Isis
Isis | |||||||||
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tomb of Nefertari | |||||||||
Name in hieroglyphs | Egyptian: Ꜣūsat[1][2]
Meroitic: Wos[a] or Wusa[2][3]
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Major cult center | Four Sons of Horus, Bastet |
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Isis
In the first millennium BCE,
In the
The worship of Isis was ended by the rise of
In Egypt and Nubia
Name and origins
Whereas some
Many scholars have focused on Isis's name in trying to determine her origins. Her
Roles
The
Wife and mourner
Isis is part of the
Set kills Osiris and, in several versions of the story, dismembers his corpse. Isis and Nephthys, along with other deities such as
Isis's role in afterlife beliefs was based on that in the myth. She helped to restore the souls of deceased humans to wholeness as she had done for Osiris. Like other goddesses, such as Hathor, she also acted as a mother to the deceased, providing protection and nourishment.[27] Thus, like Hathor, she sometimes took the form of Imentet, the goddess of the west, who welcomed the deceased soul into the afterlife as her child.[28] But for much of Egyptian history, male deities such as Osiris were believed to provide the regenerative powers, including sexual potency, that were crucial for rebirth. Isis was thought to merely assist by stimulating this power.[27] Feminine divine powers became more important in afterlife beliefs in the late New Kingdom.[29] Various Ptolemaic funerary texts emphasize that Isis took the active role in Horus's conception by sexually stimulating her inert husband,[30] some tomb decoration from the Roman period in Egypt depicts Isis in a central role in the afterlife,[31] and a funerary text from that era suggests that women were thought able to join the retinue of Isis and Nephthys in the afterlife.[32]
Mother goddess
Isis is treated as the mother of Horus even in the earliest copies of the Pyramid Texts.[33] Yet there are signs that Hathor was originally regarded as his mother,[34] and other traditions make an elder form of Horus the son of Nut and a sibling of Isis and Osiris.[35] Isis may only have come to be Horus's mother as the Osiris myth took shape during the Old Kingdom,[34] but through her relationship with him she came to be seen as the epitome of maternal devotion.[36]
In the developed form of the myth, Isis gives birth to Horus, after a long pregnancy and a difficult labor, in the papyrus thickets of the Nile Delta. As her child grows she must protect him from Set and many other hazards—snakes, scorpions, and simple illness.[37] In some texts, Isis travels among humans and must seek their help. According to one such story, seven minor scorpion deities travel with and guard her. They take revenge on a wealthy woman who has refused to help Isis by stinging the woman's son, making it necessary for the goddess to heal the blameless child.[38] Isis's reputation as a compassionate deity, willing to relieve human suffering, contributed greatly to her appeal.[39]
Isis continues to assist her son when he challenges Set to claim the kingship that Set has usurped,[40] although mother and son are sometimes portrayed in conflict, as when Horus beheads Isis and she replaces her original head with that of a cow—an origin myth explaining the cow-horn headdress that Isis wears.[41]
Isis's maternal aspect extended to other deities as well. The
A story in the Westcar Papyrus from the Middle Kingdom includes Isis among a group of goddesses who serve as midwives during the delivery of three future kings.[50] She serves a similar role in New Kingdom texts that describe the divinely ordained births of reigning pharaohs.[51]
In the Westcar Papyrus, Isis calls out the names of the three children as they are born. Barbara S. Lesko sees this story as a sign that Isis had the power to predict or influence future events, as did other deities who presided over birth,[45] such as Shai and Renenutet.[52] Texts from much later times call Isis "mistress of life, ruler of fate and destiny"[45] and indicate she has control over Shai and Renenutet, just as other great deities such as Amun were said to do in earlier eras of Egyptian history. By governing these deities, Isis determined the length and quality of human lives.[52]
Goddess of kingship and protection of the kingdom
Horus was equated with each living pharaoh and Osiris with the pharaoh's deceased predecessors. Isis was therefore the mythological mother and wife of kings. In the Pyramid Texts her primary importance to the king was as one of the deities who protected and assisted him in the afterlife. Her prominence in royal ideology grew in the New Kingdom.[53] Temple reliefs from that time on show the king nursing at Isis's breast; her milk not only healed her child, but symbolized his divine right to rule.[54] Royal ideology increasingly emphasized the importance of queens as earthly counterparts of the goddesses who served as wives to the king and mothers to his heirs. Initially the most important of these goddesses was Hathor, whose attributes in art were incorporated into queens' crowns. But because of her own mythological links with queenship, Isis too was given the same titles and regalia as human queens.[55]
Isis's actions in protecting Osiris against Set became part of a larger, more warlike aspect of her character.
Goddess of magic and wisdom
Isis was also known for her
Many stories about Isis appear as
Sky goddess
Many of the roles Isis acquired gave her an important position in the sky.[62] Passages in the Pyramid Texts connect Isis closely with Sopdet, the goddess representing the star Sirius, whose relationship with her husband Sah—the constellation Orion—and their son Sopdu parallels Isis's relations with Osiris and Horus. Sirius's heliacal rising, just before the start of the Nile flood, gave Sopdet a close connection with the flood and the resulting growth of plants.[63] Partly because of her relationship with Sopdet, Isis was also linked with the flood,[64] which was sometimes equated with the tears she shed for Osiris.[65]
By Ptolemaic times she was connected with rain, which Egyptian texts call a "Nile in the sky"; with the sun as the protector of Ra's barque;[66] and with the moon, possibly because she was linked with the Greek lunar goddess Artemis by a shared connection with an Egyptian fertility goddess, Bastet.[67] In hymns inscribed at Philae she is called the "Lady of Heaven" whose dominion over the sky parallels Osiris's rule over the Duat and Horus's kingship on earth.[68]
Universal goddess
In Ptolemaic times Isis's sphere of influence could include the entire cosmos.[68] As the deity that protected Egypt and endorsed its king, she had power over all nations, and as the provider of rain, she enlivened the natural world.[69] The Philae hymn that initially calls her ruler of the sky goes on to expand her authority, so at its climax her dominion encompasses the sky, earth, and Duat. It says her power over nature nourishes humans, the blessed dead, and the gods.[68] Other, Greek-language hymns from Ptolemaic Egypt call her "the beautiful essence of all the gods".[70] In the course of Egyptian history, many deities, major and minor, had been described in similar grand terms. Amun was most commonly described this way in the New Kingdom, whereas in Roman Egypt such terms tended to be applied to Isis.[71] Such texts do not deny the existence of other deities but treat them as aspects of the supreme deity, a type of theology sometimes called "summodeism".[72][73]
In the Late, Ptolemaic, and Roman Periods, many temples contained a creation myth that adapted long-standing ideas about creation to give the primary roles to local deities.[74] At Philae, Isis is described as the creator in the same way that older texts speak of the work of the god Ptah,[68] who was said to have designed the world with his intellect and sculpted it into being.[75] Like him, Isis formed the cosmos "through what her heart conceived and her hands created".[68]
Like other deities throughout Egyptian history, Isis had many forms in her individual cult centers, and each cult center emphasized different aspects of her character. Local Isis cults focused on the distinctive traits of their deity more than on her universality, whereas some Egyptian hymns to Isis treat other goddesses in cult centers from across Egypt and the Mediterranean as manifestations of her. A text in her temple at
Iconography
In
Beginning in the New Kingdom, thanks to the close links between Isis and Hathor, Isis took on Hathor's attributes, such as a sistrum rattle and a headdress of cow horns enclosing a sun disk. Sometimes both headdresses were combined, so the throne glyph sat atop the sun disk.[77] In the same era, she began to wear the insignia of a human queen, such as a vulture-shaped crown on her head and the royal uraeus, or rearing cobra, on her brow.[55] In Ptolemaic and Roman times, statues and figurines of Isis often showed her in a Greek sculptural style, with attributes taken from Egyptian and Greek tradition.[80][81] Some of these images reflected her linkage with other goddesses in novel ways. Isis-Thermuthis, a combination of Isis and Renenutet who represented agricultural fertility, was depicted in this style as a woman with the lower body of a snake. Figurines of a woman wearing an elaborate headdress and exposing her genitals may represent Isis-Aphrodite.[82][Note 4]
The tyet symbol, a looped shape similar to the ankh, came to be seen as Isis's emblem at least as early as the New Kingdom, though it existed long before.[84] It was often made of red jasper and likened to Isis's blood. Used as a funerary amulet, it was said to confer her protection on the wearer.[85]
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An illustration of Isis based on a painting in the tomb of Seti I
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Isis with a combination of throne-glyph and cow horns, as well as a vulture headdress, Temple of Kalabsha, first century BCE or first century CE
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Winged Isis at the foot of the sarcophagus of Ramesses III, twelfth century BCE
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A relief of winged Isis from the Philae Temple
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Figurine of Isis-Thermuthis, second century CE
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Figurine possibly of Isis-Aphrodite, second or first century BCE
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A tyet amulet, fifteenth or fourteenth century BCE
Worship
Relationship with royalty
Despite her significance in the Osiris myth, Isis was originally a minor deity in the ideology surrounding the living king. She played only a small role, for instance, in the Dramatic Ramesseum Papyrus, the script for royal rituals performed in the reign of Senusret I in the Middle Kingdom.[86] Her importance grew during the New Kingdom,[87] when she was increasingly connected with Hathor and the human queen.[88]
The early first millennium BCE saw an increased emphasis on the family triad of Osiris, Isis, and Horus and an explosive growth in Isis's popularity. In the fourth century BCE, Nectanebo I of the Thirtieth Dynasty claimed Isis as his patron deity, tying her still more closely to political power.[89] The Kingdom of Kush, which ruled Nubia from the eighth century BCE to the fourth century CE, absorbed and adapted the Egyptian ideology surrounding kingship. It equated Isis with the kandake, the queen or queen mother of the Kushite king.[90]
The
Temples and festivals
Down to the end of the New Kingdom, Isis's cult was closely tied to those of male deities such as Osiris, Min, or Amun. She was commonly worshipped alongside them as their mother or consort, and she was especially widely worshipped as the mother of various local forms of Horus.[96] Nevertheless, she had independent priesthoods at some sites[97] and at least one temple of her own, at Osiris's cult center of Abydos, during the late New Kingdom.[98]
The earliest known major temples to Isis were the Iseion at
The most frequent temple rite for any deity was the daily offering ritual, in which priests clothed the deity's cult image and offered it food.[105] In Roman times, temples to Isis in Egypt could be built either in Egyptian style, in which the cult image was in a secluded sanctuary accessible only to priests, and in a Greco-Roman style in which devotees were allowed to see the cult image.[106] Greek and Egyptian culture were highly intermingled by this time, and there may have been no ethnic separation between Isis's worshippers.[107] The same people may have prayed to Isis outside Egyptian-style temples and in front of her statue inside Greek-style temples.[106]
Temples celebrated many festivals in the course of the year, some nationwide and some very local.
Festivals dedicated to Isis eventually developed. In Roman times, Egyptians across the country celebrated her birthday, the Amesysia, by carrying the local cult statue of Isis through their fields, probably celebrating her powers of fertility.[112] The priests at Philae held a festival every ten days when the cult statue of Isis visited the neighboring island of Bigeh, which was said to be Osiris's place of burial, and the priests performed funerary rites for him. The cult statue also visited the neighboring temples to the south, even during the last centuries of activity at Philae when those temples were run by Nubian peoples outside Roman rule.[113]
Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, including Egypt, during the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Egyptian temple cults died out, gradually and at various times, from a combination of lack of funds and Christian hostility.[114] Isis's temple at Philae, supported by its Nubian worshippers, still had an organized priesthood and regular festivals until at least the mid-fifth century CE, making it the last fully functioning temple in Egypt.[115][Note 5]
Funerary
In many spells in the Pyramid Texts, Isis and Nephthys help the deceased king reach the afterlife. In the Coffin Texts from the Middle Kingdom, Isis appears still more frequently, though in these texts Osiris is credited with reviving the dead more often than she is. New Kingdom sources such as the Book of the Dead describe Isis as protecting deceased souls as they face the dangers in the Duat. They also describe Isis as a member of the divine councils that judge souls' moral righteousness before admitting them into the afterlife, and she appears in vignettes standing beside Osiris as he presides over this tribunal.[117]
Isis and Nephthys took part in funeral ceremonies, where two wailing women, much like those in the festival at Abydos, mourned the deceased as the two goddesses mourned Osiris.[118] Isis was frequently shown or alluded to in funerary equipment: on sarcophagi and canopic chests as one of the four goddesses who protected the Four Sons of Horus, in tomb art offering her enlivening milk to the dead, and in the tyet amulets that were often placed on mummies to ensure that Isis's power would shield them from harm.[119] Late funerary texts prominently featured her mourning for Osiris, and one such text, one of the Books of Breathing, was said to have been written by her for Osiris's benefit.[120] In Nubian funerary religion, Isis was regarded as more significant than her husband, because she was the active partner while he only passively received the offerings she made to sustain him in the afterlife.[121]
Popular worship
Unlike many Egyptian deities, Isis was rarely addressed in prayers,[122] or invoked in personal names, before the end of the New Kingdom.[123] From the Late Period on, she became one of the deities most commonly mentioned in these sources, which often refer to her kindly character and her willingness to answer those who call upon her for help.[124] Hundreds of thousands of amulets and votive statues of Isis nursing Horus were made during the first millennium BCE,[125] and in Roman Egypt she was among the deities most commonly represented in household religious art, such as figurines and panel paintings.[126]
Isis was prominent in magical texts from the Middle Kingdom onward. The dangers Horus faces in childhood are a frequent theme in magical healing spells, in which Isis's efforts to heal him are extended to cure any patient. In many of these spells, Isis forces Ra to help Horus by declaring that she will stop the sun in its course through the sky unless her son is cured.[127] Other spells equated pregnant women with Isis to ensure that they would deliver their children successfully.[128]
Egyptian magic began to incorporate Christian concepts as Christianity was established in Egypt, but Egyptian and Greek deities continued to appear in spells long after their temple worship had ceased.[129] Spells that may date to the sixth, seventh, or eighth centuries CE invoke the name of Isis alongside Christian figures.[130]
In the Greco-Roman world
Spread
Cults based in a particular city or nation were the norm across the ancient world until the mid- to late first millennium BCE, when increased contact between different cultures allowed some cults to spread more widely. Greeks were aware of Egyptian deities, including Isis, at least as early as the
Spread by merchants and other Mediterranean travelers, the cults of Isis and Serapis were established in Greek port cities at the end of the fourth century BCE and expanded throughout Greece and Asia Minor during the third and second centuries. The Greek island of Delos was an early cult center for both deities, and its status as a trading center made it a springboard for the Egyptian cults to diffuse into Italy.[132] Isis and Serapis were also worshipped at scattered sites in the Seleucid Empire, the Hellenistic kingdom in the Middle East, as far east as Iran, though they disappeared from the region as the Seleucids lost their eastern territory to the Parthian Empire.[133]
Greeks regarded Egyptian religion as exotic and sometimes bizarre, yet full of ancient wisdom.[134] Like other cults from the eastern regions of the Mediterranean, the cult of Isis attracted Greeks and Romans by playing upon its exotic origins,[135] but the form it took after reaching Greece was heavily Hellenized.[136]
Isis's cult reached Italy and the Roman sphere of influence at some point in the second century BCE.
Egyptian cults faced further hostility during the
The cults also expanded into Rome's western
Roles
Isis's cult, like others in the Greco-Roman world, had no firm
Elaborating upon Isis's role as a wife and mother in the Osiris myth, aretalogies call her the inventor of marriage and parenthood. She was invoked to protect women in childbirth and, in ancient Greek novels such as the Ephesian Tale, to protect their virginity.[157] Some ancient texts called her the patroness of women in general.[158][159] Her cult may have served to promote women's autonomy in a limited way, with Isis's power and authority serving as a precedent, but in myth she was devoted to, and never fully independent of, her husband and son. The aretalogies show ambiguous attitudes toward women's independence: one says Isis made women equal to men, whereas another says she made women subordinate to their husbands.[160][161]
Isis was often characterized as a moon goddess, paralleling the solar characteristics of Serapis.
She also oversaw seas and harbors. Sailors left inscriptions calling upon her to ensure the safety and good fortune of their voyages. In this role she was called Isis Pelagia, "Isis of the Sea", or Isis Pharia, referring to a sail or to the island of Pharos, site of the
Both Plutarch and a later philosopher, Proclus, mentioned a veiled statue of the Egyptian goddess Neith, whom they conflated with Isis, citing it as an example of her universality and enigmatic wisdom. It bore the words "I am all that has been and is and will be; and no mortal has ever lifted my mantle."[171][Note 7]
Isis was also said to benefit her followers in the afterlife, which was not much emphasized in Greek and Roman religion.[174] The Golden Ass and inscriptions left by worshippers of Isis suggest that many of her followers thought she would guarantee them a better afterlife in return for their devotion. They characterized this afterlife inconsistently. Some said they would benefit from Osiris's enlivening water while others expected to sail to the Fortunate Isles of Greek tradition.[175]
As in Egypt, Isis was said to have power over fate, which in traditional Greek religion was a power not even the gods could defy. Valentino Gasparini says this control over destiny binds together Isis's disparate traits. She governs the cosmos, yet she also relieves people of their comparatively trivial misfortunes, and her influence extends into the realm of death, which is "individual and universal at the same time".[176]
Relationships with other deities
More than a dozen Egyptian deities were worshipped outside Egypt in Hellenistic and Roman times in a series of interrelated cults, though many were fairly minor.[177] Of the most important of these deities, Serapis was closely connected with Isis and often appeared with her in art, but Osiris remained central to her myth and prominent in her rituals.[178] Temples to Isis and Serapis sometimes stood next to each other, but it was rare for a single temple to be dedicated to both.[179] Osiris, as a dead deity unlike the immortal gods of Greece, seemed strange to Greeks and played only a minor role in Egyptian cults in Hellenistic times. In Roman times he became, like Dionysus, a symbol of a joyous afterlife, and the Isis cult increasingly focused on him.[180] Horus, often under the name Harpocrates, also appeared in Isis's temples as her son by Osiris or Serapis. He absorbed traits from Greek deities such as Apollo and served as a god of the sun and of crops.[181] Another member of the group was Anubis, who was linked to the Greek god Hermes in his Hellenized form Hermanubis.[182] Isis was also sometimes said to have learned her wisdom from, or even be the daughter of, Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing and knowledge, who was known in the Greco-Roman world as Hermes Trismegistus.[183][184]
Isis also had an extensive network of connections with Greek and Roman deities, as well as some from other cultures. She was not fully integrated into the Greek pantheon, but she was at different times equated with a variety of Greek mythological figures, including Demeter, Aphrodite, or
Many of the aretalogies include long lists of goddesses with whom Isis was linked. These texts treat all the deities they list as forms of her, suggesting that in the eyes of the authors she was a summodeistic being: the one goddess for the entire
Iconography
Images of Isis made outside Egypt were Hellenistic in style, like many of the images of her made in Egypt in Hellenistic and Roman times. The attributes she bore varied widely.[203] She sometimes wore the Hathoric cow-horn headdress, but Greeks and Romans reduced its size and often interpreted it as a crescent moon.[204] She could also wear headdresses incorporating leaves, flowers, or ears of grain.[205] Other common traits included corkscrew locks of hair and an elaborate mantle tied in a large knot over the breasts, which originated in ordinary Egyptian clothing but was treated as a symbol of the goddess outside Egypt.[206][Note 8] In her hands she could carry a uraeus or a sistrum, both taken from her Egyptian iconography,[208] or a situla, a vessel used for libations of water or milk that were performed in Isis's cult.[209]
As Isis-Fortuna or Isis-Tyche she held a rudder, representing control of fate, in her right hand and a cornucopia, standing for abundance, in her left.[210] As Isis Pharia she wore a cloak that billowed behind her like a sail, and as Isis Lactans, she nursed Harpocrates.[211] At times she was shown resting a foot on a celestial sphere, representing her control of the cosmos.[212] The diverse imagery sprang from her varied roles; as Robert Steven Bianchi says, "Isis could represent anything to anyone and could be represented in any way imaginable."[213]
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Bust of Isis-Sothis-Demeter from Hadrian's Villa, second century CE
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Statue of Isis-Persephone with corkscrew locks of hair and a sistrum, from Gortyna, second century CE
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Isis-Aphrodite, polychrome terracotta, Alexandria, first century CE
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Bronze figurine of Isis-Fortuna with a cornucopia and a rudder, first century CE
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Fresco of Isis wearing a crescent headdress and resting her foot on a celestial sphere, first century CE
Worship
Adherents and priests
Like most cults of the time, the Isis cult did not require its devotees to worship Isis exclusively, and their level of commitment probably varied greatly.[214] Some devotees of Isis served as priests in a variety of cults and underwent several initiations dedicated to different deities.[215] Nevertheless, many emphasized their strong devotion to her, and some considered her the focus of their lives.[216] They were among the very few religious groups in the Greco-Roman world to have a distinctive name for themselves, loosely equivalent to "Jew" or "Christian", that might indicate they defined themselves by their religious affiliation. However, the word—Isiacus or "Isiac"—was rarely used.[214]
Isiacs were a very small proportion of the Roman Empire's population,
Priests of Isis were known for their distinctive shaven heads and white linen clothes, both characteristics drawn from Egyptian priesthoods and their requirements of
Temples and daily rites
Temples to Egyptian deities outside Egypt, such as the
Another object of veneration in these temples was water, which was treated as a symbol of the waters of the Nile. Isis temples built in Hellenistic times often included underground cisterns that stored this sacred water, raising and lowering the water level in imitation of the Nile flood. Many Roman temples instead used a pitcher of water that was worshipped as a cult image or manifestation of Osiris.[231]
Personal worship
Roman
The cult asked both ritual and moral purity of its devotees, periodically requiring ritual baths or days-long periods of sexual abstinence. Isiacs sometimes displayed their piety on irregular occasions, singing Isis's praises in the streets or, as a form of penance, declaring their misdeeds in public.[235]
Some temples to Greek deities, including Serapis, practiced incubation, in which worshippers slept in a temple hoping that the god would appear to them in a dream and give them advice or heal their ailments. Some scholars believe that this practice took place in Isis's temples, but there is no firm evidence that it did.[236] Isis was, however, thought to communicate through dreams in other circumstances, including to call worshippers to undergo initiation.[237]
Initiation
Some temples of Isis performed
The Golden Ass, in describing how the protagonist joins Isis's cult, gives the only detailed account of Isiac initiation.[245] Apuleius's motives for writing about the cult and the accuracy of his fictionalized description are much debated. But the account is broadly consistent with other evidence about initiations, and scholars rely heavily on it when studying the subject.[246]
Ancient mystery rites used a variety of intense experiences, such as nocturnal darkness interrupted by bright light and loud music and noise, to overwhelm their senses and give them an intense religious experience that felt like direct contact with the god they devoted themselves to.[247] Apuleius's protagonist, Lucius, undergoes a series of initiations, though only the first is described in detail. After entering the innermost part of Isis's temple at night, he says, "I came to the boundary of death and, having trodden on the threshold of Proserpina, I travelled through all the elements and returned. In the middle of the night I saw the sun flashing with bright light, I came face to face with the gods below and the gods above and paid reverence to them from close at hand."[248] This cryptic description suggests that the initiate's symbolic journey to the world of the dead was likened to Osiris's rebirth, as well as to Ra's journey through the underworld in Egyptian myth,[249] possibly implying that Isis brought the initiate back from death as she did her husband.[250]
Festivals
Roman calendars listed the two most important
Festivals of Isis and other polytheistic deities were celebrated throughout the fourth century CE, despite the
Possible influence on Christianity
A contentious question about Isis is whether her cult influenced Christianity.[259] Some Isiac customs may have been among the pagan religious practices that were incorporated into Christian traditions as the Roman Empire was Christianized. Andreas Alföldi, for instance, argued in the 1930s that the medieval Carnival festival, in which a model boat was carried, developed from the Navigium Isidis.[260]
Much attention focuses on whether traits of Christianity were borrowed from pagan mystery cults, including that of Isis.[261] The more devoted members of Isis's cult made a personal commitment to a deity they regarded as superior to others, as Christians did.[262] Both Christianity and the Isis cult had an initiation rite: the mysteries for Isis, baptism in Christianity.[263] One of the mystery cults' shared themes—a god whose death and resurrection may be connected with the individual worshipper's well-being in the afterlife—resembles the central theme of Christianity. The suggestion that Christianity's basic beliefs were taken from mystery cults has provoked heated debate for more than 200 years.[264] In response to these controversies, both Hugh Bowden and Jaime Alvar, scholars who study ancient mystery cults, suggest that similarities between Christianity and the mystery cults were not produced by direct borrowing of ideas but by their common background: the Greco-Roman culture in which they all developed.[263][265]
Similarities between Isis and
Images of Isis with Horus in her lap are often suggested as an influence on the iconography of Mary, particularly images of the Mary nursing the infant Jesus, as images of nursing women were rare in the ancient Mediterranean world outside Egypt.[270] Vincent Tran Tam Tinh points out that the latest images of Isis nursing Horus date to the fourth century CE, while the earliest images of Mary nursing Jesus date to the seventh century CE. Sabrina Higgins, drawing on his study, argues that if there is a connection between the iconographies of Isis and Mary, it is limited to images from Egypt.[271] In contrast, Thomas F. Mathews and Norman Muller think Isis's pose in late antique panel paintings influenced several types of Marian icons, inside and outside Egypt.[272] Elizabeth Bolman says these early Egyptian images of Mary nursing Jesus were meant to emphasize his divinity, much as images of nursing goddesses did in ancient Egyptian iconography.[273] Higgins argues that such similarities prove that images of Isis influenced those of Mary, but not that Christians deliberately adopted Isis's iconography or other elements of her cult.[274]
Influence in later cultures
The memory of Isis survived the extinction of her worship. Like the Greeks and Romans, many modern Europeans have regarded ancient Egypt as the home of profound and often mystical wisdom, and this wisdom has often been linked with Isis.
From the Renaissance on, the
Among modern Egyptians, Isis was used as a national symbol during the Pharaonism movement of the 1920s and 1930s, as Egypt gained independence from British rule. In works such as Mohamed Naghi's painting in the parliament of Egypt, titled Egypt's Renaissance, and Tawfiq al-Hakim's play The Return of the Spirit, Isis symbolizes the revival of the nation. A sculpture by Mahmoud Mokhtar, also called Egypt's Renaissance, plays upon the motif of Isis's removing her veil.[290]
Isis is found frequently in works of fiction, such as a superhero franchise, and her name and image appear in places as disparate as advertisements and personal names.[291] The name Isidoros, meaning "gift of Isis" in Greek,[292] survived in Christianity despite its pagan origins, giving rise to the English name Isidore and its variants.[293] In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, "Isis" itself became a popular feminine given name.[294]
Isis continues to appear in modern esoteric and
See also
- Traditional African religion portal
Notes
- romanized: ʾs
- ^ Originally the first consonant in the name, ꜣ, was pronounced as r or l. By the time of the New Kingdom it had weakened to a glottal stop sound, and the t at the end of words had disappeared from speech, so in the New Kingdom the pronunciation of Isis's name was similar to Usa. Forms of her name in other languages all descend from this pronunciation.[14] The Meroitic forms of her name, 𐦥𐦣𐦯 Wos[a] or 𐦠𐦯 As[a], indicate the pronunciation /uːɕa/.[3]
- ^ These figurines, which were common in Roman Egypt, are often thought to depict Isis or Hathor combined with Aphrodite, but it is not even certain that they represent a goddess.[83] The exposed genitals may represent fertility[82] or be meant to ward off evil.[83]
- ^ Scholars have traditionally believed, based on the writings of Procopius, that Philae was closed in about AD 535 by a military expedition under Justinian I. Jitse Dijkstra has argued that Procopius's account of the temple closure is inaccurate and that regular religious activity there ceased shortly after the last date inscribed at the temple, in 456 or 457 CE.[115] Eugene Cruz-Uribe suggests instead that during the fifth and sixth centuries the temple lay empty most of the time, but Nubians living nearby continued to hold periodic festivals there until well into the sixth century.[116]
- ^ Tiberius's expulsion of the Egyptian cults was part of a broader reaction against religious practices that were regarded as a threat to order and tradition, including Judaism and astrology. Josephus, a Roman-Jewish historian who gives the most detailed account of the expulsion, says the Egyptian cults were targeted because of a scandal in which a man posed as Anubis, with the help of Isis's priests, in order to seduce a Roman noblewoman. Sarolta Takács casts doubt on Josephus's account, arguing that it is fictionalized in order to convey a moral point.[144]
- Sais, Neith's cult center. She was largely conflated with Isis in Plutarch's time, and he says the statue is of "Athena [Neith], whom [the Egyptians] consider to be Isis". Proclus' version of the quotation says "no one has ever lifted my veil," implying that the goddess is virginal.[172] This claim was occasionally made of Isis in Greco-Roman times, though it conflicted with the widespread belief that she and Osiris together conceived Horus.[173] Proclus also adds "The fruit of my womb was the sun", suggesting that the goddess conceived and gave birth to the sun without the participation of a male deity, which would mean it referred to Egyptian myths about Neith as the mother of Ra.[172]
- ^ This knot is sometimes called the "Isis-knot", although it should not be confused with the tyet symbol, which is also sometimes called the "knot of Isis".[207]
- ^ The mystery rites may have emerged as part of the Hellenization of Isis under the Ptolemies in the third century BCE,[241] in Greece under the influence of the cult of Demeter in the first century BCE,[242] or as late as the first or second century CE.[243] Even after the initiation ceremony had developed, few texts in Egypt referred to it.[244]
- ^ Early modern illustrations of Isis as nature often showed her with multiple breasts. Originally, the form of Artemis that was worshipped at Ephesus was depicted with round protuberances on her chest that came to be interpreted as breasts. Early modern artists drew Isis in this form because Macrobius claimed that both Isis and Artemis were depicted this way.[283]
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Further reading
- Berger, Catherine; Clerc, Gisèle; Grimal, Nicolas, eds. (1994). Hommages à Jean Leclant, Volume 3: Études isiaques (in French, English, German, and Italian). Institut français d'archéologie orientale. ISBN 978-2-7247-0138-8.
- Bricault, Laurent (2019). Isis Pelagia: Images, Names and Cults of a Goddess of the Seas. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-41389-4.
- Bricault, Laurent (2013). Les Cultes Isiaques Dans Le Monde Gréco-romain (in French). Les Belles Lettres. ISBN 978-2-251-33969-6.
- Bricault, Laurent; Veymiers, Richard, eds. (2008–2020). Bibliotheca Isiaca. Ausonius Éditions. Vol. I: ISBN 978-2-356-13341-0.
- Dunand, Françoise (1973). Le culte d'Isis dans le bassin oriental de la méditerranée (in French). Brill. Vol. I: ISBN 978-90-04-03583-6.
- ISBN 978-90-04-09247-1.
- Tran Tam Tinh, V. (1973). Isis lactans: Corpus des monuments gréco-romains d'Isis allaitant Harpocrate (in French). Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-03746-5.
- Vidman, Ladislav (1970). Isis und Serapis bei den Griechen und Römern (in German). Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-176823-6.
External links
- "Isis and the Name of Ra", as translated by A. G. McDowell.
- Plutarch: Isis and Osiris, as translated by Frank Cole Babbitt.
- Lucius Apuleius: The Golden Ass, Book XI, as translated by A. S. Kline.