the sun god Ra. Her husband was also her brother, Geb. She was thought to be the mother of five children on the five extra days of the Egyptian calendar, won by Thoth - Osiris who was born on the first day, Horus the Elder on the second, Set on the third, Isis on the fourth, and Nephthys the last born on the fifth day. The days on which these deities were born were known as the 'five epagomenal days of the year', and they were celebrated all over Egypt:
1. Osiris - an unlucky day
2. Horus the Elder - neither lucky nor unlucky
3. Seth - an unlucky day
4. Isis - a lucky day, "A Beautiful Festival of Heaven and Earth."
5. Nephthys - an unlucky day
She was shown in Egyptian artwork as a dark, star-covered naked woman, holding her body up in an arch, facing downwards. Her arms and legs were imagined to be the pillars of the sky, and hands and feet were thought to touch the four cardinal points at the horizon. Far underneath her lay the earth god, Geb, sometimes ithphallyic, looking up at his sister-wife. She was also described as a cow goddess, taking on some of the attributes of Hathor. Geb was described as the "Bull of Nut" in the Pyramid Texts. As a great, solar cow, she was thought to have carried Ra up into the heavens on her back, after he retired from his rule on the earth. At other times, she was just portrait as a woman wearing her sign - the particular design of an Egyptian pot on her head. In one myth Nut gives birth to the Sun-god daily and he passes over her body until he reaches her mouth at sunset. He then passed into her mouth and through her body and is reborn the next morning. Another myth described the sun as sailing up her legs and back in the Atet (Matet) boat until noon, when he entered the Sektet boat and continued his travels until sunset. As a goddess who gave birth to the son each day, she became connected with the underworld, resurrection and the tomb. She was seen as a friend to the dead, as a mother-like protector to those who journeyed through the land of the dead. She was often painted on the inside lid of the sarcophagus, protecting the dead until he or she, like Ra, could be reborn in their new life. In the Book of the Dead, Nut was seen as a mother-figure to the sun god.
Ancient Egyptian Goddess of the Cosmos, she was also known as "she who bore the gods". Nut was the eternally permanent sky arched over the earth, with her children, the sun, moon and stars, moving through her. It was she who poured the nourishing rain down from the heavens with her water jar and she who offered water and food to the souls of the departed. Her image was often pictured inside the tops and bottoms of coffins so that the dead could be embraced by her for eternity. She can be seen in a ceiling relief in the Temple of Hathor, Denderah, Egypt, 1st-4th century CE.
In some cases she took the form of a great cow who's eyes represented the sun and the moon.
Nut was also a goddess of the dead, and the pharaoh was said to enter her body after death, from which he would later be resurrected. Her principal sanctuary was at Heliopolis.