Isis

What it is

Isis is one of the great deities of ancient Egyptian religion, and her worship travelled far beyond Egypt into the Greek and Roman world. In the Osiris myth she is sister and wife to the divine king Osiris, mother of Horus, and daughter of Geb and Nut. Egyptian texts credit her with more magical power than any other god, and say she ruled the natural world and held fate in her hands. Because she had restored Osiris to life, she was asked to help the dead reach the afterlife, and her motherly aid was called on in spells for healing. In art she appears as a woman with a throne-shaped sign on her head.

Where it comes from

Isis and Osiris are not named before the Fifth Dynasty, though an inscription that may mention her comes from the reign of Nyuserre Ini. She features prominently in the Pyramid Texts, written down at the end of that dynasty from material that may be older. Some of those passages tie her to the Delta, in the area of Behbeit el-Hagar and Sebennytos, and some scholars place the start of her cult there. Her Egyptian name, ꜣst, shifted in pronunciation over the centuries and became Ēse in Coptic, Wusa in Meroitic and Ἶσις in Greek, the form behind her English name. Whether it is related to st, the Egyptian word for a throne, is disputed.

How it is done

In Egypt her part in temple rites stayed modest for a long while. Mourning and burial were where she was felt most: the search for Osiris's scattered body and its reassembly became the pattern that Egyptian funerary custom followed, and texts for the dead carry speeches in which she grieves, desires and calls her husband back. Healing spells for ordinary people called on her motherly help. Under Greek and Roman rule her devotees went through initiation ceremonies of the kind used in other mystery cults of the region, and kept a festival called the Navigium Isidis.

Tools and materials

Her most recognisable sign is the seat: a throne-shaped hieroglyph sits on her head, and the same sign writes the sound of her name. The tyet and the star Sirius are named as her symbols. From Hathor she took a headdress of cow horns holding a sun disk, and one tale explains it by saying Horus replaced her head with a cow's. Spoken spells are her instrument in the myths, and the four sons of Horus, guardians of the organs of the dead, are called her children.

What it is for

People turned to Isis for several things. Because she had brought Osiris back, she was asked to make the dead whole and to welcome them as a mother welcomes a child. Because she had hidden and raised Horus, she was called on to keep the king safe, and her milk was a sign of his right to rule. Ordinary Egyptians sought her in spells against illness. Greek worshippers credited her with founding marriage and with guarding ships at sea, and late texts call her ruler of fate, with the length and quality of a life in her keeping.

Who does it

Temple ritual belonged to priests, and in the earliest royal ceremonies Isis had only a small part. In funerary practice her mourner's role was central: priests and relatives recited the speeches of Isis and Nephthys over the dead, and women were thought able to join the two goddesses' retinue in the afterlife. Ordinary people, not only the court, called on her in healing spells. Under Greek and Roman rule, devotees entered her cult through initiation ceremonies. In the myth itself Isis is the one who speaks the spells, and her learning in magic is what restores Osiris.

Peoples and places

Isis belongs to Egypt, and her temple at Philae drew worshippers from Nubia to the south as well, with rulers in both lands building shrines in her name. From the first millennium BCE she and Osiris were the most widely honoured Egyptian gods. When Greek kings ruled Egypt, from 323 to 30 BCE, Greeks and Egyptians alike worshipped her, and a new god, Serapis, was honoured alongside. Their following then moved out across the Mediterranean, and once Rome absorbed Hellenistic culture the cult took its place within Roman religion, its members spread thinly over the whole empire.

What people believe

Isis stands inside a family of gods. The Ennead of Heliopolis, nine deities descended from the creator Atum or Ra, passes rule down its male line, and she is of the last generation, born to Geb, the earth, and Nut, the sky. She is queen because Osiris is king. Egyptian belief held that her magic reached further than any other god's, that she governed the natural world and fate, and that she decided how long and how well a person lived by ruling the deities of destiny. After Osiris's death he ruled only in the Duat, the underworld, and it was through the son she bore that he endured.

When it is done

Her public calendar centres on festivals, above all the Navigium Isidis, kept by her followers in the Greco-Roman world. In Egyptian practice the moments that mattered were funerals and the great temple ceremonies, where her part was at first slight. The myth ties her to birth as well: in the Westcar Papyrus she attends three royal deliveries as a midwife and speaks each child's name as it arrives. Initiation into her cult was another fixed occasion for devotees under Greek and Roman rule.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Much scholarly effort has gone into her beginnings. Kurt Sethe proposed that she started as a personification of the throne, since the Egyptian word for throne, st, may share a root with her name; Henri Frankfort accepted this, arguing that the throne made a man king and so counted as his mother. Jürgen Osing and Klaus P. Kuhlmann rejected the idea, pointing to differences between the two words and to the absence of evidence that a throne was ever treated as a god. Barbara S. Lesko read her naming of the three children in the Westcar Papyrus as a sign of power over what is to come. Whether her cult shaped Christian practice is disputed, the evidence being ambiguous.

Compare and confuse

Isis is often set beside Hathor, whose headdress and traits she took over, and beside her sister Nephthys, who shares her mourning role. As her cult spread she absorbed features of many other goddesses and was paired with the new god Serapis. Her name was written ꜣst in Egyptian, Ēse in Coptic, Wusa in Meroitic and Ἶσις in Greek, the last of these giving the English form.

Law and persecution

Under the Greek kings of Egypt, and then under Rome from the first century BCE, the cult of Isis was an accepted part of public religion, though its members were a small share of the empire's people. They could be found across the whole territory, and that standing ended as Christianity rose: between the fourth and sixth centuries CE her worship came to an end.

Today

The old cult came to an end, yet the figure has not disappeared. Writers in the esoteric tradition and practitioners of modern pagan religion take her up, and many of them read her as a picture of the natural world or of the divine in female form. Her stories and images turn up in art and in literature as well.

Questions people ask about Isis

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle

• Isis on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data