Queen Hatshepsut

 

Isis is a major deity in the ancient Egyptian religion, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-

Roman world. Isis is mentioned for the first time in the ancient Egyptian kingdom (2686-2181 BC) as one of the main characters in the Osiris myth, as she revived her husband, the slain divine king Osiris, and gave birth to his heir Horus and protected him. It was believed that Isis guides the dead to the afterlife as she helped Osiris, and was considered the divine mother of the pharaoh, as he was likened to her son Horus. Her maternal aid was a healing spell to help the common people. Isis originally played a small role in royal hymns and in temple rites and rites, but she was more important in burial rites and in magical texts. She was often represented in art as a female humanoid who wore something like a throne on her head. During the New Kingdom, the features enjoyed by Hathor - the former prominent goddess - took over, as Isis became represented wearing Hathor's clothes, and on her head the sun disk between the horns of a cow, as she was previously represented.

In the first millennium BC, Isis and Osiris became the most worshiped Egyptian deities, and Isis absorbed many of the attributes of other deities. The rulers of Egypt and the rulers of its neighbors to the south in Nubia began building temples dedicated specifically to Isis, and her temple at Philae was one of the most important religious centers for Egyptians and Nubians alike. Isis's magical powers were stronger than all the other deities, and she was said to protect the kingdom from its enemies, to rule the heavens and the natural world, and to dominate fate itself.

In the Hellenistic period (323-30 BC) when the Greeks ruled Egypt, Isis came to be worshiped by the Egyptians and Greeks, as well as a new deity named Serapis. Their worship spread to the wider Mediterranean world. The Greeks endowed Isis with some of the features that distinguished the Greek gods, such as the invention of marriage and the protection of ships at sea, and she maintained strong ties between Egypt and other Egyptian deities that spread in the Hellenistic era such as Osiris and Harpocrates. With Rome's absorption of Hellenistic culture in the first century BC, the cult of Isis became part of Roman religion. Although her worshipers were a small part of the Roman Empire, they were scattered throughout. Its followers began to develop some festivals such as the "Passage of Isis" festival, as well as some new ceremonies that were similar to the mysteries of the Greco-Roman religions. Some followers said it included all the powers of the female deities in the world.

The cult of Isis ended with the spread of Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries AD. Her worship influenced Christian beliefs and practices such as the veneration of Mary, but the evidence for this influence is still vague and controversial. Isis continued to appear in Western culture, especially in Western esoteric teachings and in neo-paganism, often as a personification of nature or the feminine aspect of divinity.

name and origin

While some Egyptian deities appeared in the last pre-dynastic era (before 3100 BC), both Isis and her husband Osiris were not clearly mentioned before the Fifth Dynasty (2494-2345 BC). A manuscript from this period refers to Isis from the era of King Neuserre, as Isis clearly appears in the Pyramid Texts, which began to be written at the end of the dynasty, although its content must have developed long before this. Many phrases in the pyramid texts link Isis to the Nile delta region near Behbeit El-Hagar and Samanoud, as her worship often began there.

Many researchers have focused on the name of Isis in an attempt to determine its origin. Its Egyptian name was ꜣst or "Ast", from which the Coptic name "Asa" (Coptic: ⲎⲤⲈ) and Isis (Greek: Ἶσις), which is the name from which the modern name is derived. The hieroglyphic name includes the sign of a throne, which Isis also wears on her head as a sign of her identity. The symbol serves as a phonetic graphic, as it forms the "six" part of her name, but it may also be associated with the actual throne. The name of the throne in the Egyptian language was "Set" as well, and may have shared the term with the name of Isis. Therefore, Egyptologist Kurt Sety suggests that Isis was initially a personification of thrones. Henry Frankfurt agrees, believing that the throne was considered the king's mother, and thus a goddess, because of its power to transform a man into a king. Some scholars such as Jürgen Ossing and Klaus Kohlmann disagree with this interpretation, due to differences between the name Isis and the word throne or due to the lack of evidence that the throne was considered a deity.

The wife and the bereaved

Isis is part of the Holy Ennead, a family of nine deities who are all descended from the creator god Atum or Ra. Both Isis, Osiris, Set, and Nephthys are the last of the generations of the Ninth, born of Geb, god of the earth, and Nut, goddess of heaven. The Creator God, the original ruler of the world, passed his power over to the male generations of the ninth until Osiris became king. Isis - Isis's wife and sister - is his queen.

Six killed Osiris and in several versions of the story he dismembered his body. Isis, Nephthys, and other deities such as Anubis searched for pieces of their brother's body in order to collect it. Their efforts are the prototype for embalming and other Egyptian funeral practices. According to some texts, they also had to protect Osiris' body from mutilation by Set and his followers. Isis was a portrait of a grieving widow. Her and Nephthys' love and grief helped bring Osiris back from the dead, as well as Isis's chanting of some magical spells. Funerary texts contained some of Isis's sayings, in which she expressed her grief over the death of Osiris, her sexual desire for him, and even anger at his leaving her. All these feelings played a role in Osiris' resurrection, as they were supposed to induce his return. In the end, Isis restored the soul and life to the body of Osiris and his union to give birth to their son, Horus. From this moment on, Osiris lived only in the Duat or the underworld. But with a son and heir avenging his death and performing funeral rites for his father, Isis ensured that her husband would endure the journey of the afterlife.

The role of Osiris in the afterlife is based on this legend. Isis helps in restoring the souls of dead people to the full, just as she recovered the soul of Osiris. Like other deities such as Hathor, Isis was considered the mother of the dead, providing them with protection and nourishment. Therefore, like Hathor, she sometimes took the form of Amentet - the goddess of the West - who welcomed the souls of the dead into the afterlife as her children. But for most of Egyptian history, male deities such as Osiris were believed to possess regenerative powers such as sexual ability that were necessary for revival. It was believed that Isis had the ability to help by imitating his abilities. The powers of female deities became more important in the afterlife in the latter part of the New Kingdom. Several Ptolemaic funerary texts assert that Isis played an important role in the conception of Horus by sexually stimulating her inner husband. Several decorations from the Roman-Egyptian period depict Isis's pivotal role in the afterlife, and funerary texts from that period tell us that women were thought to join the retinue of Isis and Nephthys in the afterlife.

mother goddess

Even in the earliest versions of the Pyramids texts, Isis is treated as the mother of Horus. However, there are signs that Hathor was considered the mother of Horus in the beginning, and some ancient traditions made Horus a direct son of Nut and a brother of Isis and Osiris. Isis may have become the mother of Horus after the myth of Isis and Osiris was formed in the Old Kingdom, but through her relationship with him, she came to be considered an image of maternal devotion.

In the evolved form of the myth, Isis gives birth to Horus after a long pregnancy and difficult birth on a grove of sedge in the Nile Delta. With the growth of her son, she had to protect him from six and several other dangers, such as snakes, scorpions, and simple diseases. In some texts, Isis travels among humans asking for their help. According to one story, seven scorpion deities traveled with her to protect her and who retaliated against a rich woman who refused to help Isis by stinging her son, making it necessary for the goddess to heal the innocent child. Isis's reputation as a compassionate deity trying to alleviate human suffering contributed to her wide acceptance.

Isis continued to help her son when he challenged Set to regain his throne that Set had robbed of his father. Although sometimes the dispute between the son and his mother to the extent that Horus cut off his mother's head and had to replace her head with the head of a cow, the original legend says that Isis wore cow horns on her head from the beginning.

The maternal aspect of Isis extended to other deities as well. Coffin texts from the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC) tell that the four children of Horus - funerary deities believed to protect the internal organs of the dead - were descendants of Isis and the large image of Horus. In the same era, Horus was depicted with the fertility god Min, so Isis was considered the mother of Min. One of the images of Min, known as Kamotiv - "the bull of his mother" - which represented the renewal of gods and kings, is said to have made his mother pregnant in order to give birth to himself. So Isis was also considered the wife of Min. This idea of ​​ownership may also lie behind a tradition found in some texts that Horus raped Isis. Amun, the greatest Egyptian deity during the Middle and New Kingdoms, also played a role in Kamotiv and, when in his image, Isis was also his wife. It is also said that Apis - a bull who was worshiped as a living deity in Memphis - was the son of Isis and his father was one of the images of Osiris known as Osiris-Apis. The mother of every Apis bull is known as "the cow Isis" for this reason.

A story from the Westcar Papyrus from the Middle Kingdom includes Isis among the group of deities serving as wives during the birth of the three future kings. Isis plays a similar role in the New Kingdom texts that describe the divine birth of the ruling pharaohs.

In the Westcar Papyrus, Isis calls out to the three sons at the time of their birth. Barbara Lasko sees this story as a sign that Isis had the power to predict or influence future events, like some of the other deities who were responsible for childbirth such as Shai and Rhinnotite. Texts long afterwards call Isis "the Lady of Life, Queen of Destiny and Destiny", and the texts show that she had authority over Shai and Rinnotite, like some of the great deities such as Amun, who was said to do so in earlier eras of Egyptian history. Through her power over these deities, Isis determined the length and quality of human life.

Goddess of royalty and protector of the kingdom

Horus is equal with every living pharaoh and Osiris with the previous dead pharaoh. So Isis was the legendary mother and wife of kings. In the texts of the pyramids, its main importance to the king was that she was one of the deities who protected and helped him in the afterlife. Its importance in the royal idea grew in the modern Egyptian kingdom. Temple reliefs from this period show the king sucking from the breast of Isis, and her milk not only healed her son, but also symbolized his divine right to rule. The royal idea increasingly emphasized the importance of queens as earthly counterparts to goddesses who served as wives of the pharaoh and as mothers to his heirs to his throne. In the beginning, Hathor was the most important of these goddesses, as the female counterpart of Ra and Horus, who was artistically depicted on the crowns of queens. But because of her mythical association with queens, Isis also took the same titles and rights as a human queen.

Isis's actions to protect Osiris against Set became part of a larger warlike aspect of her character. Funerary texts from the New Kingdom depict Isis as Ra sailing through the underworld, as she was one of the many deities who defeated Ra's archenemy Apophis. Kings also requested her magical protective power against human enemies. In her Ptolemaic temple at Philae, which lies near the border with the Nuba peoples who sometimes raided Egypt, Isis is described as the protector of the entire nation, more effective in war than "millions of soldiers", and supporting the Ptolemaic kings and Roman emperors in their attempt to repel Egypt's external enemies.

Goddess of magic and wisdom

Isis was also known for her magical powers, which enabled her to revive Osiris and protect and heal Horus, as well as her cunning. Thanks to her magical powers, she was said to be "more skilled than a million gods". In several versions of the New Kingdom story "The Rival of Horus and Set", Isis uses these powers to maneuver Set during his struggle with her son. In one case, she is transformed into a young woman who tells Set that she is in a succession struggle similar to Set's usurpation of the crown of Osiris. When Set judged the situation unfair, Isis ridiculed him, saying that he had judged himself wrong. In later texts, she uses her powers of transformation to fight and destroy Set and his followers.

Many stories about Isis were precursors to magical texts describing mythical events associated with the intended purpose of the spell. In one of the spells, Isis created a serpent that bites Ra - who is bigger and mightier than her - to make him sick with his venom. After that, she offered to heal Ra if he told her his secret real name, a piece of information that carries with it infinite power. After a long compulsion, Ra told her his name, which she passed on to Horus in order to consolidate his royal power. The meaning of the story may be to explain why Isis's magical powers transcend all other deities. But because she used magic to force Ra, the story considers her to have these powers even before she knows his secret name.

sky goddess

The many roles that Isis played gave her an important position in the sky. Passages in the pyramid texts link Isis with Sopdet - the goddess represented by the star of poetics - and her relationship with her husband Saah (the constellation of Orion) and their son Subdu, which parallels Isis's relationship with Osiris and Horus. The star rising gives Subdeet - just before the flood of the Nile - an intimate relationship with the flood and the subsequent growth of plants. Partly because of her relationship with Subdeet, Isis was also associated with the Flood, which was considered the tears she shed on Osiris. By the Ptolemaic period, Isis was associated with rain, which the Egyptians call "the Nile in the sky", with the sun, the protector, Ra, and with the moon, mostly because of her association with the Greek moon goddess Artemis through a common relationship, the Egyptian goddess of fertility Bastet. In one of the hymns inscribed in Philae, Isis was called "the Lady of Heaven," whose control of the sky parallels Osiris' control of the Duat (the underworld) and Horus' reign on earth.

cosmic goddess

In the Ptolemaic period, the circle of influence of Isis covered the entire universe. Being the goddess who protects Egypt and upholds its king, she had control over all nations, and as a cause of rain, she is the one who revives the natural world. The hymns continue to Philae, who began by calling her the Lady of Heaven, and extend her authority. At its peak, her dominion includes heaven, earth, and the Duat. The hymns say that her dominion over nature revives humans and blesses the dead and the gods. Some other hymns from the Ptolemaic period call Isis "the beautiful essence of all the gods." Throughout Egyptian history, many deities, small and large, have been described with such great qualities. Amon in particular was described as such in the New Kingdom, but in Roman Egypt Isis became the one who was described as such. These texts do not deny the existence of other deities but treat them as aspects of the greater deities.

In the late Ptolemaic and Roman eras, many temples contained creation myths that carried ancient ideas of creation to give the gods their main roles. In Philae, Isis is described as the creator in the same way that ancient texts describe the actions of the god Ptah, who is said to have designed, sculpted and created the world. Like him, Isis became the creator of the universe "by what her heart conceived and what her hands created."

Like other deities in Egyptian history, Isis had multiple images in her personal cult centers, with each center focusing on a different aspect of her personality. The local cult of Isis focused on the deity's distinctive features rather than on her universality, while some Egyptian hymns to Isis treated other deities in the cult centers scattered across Egypt and all the Mediterranean coast as images of them. A text from the temple of Isis at Dendera says, "In every Egyptian province she is there, in every town and village, in every province she and her son Horus find."

Iconic

In Egyptian art, Isis was often depicted as a woman with the attributes of a typical deity: a fluffy dress and a bundle of papyrus in one hand and the life-sign ankh in the other. Her original headdress was a throne, which is also used to write her name. Isis and Nephthys often appear together, especially when denouncing the death of Osiris, placing him on his throne, or protecting the coffins of the dead. In these circumstances their hands are often at their heads in a sign of denunciation, or they are extended around Osiris or the dead as a sign of their role in protecting him. In these circumstances they were often depicted as a kite or a woman with the wings of a kite. Perhaps this image is inspired by the similarity of the kite's voice with the sound of women's wailing, or due to the similarity between the kite's search for a carrion and the two goddesses' search for their dead brother. Isis sometimes appeared in the form of other animals such as the sow, which represents the characteristics of motherhood, and as a cow, especially when associated with Apis, or as a scorpion. Isis also took the image of a tree or a woman emerging from a tree, sometimes providing food and water to the dead. This photo refers to her maternal feeding.

With the beginning of the New Kingdom - and thanks to the strong relations between Isis and Hathor - Isis took on other goddess features such as the sound of the sistrum and the presence of the sun disk between the two horns of a cow on her head. Sometimes both covers of her head are combined so that the throne is above the disk of the sun between the two horns of a cow. In the same era, Isis began to wear the same clothes as human queens, such as a crown in the form of an eagle on her head and a cobra standing on her forehead. In the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, statues and reliefs depicted Isis in a form similar to the Greek style of sculpture, with attributes combined from Egyptian and Greek traditions. Some of these images reflected her relationship with other goddesses in a fictional form. Isis Thermotis—a fusion of Isis and Rhinnotte that represented agricultural fertility—is depicted as a woman with a serpent's lower body. Some figurines of a woman revealing her genitals may represent a fusion of Isis and Aphrodite.

The symbol of Tet - a knot shaped like an ankh - was considered an emblem of Isis, especially in the New Kingdom, although it existed long before that. It was often made of red jasper because it was associated with the blood of Isis. The symbol was used as a funerary amulet, as it was believed to give the wearer the protection of Isis.