Nephthys was typically paired with her sister Isis in funerary rites[2] because of their role as protectors of the mummy, with her brother Osiris, and as the sister-wife of Set.

[11] Nephthys was typically paired with her sister Isis in funerary rites[2] because of their role as protectors of the mummy and the god Osiris and as the sister-wife of Set.

Nephthys's association with the kite or the Egyptian hawk (and its piercing, mournful cries) evidently reminded the ancients of the lamentations usually offered for the dead by wailing women.

According to the Pyramid Texts, Nephthys, along with Isis, was a force before whom demons trembled in fear and whose magical spells were necessary for navigating the various levels of Duat, as the region of the afterlife was termed.

Levai notes that while Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride mentions the deities' marriage, there is very little specifically linking Nephthys and Set in the original early Egyptian sources.

After consuming the Eye of Horus and becoming intoxicated by it, Set attempts to anally penetrate Nephthys before being discovered by the gods and accused of murdering Osiris.

Rather than responding to the accusations made by Isis or Thoth, Set instead laments that the gods have separated him from Nephthys, whom he refers to as the "female donkey," just as he had grabbed her by the tail and was about to penetrate her—insisting that she rightfully belonged to him as his wife.

Nephthys was attested as one of the four "Great Chiefs" ruling in the Osirian cult center of Busiris in the Delta[17] and she appears to have occupied an honorary position at the holy city of Abydos.

[18] These "Festival Songs of Isis and Nephthys" were ritual elements of many such Osirian rites in major ancient Egyptian cult centers.

In the city of Memphis, Nephthys was duly honored with the title "Queen of the Embalmer's Shop" and there associated with the jackal-headed god Anubis as patron.

An ancient Egyptian myth preserved in the Papyrus Westcar recounts the story of Isis, Nephthys, Meskhenet, and Heqet as traveling dancers in disguise, assisting the wife of a priest of Amun-Re as she prepares to bring forth sons who are destined for fame and fortune.

Nephthys's healing skills and status as direct counterpart of Isis, steeped, as her sister in "words of power", are evidenced by the abundance of faience amulets carved in her likeness and by her presence in a variety of magical papyri that sought to summon her famously altruistic qualities to the aid of mortals.

Here, as Papyrus Wilbour notes in its wealth of taxation records and land assessments, the temple of Nephthys was a specific foundation by Ramesses II, located in close proximity to (or within) the precinct of the enclosure of Set.

To be certain, the House of Nephthys was one of fifty individual, land-owning temples delineated for this portion of the Middle Egyptian district in Papyrus Wilbour.

After making an introductory appeal to "Re-Horakhte, Set, and Nephthys" for the ultimate resolution of this issue by the royal Vizier, the prophet (named Pra'emhab) laments his workload.

The basalt image originally was stationed at Medinet-Habu as part of the cultic celebration of the pharaonic "Sed-Festival", but was transferred at some point to Herakleopolis and the temple of Herishef.

Therefore, it should not be surprising that her cult images could likely be found as part of the divine entourage in temples at Kharga, Kellis, Deir el-Hagar, Koptos, Dendera, Philae, Sebennytos, Busiris, Shenhur, El Qa'la, Letopolis, Heliopolis, Abydos, Thebes, Dakleh Oasis, and indeed throughout Egypt.