{
  "id": "nephthys",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Nephthys",
  "summary": "Youngest of the five children of Nut and Geb, wife of Typhon (Set) and mother of Anubis by Osiris, who mistook her for Isis; with Isis she is the second of the two mourning sisters whose Lamentations were sung at the Osiris festival. Plutarch glosses her name as \"Finality\" and reads her as the barren land at the edge of the Nile flood.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "egyptian",
    "deities",
    "goddesses",
    "mourning",
    "funerary-gods"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "child_of",
      "target": "geb"
    },
    {
      "rel": "child_of",
      "target": "nut"
    },
    {
      "rel": "sibling_of",
      "target": "isis"
    },
    {
      "rel": "sibling_of",
      "target": "osiris"
    },
    {
      "rel": "sibling_of",
      "target": "set"
    },
    {
      "rel": "consort_of",
      "target": "set"
    },
    {
      "rel": "parent_of",
      "target": "anubis"
    },
    {
      "rel": "member_of",
      "target": "ennead"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "on-isis-and-osiris"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Who is Nephthys?",
    "Who is the husband of Nephthys?",
    "Is Nephthys the mother of Anubis?",
    "What does the name Nephthys mean according to Plutarch?",
    "What are the Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys?",
    "Who are the parents of Nephthys?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Nephthys was born on the fifth intercalated day, and to her \"they give the name of Finality and the name of Aphrodite, and some also the name of Victory\"; one tradition makes \"Typhon and Nephthys\" children of Cronus, and \"Nephthys became the wife of Typhon\" (Plut. Is. 12).",
      "sources": [
        "plutarch-isis-osiris"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.93
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "Osiris \"in his love had consorted with her sister through ignorance, in the belief that she was Isis\", as \"the garland of melilote which he had left with Nephthys\" proved; she exposed the child \"because of her fear of Typhon\", and it became Anubis (Plut. Is. 14). \"Isis gave birth to Horus in lawful wedlock, but Nephthys bore Anubis clandestinely\", and the king-lists say she was at first barren after her marriage to Typhon (Plut. Is. 38).",
      "sources": [
        "plutarch-isis-osiris"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.92
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The interpreters make her \"the outmost parts of the land beside the mountains and bordering on the sea\", so that the Nile reaching them is \"the union of Osiris with Nephthys\" (Plut. Is. 38); she is \"that which is beneath the Earth and invisible\" against the visible Isis (Plut. Is. 44); on the sistrum the faces of Isis and Nephthys \"symbolize birth and death\" (Plut. Is. 63).",
      "sources": [
        "plutarch-isis-osiris"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys were recited by \"two 'fair women,' who personified Isis and Nephthys\", each with the goddess's name on her shoulder; Nephthys sings \"O Beautiful Prince, come to thy house ... Thy two Sisters are nigh unto thee; they guard thy bier ... I am thy sister Nephthys who loveth thee ... I act as the protectress of thy members for ever and ever\" (Budge Lit. ch. V).",
      "sources": [
        "budge-literature-ancient-egyptians"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.92
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "On the Metternich Stele, when Isis finds Horus dead of a sting, \"the goddess Nephthys, her sister, arrived, and she too lamented\", with the scorpion-goddess Serqet, and \"Nephthys at once advised Isis to cry out for help to Ra, for, said she, it is wholly impossible for the Boat of Ra to travel across the sky whilst Horus is lying dead\" (Budge Lit. ch. VII, Wanderings of Isis).",
      "sources": [
        "budge-literature-ancient-egyptians"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "Budge's Egyptian sources agree on her parents and her husband and differ from Plutarch on Anubis's father: \"Isis and Nephthys were the daughters of Keb and Nut\", Nephthys the mother of Anubis (Budge Lit. ch. III), the five gods being \"Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys. Osiris married Isis ... Set married Nephthys, but their son Anpu, or Anubis, is not mentioned\" (Budge Lit. ch. VI); a Ptolemaic stele calls her \"Nephthys, the divine sister of Horus\" (Budge Lit. ch. IX).",
      "sources": [
        "budge-literature-ancient-egyptians"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.88
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [
    "Wife of Set in every witness; mother of Anubis in every witness; the father of Anubis is Osiris in Plutarch and Set in the Egyptian text.",
    "Her ritual role — second mourner at the bier — is preserved verbatim in the Lamentations Budge translates.",
    "Plutarch's \"Finality\" is his gloss of her name and the key to his allegory of her as the edge of the flooded land."
  ],
  "faqs": [
    {
      "q": "Who is the husband of Nephthys?",
      "claim": "c1"
    },
    {
      "q": "Is Nephthys the mother of Anubis?",
      "claim": "c2"
    },
    {
      "q": "What does the name Nephthys mean according to Plutarch?",
      "claim": "c1"
    },
    {
      "q": "What are the Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys?",
      "claim": "c4"
    },
    {
      "q": "Who are the parents of Nephthys?",
      "claim": "c6"
    }
  ],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "theoretical",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Pages reduce her to \"sister of Isis\". This object gives her own lines in the Lamentations, her counsel on the Metternich Stele, Plutarch's gloss of her name, and the one genealogical disagreement, each with its reference.",
  "confidence": 0.9,
  "last_verified": "2026-09-03",
  "media": [],
  "x": {
    "myth": {
      "pantheon": "egyptian",
      "kind": "deity",
      "group": "ennead",
      "domains": [
        "mourning",
        "the edge of the fertile land",
        "protection of the dead"
      ],
      "symbols": [
        "sistrum face",
        "mourning woman"
      ],
      "wikidata": "Q169040"
    }
  },
  "canonical_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/nephthys",
  "api_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/api/k/nephthys.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Nephthys",
    "description": "Youngest of the five children of Nut and Geb, wife of Typhon (Set) and mother of Anubis by Osiris, who mistook her for Isis; with Isis she is the second of the two mourning sisters whose Lamentations were sung at the Osiris festival. Plutarch glosses her name as \"Finality\" and reads her as the barren land at the edge of the Nile flood.",
    "url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/nephthys",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-09-03",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride) — tr. William Baxter, rev. W. W. Goodwin (1874), Perseus TEI edition",
        "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0007/tlg089/tlg0007.tlg089.perseus-eng3.xml"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "E. A. Wallis Budge, The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians (1914), Project Gutenberg #15932 via GITenberg",
        "url": "https://github.com/GITenberg/The-Literature-of-the-Ancient-Egyptians_15932/blob/master/15932.txt"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Nephthys"
  }
}