Isis (deity)

Symbol: throne, scorpion, kite, knot

Country/Culture: Egyptian

Mother: Nut

Father: Geb

Siblings: Osiris (brother and husband), Nephthys (sister), Set (brother)

Children: Horus

Isis holds a central place in ancient Egyptian mythology as the goddess of motherhood and fertility. Her influence extended into later periods in the Greco-Roman world and the Roman Empire. The sister and wife of Osiris, Isis is also the mother and protector of the divine king Horus. She is therefore known, by extension, as the mother and protector of all of Egypt’s kings or pharaohs. The pharaohs of Egypt were sometimes depicted as her children, sitting on her lap or beside her on her throne. The name Isis itself means "throne," which is the form usually taken by her headdress. She is often depicted sitting on a throne with Horus suckling at her breast. In various times and places, Isis was revered as an ideal wife, a nurturing mother, and as a sorceress with great abilities to heal. Isis is perhaps most vividly known as a goddess who was able to resurrect Osiris from the dead. She was understood to be the goddess of rebirth and reincarnation, and as a protector of the souls of the dead. The center of the cult of Isis was Egypt and Ethiopia, but her influence extended into Europe and persists today in various pagan cults and religions.

In Mythology

Isis was born as the first daughter of Nut, goddess of the Sky, and Geb, god of the Earth. Her brothers, Set and Osiris, were great rivals. Through an elaborate plot, Set murdered Osiris by locking him in a beautiful chest designed for his exact proportions and sending the chest-turned-coffin down the Nile River. Isis searched for and found the coffin to give Osiris a proper burial, only to have Set steal the box, chop Osiris’s body into fourteen pieces, and scatter the pieces across Egypt. The persistent and ever-loyal sister, Isis found thirteen of the fourteen pieces of Osiris’s body. She created the missing piece, a phallus, and attached it to Osiris’ body. She then married Osiris, and with him conceived their son, Horus. According to this myth, the annual flooding of the Nile River was caused by the tears that Isis shed for Osiris while he was dead. The Isis-Osiris story was famously retold by Plutarch in the first century CE. Plutarch described Isis as "a goddess exceptionally wise and a lover of wisdom, to whom . . . knowledge and understanding are in the highest degree appropriate . . . ."

After the dynastic age in Egypt, the cult of Isis came to focus more on her role as mother of Horus and less as Osiris’s wife. She was revered for protecting Horus, who was a weak and sickly child. One common mythic motif involved continuing enmity between Set and young Horus. In some stories, Isis and Horus have to flee from the plots of Set; in some Isis magically cures Horus from venomous stings that Set inflicts upon him.

Origins & Cults

Worship of Isis played a role at Pompeii, was well-known in Athens and northern Greece, and she had followers in Gaul, Spain, Germany, and throughout Arabia to Asia Minor. In Arabia, Isis became associated with the pre-Islamic goddess al-Uzza, whose worship was centered around Mecca. The pinnacle of Isis worship occurred at the end of the New Kingdom in the fourth century BCE on Philae, an island in the Nile. There, during the thirtieth dynasty, a large temple was built in her honor. Isis’s cult spread throughout the Hellenistic world after the fourth century. The Greek historian Herodotus associated her with Demeter, the Greek goddess of earth, agriculture, and fertility.

Over the course of many centuries, Isis absorbed the mythology and characteristics of a variety of local Egyptian goddesses and became Egypt’s dominant female deity. In particular, she wore the sistrum (sacred rattle), menyt (sacred beads), sun disk, and cow horns previously associated with the influential Hathor. The two goddesses became nearly impossible to separate. With the advent of Christianity and the suppression of paganism, her cult eventually died out, with the last temples devoted to Isis closing in the mid-sixth century CE. However, the image of Isis with Horus nursing at her breast served as a symbolic precursor to the Christian imagery of Mary suckling the infant Jesus.

In modern times, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn regarded Isis as a major deity. The Order of the Golden Dawn was a nineteenth and early twentieth century semi-secret British organization whose membership included such famous literary figures as Arthur Conan Doyle, William Butler Yeats, and Bram Stoker. It is considered a significant influence on Wicca and other manifestations of occultism in the modern English-speaking world.

Bibliography

Dawson, Lorne L. Cults and the New Religious Movements: A Reader. Malden: Blackwell, 2006. Print.

Hart, George. A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. London: Routledge, 1986.

Shaw, Ian. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, Oxford UP, 2005. Print.

Thayer, Bill. "Plutarch: Isis and Osiris." LacusCurtius: Plutarch. Author, 9 Oct. 2012. Web. 05 Sept. 2015.

Tyldesley, Joyce. The Penguin Book of Myths & Legends of Ancient Egypt. London: Penguin, 2011. Print.

Tyldesley, Joyce. "Isis: Great of Magic." Ancient Egypt Magazine Aug. 2012: 50. Print.

Witt, R. E. Isis in the Ancient World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997. Print.