Pagan Book Reviews

Nebt-het: Lady of the House
Tamara L. Siuda
lulu.com, 2010
36 pages

Reviewed by Ser

In the book’s preface, we learn that Nebt-het: Lady of the House started life as a “formal academic paper” for the author’s master’s degree. While Amazon lists the book as containing 36 pages, in actuality the “meat” of this book is only 9 1/2 pages. It reads just like a paper, too: rather dryly.

The preface to the 2010 edition is a spiritual dedication to Nebt-het herself, so I expected the rest of the book to follow suit. It does not. After the 9 1/2 pages of the paper, there is an additional 9 pages of references or “Notes”, another 3 pages of “Bibliography and Works Cited”, and 6 1/2 pages of alternative names and associations of Nebt-het. $12 is a lot to pay for 9 1/2 pages of someone’s school paper, a lot of which (though not all) contains information that I could find online after a few minutes of Googling. Whether this is because of the book or in spite of it, I can’t tell. (It does make me consider publishing my own school papers to earn a few bucks.)

There is a line stating something was discussed earlier, “on page 5”. When turning back to refresh myself of the subject, page 5 turned out to be the preface to the 2004 edition. I had to count individual pages of the paper itself to find the location being referred to. A small revision is needed to clarify this point to save the reader time and possible confusion.

That said, it is nice to have the scant information on Nebt-het in one place, as well as a listing of the many epithets of the goddess. I don’t doubt this information would be useful to anyone interested in learning more about Nebt-het and how she ties into Ancient Egyptian theology. As this paper is no longer for school purposes, I feel that there should really be more of the second preface’s contents included – the personal experiences and feelings that can give the goddess personality. I expected to learn of Nebt-het through the author’s point of view; this may be because I was reading Siuda’s “The Ancient Egyptian Prayerbook” simultaneously, which does include some of her personal experiences. I believe this book itself would be better served on the internet as a beginner’s reference (perhaps on kemet.org, which I believe is owned by the author?), or as the first chapter in a book on Nebt-het, followed by stories of current worship and encounters.

Three pawprints out of five.

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