CHAP. XIII. EILETIIYIA. 41 



possibly be Buto ; and future discoveries will no 

 doubt enable us to settle this question, and decide 

 respecting the reading of her name. 



ElLETHYIA, IlITHIA, IlITHYIA, SoVEN ?, SeBN ?. 



Though there is reason to believe that Netpe * 

 held an important station as the protectress of 

 mothers, the fact of the Goddess before us pre- 

 siding over the city of Eilethyas, and her attend- 

 ance upon Isis while nursing Horus, assert her 

 claim to the name of Lucina. t It also seems in 

 some degree confirmed by her emblem, a vulture t, 

 the hieroglyph ical representative of a *' mother** 

 Though the monuments show her to have per- 

 formed the duties of liUcina, she is more usually 

 the protectress of the Kings ; and she does not ap- 

 pear, like the Greek Lucina, to be connected with 

 the Moon, or with Bubastis the Egyptian Diana. 

 At Eilethyas, she was worshipped under the name 

 of Seneb or Soven ; and there, as in other places, 

 she had the office of Lucina. Netpe, as already 

 stated, had also a claim to that character, being 

 the "protectress of childbirth, and of nurses;" 

 and the monster Goddess Typho (who appears to 

 represent childbearing or gestation), Isis, and even 



* Vide supra, Vol. I. (2d Series) p. 314. 

 f Hor. Carm. Sec. 13. — 



" Rite matures aperire partus, 

 Lenis Ilithyia, tuere matres ; 

 Sive tu Lucina probas vocari, 

 Seu Genitalis." , 

 J Has HorapoUo in view Eilethyia or Juno-Lucina, when he says 

 Juno and Minerva are both represented by a vulture ? (i. 11.) 



