A name and a job. Nothing else survives — and that is the finding, not a gap in our work. Arrives with the Book of the Dead.
Nebt-usha
the Hour that guides the sun through the Eighth Division
Overview
She is an hour. Not a goddess who governs an hour — the Egyptians named the hours of the night and made each one a guide, and this is the name of the eighth.
Every division of the Am-Tuat closes with the same three-part formula: the name of the gate, the name of the city, and the name of the hour. For the Eighth:
The name of the gate of this City is Aha-an-urt-nef. The name of this City is Tebat-neteru-s. The name of the Hour of the night which guideth this great god is Nebt-usha. [budge-1905]
That is her whole record, and it is more precise than most of this corpus's ○ name-only entries: she has a number, a city, a gate, and a job.
The formula, and the four other hours it names
The same sentence recurs division by division, and the archive preserves five of the twelve:
| Division | The Hour's name | The City |
|---|---|---|
| Seventh | Kheftes-nau-hesqet-[neha]-hra | Thephet-Sheta |
| Eighth | Nebt-usha | Tebat-neteru-s |
| Ninth | Tuatet-maketet-en-neb-s | Best-aru-ankhet-kheperu |
| Tenth | Tentenit-uheset-khak-abu | Metet-qa-utchebu |
| Eleventh | Sebit-nebt-uaa-khesfet-seba-em-pert-f | Re-en-qerert-apt-khatu |
Look at the lengths. Four of the five are sentences — Sebit-nebt-uaa-khesfet-seba-em- pert-f is a clause about repelling the serpent-fiend at his coming forth. Nebt-usha is the short one, and short enough that a census could mistake it for an ordinary divine name and file it as a goddess without a note.
Which, in a sense, it is. The hours of the night are goddesses. But an entry that says only "a goddess" has lost the fact that she is a unit of time in a twelve-part system, and that is the whole of what the source says about her.
What the Eighth Division is
The passage that names her also describes what she is guiding him through: a division of Circles of hidden gods "who are on their sand," with the boat towed "by means of the magical powers of the serpent Mehen," and a promise attached —
Whosoever knoweth them by their names shall be the possessor of swathings upon earth, and he shall not be repulsed at the hidden gates, and he shall have offerings… [budge-1905]
Knowing the name is the mechanism again, exactly as at the Door of the Hall of Two Truths. Her name is one of the names worth knowing.
The record
Every claim above traces to a row here. Source, exact place in that source, and what it actually supports.
| Source | Locus | Attests |
|---|---|---|
[budge-1905] | *Book of Am-Tuat* I, Eighth Division, p. 162 | "The name of the **Hour of the night which guideth this great god is Nebt-usha**"; gate **Aha-an-urt-nef**; city **Tebat-neteru-s** |
[budge-1906] | *Egyptian Heaven and Hell* I | the same sentence in a second scan, spelling **Nebt-usha** identically |
[budge-1904] | *Gods of the Egyptians* II, index | listed among the gods of the Book of the Dead |
Sources
[budge-1905]— Budge, The Book of Am-Tuat (1905), vol. I. Public domain, archived.[budge-1906]— Budge, The Egyptian Heaven and Hell (1906), vol. I, alternative scan. Public domain, archived. Independently confirms the reading — the two scans agree letter for letter, which is not always true of Budge's OCR.[budge-1904]— Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (1904), vol. II. Public domain, archived.
Open questions
- Recover the other seven hour-names. Five of twelve survive the OCR in the passages searched. The remaining seven are in the same book, in the same formula, and finding them would complete one of the tidiest sets in Egyptian religion. This is the single most tractable set left (C362).
- Translate the names. Four of the five are clauses. Sebit-nebt-uaa-khesfet-seba-em-pert-f appears to be about repelling the fiend; Tentenit-uheset-khak-abu is unglossed. Budge transliterates and does not translate — a lexicon would turn a list of names into a description of the night.
- Do the twelve hour-names appear outside the Am-Tuat? The Book of Gates divides the night the same way. Check whether it uses the same names.
- Does usha mean "night"? If so the name is roughly "Lady of the night," which would make her the plainest-named of the twelve and explain why she alone reads as an ordinary goddess.
Cite this entry
Research grade: ○name-only — A name and a function in a spell list. That is all that survives.
"Nebt-usha", The Egyptian God Corpus,
graded name-only, retrieved 2026-08-10.