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Neith is generally regarded as the quintessential war-goddess and huntress deity of the Egyptians since the ancient predynastic period. However, she is a far more complex goddess than is generally known, and of whom ancient texts only hint of her true nature. In her usual representations, she is portrayed as a fierce deity, a human female wearing the Red Crown, occasionally holding or using the bow and arrow, in others a harpoon.

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Nit (Net, Neit, Neith) was the predynastic goddess of war and weaving, the goddess of the Red Crown of Lower Egypt and the patron goddess of Zau (Sau, Sai, Sais) in the Delta. In later times she was also thought to have been an androgynous demiurge - a creation deity - who had both male and female attributes. The Egyptians believed her to be an ancient and wise goddess, to whom the other gods came if they could not resolve their own disputes.

"In summary, Neith should be seen as an example of the entire Egyptian theological and cosmogonical systems personified in one deity. As one of the oldest deities of the Egyptians, the full range of her attributes and meaning in Egyptian religion has only begun to be fully explored. She encompasses the creative powers of the "first time," the period of creation that was the goal of the Egyptian culture in its daily ethical and religious life to cultivate and maintain. That her act of creation becomes many deities which make up the Egyptian pantheon, emerging from Atum, reflects Hornung’s theory in which all divinity comes from Unity (via the Potential and the Act), making Neith a deity of the First Principle"

"A protectress of Osiris, the pharaoh and the dead, she guarded the coffin and one of the canopic jars along with a son of Horus. She wove the linen bandages for the dead, protecting the body from decomposition. Linked to royalty since the 1st Dynasty, she was a guardian of the Red Crown of Lower Egypt itself. She used her arrows to put evil spirits to sleep, and thus was a goddess of the chase and of warfare. She was thought to be the water from which Ra was born, becoming the mother of Ra and thus of the gods themselves. Eventually she became the creatrix, the great creator, who was neither male nor female, but a combination of both. Despite the attempt at Iunyt to give her northern origins, where she was the wife of Khnum, she was a goddess of the delta and of Upper Egypt itself. She was 'Everything that has been, that which is, and everything that will be', the female creator god of Egypt."
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