ISIS

ISIS is one of the most important deities in the Egyptian pantheon. The hieroglyph for her name was the throne, and she was portrayed with a headdress in the shape of a throne. Scholars postulate that Isis was the personification of the throne or that her name means "the one who has ruling power." Jan Bergman concludes in "Isis" (1980, col. 188) that the explanation of her name points to a later priestly interpretation. The name Isis appears securely for the first time in the fifth dynasty (2465–2325 bce) and in the Pyramid Texts at the end of the Old Kingdom (2650–2152 bce). The first depiction of the goddess occurred almost a thousand years after the first textual mention in the eighteenth dynasty (1539–1295 bce).

In the Heliopolitan rendering of the nine premier Egyptian gods, Isis was the daughter of Geb and Nut (Earth and Sky). Osiris was her brother and husband, Horus their son. Seth and Nephthys, also offsprings of Geb and Nut, were Isis and Osiris's opponents. Seth killed his brother Osiris and dismembered him, and Isis searched for the scattered body parts across Egypt. She found all the parts except for the phallus. Isis then fashioned a replacement for the missing part and reassembled her brother-husband's body. With the help of Thoth, she revived Osiris for a short time. In this period of revival Isis conceived Horus, who became his father's avenger.

Being a mother herself, Isis helped women in childbirth. In the New Kingdom (1539–1069 bce), Isis was depicted as midwife. Greco-Roman renderings of Isis show her with a knot on the front of her dress. This knot indicated life and protected pregnant women as well as their babies. The goddess was also a healer. When a scorpion stung and killed her son Horus, Isis revived him. In another myth Isis fashioned a snake that bit the supreme god Re. As Re lay dying, Isis promised to heal him if he gave up his secret name and thus world dominion. Re refused at first, but in the end he gave Isis what she sought. In another succession myth, Horus raped and decapitated his mother, the latter as punishment for Isis's disloyalty when she did not allow the destruction of her brother Seth. The Greek writers Diodorus Siculus (1.13–27) and Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride, 12–19) provide the most continuous myths surrounding Isis. Various aretologies emphasize her henotheistic, singular divine force of creation; she was the goddess with a thousand names (myrionyma ).

Isis was linked to the goddess Hathor. She wore Hathor's headdress, the cow horns. In his "Isis," Bergman points to another connection with Hathor (Bergman, 1980, col. 189f.). After Horus decapitated his mother, she received a cow head as replacement. Like the cow horns and cow head, Isis acquired the uraeus snake from Hathor. In addition, Isis was equated with Selket and appropriated that goddess's animal form, the scorpion. Isis was also linked to the female hippopotamus, a white sow, and a lion. Bergman notes that the goddess appears as a water- and food-providing tree goddess. In the celestial sphere Isis was connected with Sothis or Sirius, the Dog Star (Canis Major). She was the bringer of the Nile's annual flooding (Bergman, 1980, col. 192), which was essential for Egypt's agriculture. Isis's manifestations are manifold due to syncretism, an inbuilt fluidity that allowed gods to merge with each other. Depictions of Isis from Egyptian to Greco-Roman times show this confluence of representative elements most succinctly. Isis was not only myrionyma in name but also in terms of her iconographic signifiers.

Dissemination of the Cult

Greeks, who had economic links with Egypt since the seventh century bce, knew of Egyptian deities. They explained these deities by way of analogies. In this way Isis was equated with Demeter (Herodotos, Histories, 2.42ff.). The Ptolemaic period, however, ushered in a more intensive propagation of the cult of Isis outside Egypt. In this era, as in Roman times, the most important temple structure of Isis was on the island of Philae in southern (Upper) Egypt. Alexander's successor, Ptolemy I Soter, chose Sarapis as his dynasty's guardian deity. This god then became Isis's Hellenized consort.

An inscription from Pireus (Vidman, 1969, inscription no. 1), the port city of Athens, dated to 333 bce suggests that cult adherents were first Egyptians who had economic ties with Athens. By the end of the third century bce Athenian citizens held the various priesthoods. On Delos, the most important location for the westward dissemination of the cult, Egyptians held the priesthoods initially, followed by Delians and then Athenians. Françoise Dunand demonstrates in Le culte d'Isis dans le bassin oriental de la Méditerranée (1973) that, in all of Greece, Isis had the lowest impact on the Peloponnese. Michel Malaise shows in "La diffusion des cultes égyptiens dans les provinces européennes de l'Empire romain" (1984) that merchants were the most important propagators of the cult. When Archelaos, a general of Mithridates VI, the king of Pontos, captured the island of Delos in 88 bce, Italian merchants returning to Italy brought with them the goddess Isis and intensified the goddess's presence where she was already known before this time.

Isis, for example, was established before 88 bce in the port cities of Pompeii, Puteoli, and Ostia. The temple of Isis in Pompeii was built toward the end of the second century bce, the temple of the Alexandrian gods in Puteoli dates to approximately 105 bce. However, it seems that, in the wake of the forceful return of Italian merchants from Delos, Isis made her way to Rome. The second century ce author Apuleius states in his Metamorphoses, also known as The Golden Ass (11.30), that the first association of Isiac priests (collegium pastophorum, college of carriers of sacred objects) in Rome was founded at the time of the dictator Sulla (82–79 bce). An inscription, unfortunately now lost, established a strong connection between Delos and Rome (Vidman, 1969, inscription no. 377). In "Iside Capitolina, Clodio e i mercanti di schiavi" (1984) Filippo Coarelli convincingly dates the inscription to 90–60 bce and points to families of slave traders as a decisive link between the Aegean island and the capital. Ladislav Vidman suggests in Isis und Sarapis bei den Griechen und Römern (1970) that the Late Republican period was favorable to the Egyptian cult. Subsequent research showed that it was not unbridled passions of the simple and disfranchised that brought about this acceptance. Egyptian scenes and representations of Isis's headdress, rattles (sistra ), Egyptian snakes (uraei), obelisks, and lotus flowers were components of an artistic repertoire. Control marks on coins were not expressions of a social revolution but an artistic realization of a Late Republican cultural reality.

The reactions against the cult in 58, 53, and 48 bce were of a political nature (Tertullian, Ad Nationes, 1.10; Dio Cassius, 40.47 and 42.26). The Roman Senate found itself stripped of its political power and, as a consequence, dictated these expulsions of the cult of Isis. Expulsion as well as acceptance and subsequent introduction of a foreign cult into Rome's religious system were privileges of the Senate. These actions demonstrated, confirmed, and secured the Senate's political authority. Isis, however, did not disappear from Rome. Far from it, the triumvirate in charge of restoring the Republic voted in favor of a temple of Isis in 43 bce (Cassius Dio, 47.15.4). Two later regulations (28 and 21 bce; Cassius Dio, 53.2.4 and 54.6.6) curtailing the cult within the city of Rome were intended by Augustus to demonstrate his resolve vis-à-vis the traditional code of behavior (the mos maiorum ) and the traditional, Greco-Roman gods.

In 19 ce Tiberius ordered the removal of Jews and Isis worshipers from Rome (Tacitus, Annals, 2.85.5; Josephus, Antiquities, 18.72; Suetonius, Life of Tiberius, 36.1). It has been suggested that the emperor intended to cleanse the capital of foreign cults, especially those perceived as undermining Roman morality, but is seems more likely that the reason was political. Germanicus, Tiberius's designated successor, had traveled to Egypt and, in a public relations stunt, opened the granaries. Unfortunately, this gesture of generosity led subsequently to famine in Rome (Tacitus, Annals, 2.67). Germanicus also visited Memphis without imperial permission. The priests of Memphis, the guardians of the living and dead Apis bulls, made and unmade pharaohs, even if only symbolically at this time (Maystre, 1992).

In the Roman construct of reality, politics and religion were intertwined; hence Rome's success was thought dependent on the gods and the gods favored a people who worshiped them properly and in a timely fashion. Whenever a political crisis occurred that undermined Rome's social order, the problem was thought to lie in the religious sphere; that is, it was believed that the gods had turned away from the Romans, who had failed in their ritual performance. Isis was Alexandria's most powerful god, and the city had the largest number of Jewish inhabitants in the Roman Empire. The expulsion of Jews and Isis worshipers from Rome demonstrated the emperor's political power and symbolized the reestablishment of traditional order.

With the consolidation of the new political order (the principate, which began with the emperor Augustus [r. 27 bce–14 ce]) and the integration of Egypt as a province of the Roman Empire, Isis and her cult could no longer be thought illegal. The cult was officially recognized at the end of Caligula's reign or at the beginning of Claudius's. The first to establish this time period was Georg Wissowa in Religion and Kultus der Römer (1971), and Anthony Barrett in Caligula (1989, pp. 220f.) further developed the argument. The connection with the imperial house (the domus Augusta ) occurred during the reign of Vespasian (69–79 ce). Vespasian had been proclaimed emperor by his troops while he was in Alexandria. Upon his return to Rome, he and his son Titus stayed in the temple of Isis in the Field of Mars, the Iseum Campense, the night before their triumphal procession into Rome (Josephus, Jewish Wars, 7.123f.). Domitian, Vespasian's youngest son, renovated many temples of Isis during his reign (81–96 ce). After Vespasian's acclamation in Alexandria, the family had a connection to Isis, and their subsequent actions are demonstrations of piety toward the goddess.

There was an increasing interest in Egyptian and Egyptianizing objects at the time of the emperor Hadrian (114–141 ce), which had to do with the emperor's interest in Egypt. The city of Alexandria possessed the most important libraries of antiquity. Hadrian was a philhellene (a lover of Greek culture), and the Alexandrian libraries were the guardians of Greek literature and culture. It also happened that Hadrian's beloved Antinous had drowned in the Nile while visiting Egypt with the emperor. The death of a friend and accessibility to a cherished cultural heritage made Egypt so prominent in Hadrian's life that it brought about a new artistic movement. Even Hadrian's villa outside Rome featured an Egypt-inspired area.

Inscriptions asking for the well-being (salus ) of the imperial household (domus Augusta ) in the name of Isis's Hellenistic consort Sarapis appear predominantly in the period after Emperor Marcus Aurelius's victory over the Quadi, a Germanic people. István Tóth established in "Marcus Aurelius' Miracle of the Rain and the Egyptian Cults in the Danube Region" (1976) that the dedicators of these inscriptions were the emperor's generals. As the Quadi were close to victory on a blazing hot day, Arnouphis, a hierogrammateus (cultic scribe) and member of Marcus Aurelius's entourage, induced rain and alleviated the Roman legions' debilitating thirst. The Romans thus gained the advantage over their adversaries (Cassius Dio, 71.8). Isis and her consort Sarapis were now fully accepted guarantors of the Empire's well-being. Ultimately, at the time of the Severi (193–235 ce), the Roman dynastic ideology corresponded to the pharaonic-Ptolemaic one. Like Vespasian more than a century earlier, the legions of the East had made Septimius Severus, the founder of the dynasty, emperor.

Religion Practices

Two major festivals in honor of Isis are known: the public launching of the ship of Isis—the navigium Isidis, or ploiaphesia —which was celebrated on March 5 (Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 11.8–17), and the finding of Osiris—the inventio or heuresis Osiridis —from October 28 to November 3. A cult association had five antistites (priests or carriers of sacred objects), pastophori or hierophoroi, who in the cult hierarchy were below a sacerdos, priest. These five carried various insignia during a procession (Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 11.10). A sacerdos (man or woman) held his or her position for a year, sometimes for life. The lower priesthoods and cult positions were most often held for life. Inscriptions name guardians of temples (neokoroi or zakoroi), who may have helped during sacrifices. In the West the pastophori were equated with hierophoroi (both carriers of sacred objects) or hagiophoroi (carriers of the sacred) during imperial times. Greeks living in Egypt translated the title of the highest priest in the cult as prophetes (prophet). Outside Egypt, however, a prophetes is best thought of as pastophorus. In the Egyptian system the dresser (stolistes ) held the second highest position after the prophets. Documentation, however, records dressers of statues only in Athens in the second and third century ce.

In the West there is only one inscription of a dresser, an ornatrix fani (Vidman, 1969, inscription no. 731). Scribes (scriba, grammateus, or hierogrammateus ) (Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 11.17), follow the dressers in the Egyptian priestly hierarchy. They are, however, like astrologers (horoskopoi or horologoi) and singers (hymnodoi), not documented outside Egypt. Therapeutai or cultores were cult adherents without rank and function. The official heading the ploiaphesia in March, the nauarchus, trierarchos, hieronautes, or naubates, is only known through inscriptions from Rome's imperial period. He or she was not a priest but a lay member of the cult association. In general, one notes that priests and lay cult functionaries could have the same designation. In addition, not every dedicator of an inscription was a cult initiate. Most of the personal inscriptions were put up in fulfillment of a vow (ex-voto), and most of the official ones (pro salute imperatoris, for the well-being of the emperor) were political in nature.

In Roman times, temples of Isis (Isea ) were most often found outside the religious border of a city (the pomerium) and in an aqueous area in the vicinity of a river, an important water source, a marsh, or a port. Unlike Greco-Roman temples, Isea were not oriented toward public spaces. Even the innermost part of a temple of Isis, the cella (naos ), opened only inward. The doors of the temple were opened and closed in connection with a morning and an afternoon ceremony. Sacrifice was given during these ceremonies. Although Plutarch mentions sacrifice of a white and a saffron-colored rooster to Osiris (Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 61; see Griffiths, 1970, p. 518) and red cattle to Seth (Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 31; Griffiths, 1970, pp. 414–415), his treatise does not reveal what kind of sacrifice Isis received. Apuleius, in his Metamorphoses (11.21ff.), indicates that there were three initiation rituals. Whether this was indeed true is not known with certainty. As was the case with other mystery cults, the preparations of an initiate included abstinence and purification. The initiate (mystes ) experienced death and through it achieved new life. In contrast to public cults, social standing did not translate to a comparable position in the hierarchy of this mystery cult. The origins of the Isiac mysteries are not easily discerned, but it seems that there was an Egyptian element (Bianchi, 1980; Griffiths, 1970, pp. 390–392; Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 27; Junge, 1979; and Kákosy, 1999). The premier temple of Isis, the Iseum on Philae, closed its doors forever during the reign of Justinian I (527–561 ce).

See Also

Goddess Worship, article on Goddess Worship in the Hellenistic World; Mystery Religions.

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