Library of Ashurbanipal · MELEK

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Neith

Neith (Egyptian nt) is one of the earliest attested Egyptian deities — a goddess of weaving, of warfare (her emblem is crossed bows), and of creation, called the Great Mother and named as mother of Ra. Her cult city is Saïs in the western Delta. She is possibly of Libyan origin.

In the Botanica venue map she is patron of the Scriptorium — Byblos, weaving as knowledge, the origin of writing.

Neith is Athena — and this is attested, not proposed

Two independent Greek witnesses make the identification directly. This matters because most deity equations in popular literature are modern conjecture; this one is ancient testimony.

Plato, Timaeus 21e (Bury):

: "The chief city in this district is Saïs… the founder of which, they say, is a goddess whose Egyptian name is Neith, and in Greek, as they assert, Athena."

Herodotus II.59 (Macaulay), listing the six great Egyptian festivals and their Greek equivalents:

: "…thirdly, they have a solemn assembly at the city of Saïs for Athene, fourthly at Heliopolis for the Sun (Helios), fifthly at the city of Buto in honour of Leto, and sixthly at the city of Papremis for Ares."

And Herodotus II.170, on the same temple:

: "Also at Saïs there is the burial-place of him whom I account it not pious to name in connexion with such a matter, which is in the temple of Athene behind the house of the goddess."

That II.59 passage is worth reading as a whole, because it is a complete interpretatio graeca table from a primary source: Bubastis → Artemis · Busiris → Isis (whom he glosses as Demeter) · Saïs → Athene · Heliopolis → Helios · Buto → Leto · Papremis → Ares.

Saïs, Solon, and Atlantis

The Timaeus passage above is the same passage that introduces Solon to the priests of Saïs — and the priest Sonchis of Saïs is the source of the Atlantis account. Plato has the Egyptians claim Athens as a kindred city and the goddess as founder of both.

This is a single testimony doing two jobs, and it cuts both ways: Neith-as-Athena and Athens-as-a-colony-of-Saïs are not two claims but one, from one witness at one temple. Anyone treating the goddess identification as evidence while treating the Atlantis account as legend is dividing a sentence that the source does not divide.

Neith as arbitrator

In The Contendings of Horus and Seth (Papyrus Chester Beatty I, Ramesside), the Ennead deadlocks after eighty years. Banebdjedet declines to judge and advises writing to Neith; Thoth drafts the letter. Neith rules that the office goes to Horus, and that Seth be compensated with Anat and Astarte — two Canaanite goddesses — or the sky will fall. The Ennead accepts.

So Neith functions as the external authority whose written judgment settles a sovereignty dispute, and whose settlement transfers foreign goddesses to the god of the desert. If you want a "treaty goddess," this is the case — not the Egyptian–Hittite treaty at Kadesh, where Neith does not appear in the divine-witness list.

Weaving and writing

Neith's weaving is not decorative. The link between weaving and knowledge is why the Scriptorium venue takes her: a woven thing is an ordered thing made from threads, which is the same figure the alphabet material uses when it treats letters as a set of tokens ordered into meaning. Her Indic counterpart in the venue map is Saraswati, goddess of speech and learning.

Where this lives

Neith is patron of the Scriptorium in the Botanica venue map — weaving as knowledge, the origin

of writing. The working equivalent is this library itself:

See also: Tanit · Melqart · Solar Theory and Euhemerism · Khepri · Kyphi