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Bible Encyclopedias
Isis
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
or (Ισις ), an Egyptian deity, sister and wife of Osiris (q.v.), is called by the Egyptians His, and is by them said to have been born on the 4th day of the Epagomena. or five days added to the Egyptian year of 360 days. The history of the worship of Isis is very obscure, all the information we possess on the subject being derived from Greek writers. Tradition said that her brother Osiris having married her, they together undertook the task of civilizing men, and taught them agriculture; their marriage produced Horus. Their other brother, Typhon, being at enmity with them. succeeded once in surprising Osiris, murdered him, and deposited the body in a box, which he threw into the sea (Nile). Isis, while wandering about in mourning, seeking Osiris, heard that Osiris, before his departure, had been enamored with her sister Nephthys, who had had a son, now abandoned by the mother for fear of Typhon. By the aid of some dogs Isis succeeded in discovering that son, Anubes by name; she at once adopted him, and brought him up, and he became her faithful follower. In the mean time, the box containing Osiris drifted in the sea towards Byblos, Phoenicia, and was arrested by a bush, which soon grew into a tree, the box remaining enclosed in the wood. The king of Byblos caused a column to be made of this tree for his palace. Isis hastened thither to investigate the rumor, and, to avoid recognition, offered her services to ‘ the queen as nurse. At nightfall she put one of the children placed under her care in the fire, to divest it of all that was mortal, while she herself, in the form of a swallow, flew around the column which contained Osiris. The queen, seeing her child in the fire, cried out loudly, and thus deprived him of immortality. The goddess now revealed herself amidst thunder and lightning, and at one blow broke down the column, out of which the box containing Osiris fell. This she carried to her son Horus, who had been brought up in Butos, and he hid it. Typhon, however, discovered it, recognized the body, and tore it into 14 pieces (according to others, into 26 or 28 pieces). By means of magic, Isis succeeded in gathering all these pieces with the exception of the genitals, to replace which she made artificial ones. This is the reason why the Egyptians considered the Phallus as sacred. The body was now interred at Philae, which became the principal burial-place of the Egyptians. Osiris, however, returned from Hades to educate his son, and Isis bore him again another son, Harpocrates. As, however, she allowed Typhon, who had been captured by Horus, and whom she was to have killed to escape, Horns took the crown from her, and in its place Hermes placed bulls' horns on her head, since which Isis has generally been represented under the form of a woman with the horns of a cow. Isis was originally for the Egyptian a personification of the valley of the Nile, fecundated by Osiris, the god of the Nile. In after times, when, under the influence of foreign notions, Osiris came to be considered as the god of the sun, Isis was transformed into the goddess of the moon, and consequently as a friendly and life-imparting deity. She was also considered as the goddess of the lower world, of which she was said to hold the keys, and to be the ruler and judge. She subsequently came to be regarded as the ruler of the sea, the law-giver and protector of marriage, the support of the state, the foundress of religion and the mysteries; and she finally obtained such importance that she was considered by the philosophers as the fundamental principle of the world, the divine power which is the cause of all the phenomenon of nature, and the source of divine and human life.
In the monuments Isis is called the goddess-mother, the mistress of heaven, sister and wife of Osiris, and nurse of Horus, the mourner of her brother, the eye of the sun, and regent of the gods. In her terrestrial character she wears upon her head the throne which represented her name; in her celestial, the disc and horns, or tall plumes. She is often seen nursing Horus (q.v.); sometimes also with the head of a cow (indicating her identity with the cow Athor, the mother of the sun), having a ball between her horns, the lotus on the top of her head, and the sistrum in her hand. She mostly wore a cloak fastened on her bosom by a knot; other images represent her with a spear, or, again, with the head of a hawk and wings, a spear in her right hand and a snake in the left, or with a flowing mantle and spreading a sail. Isis was worshipped throughout Egypt, and especially at Memphis. There was an image of her at Sais with the inscription," I am the all, that has been, is, and shall be, and my cloak has no mortal lifted yet." All annual festival of ten days' duration commemorated the victory of Isis over Typhon by means of the sistrum: on this occasion a solemn fast was succeeded by processions, in which sheaves of wheat were carried about in honor of Isis, etc. After Alexander the Great, the worship of Isis was propagated throughout all the countries inhabited by the Greeks; in Greece temples were erected to her at Phlius, Megara, Tithorea, and Phocis. The worship of Isis was also introduced into Rome in the time of Sulla (B.C. 86), but her temples were often closed on account of the licentiousness of her priests. (Josephus tells a story about the demolition of her temple at Rome by order of the emperor on account of an intrigue by one Mundus to secure the gratification of his passion for a Roman matron, Ant. 18, 3, 4). Yet, under the emperors, it found credit, and Domitian, Commodus, and Caracalla were themselves among her priests. Writers of those times say that it was in their day still the custom of the Greeks and Romans to carry a boat in solemn procession in honor of Isis on the opening of spring (March 5th). Hence, in the Roman calendar, the 5th of March is designated as Isidis navilium. As similar processions were also made by some of the German nations in honor of their deities, Tacitus claims that they also worshipped Isis; yet her name nowhere appears among them, neither is it exactly known what goddess he thus designated.
"The myth of Isis, as given by Plutarch (De Iside), appears to be a fusion of Egyptian and Phoenician traditions, and the esoterical explanations offered ‘ by that writer and others show the high antiquity and unintelligibility of her name. She was thought to mean the cause or seat of the earth, to be the same as the Egyptian Neith or Minerva, and Athor or Venus; to be the Greek Demeter or Ceres, Hecate, or even Io. Many monuments have been found of this goddess, and a tern. pie at Pompeii, and a hymn in her honor at Antioch. The representations of her under the Roman empire are most numerous, Isis having, in the pantheistic spirit of the age, been compared with and figured as all the principal goddesses of the Pantheon" (Chambers, Cyclopaedia, s.v.).
The fable was adopted and incorporated in the mysticism of the Gnostics. Accordingly, among other representations, we find a gem containing a beetle, with Isis on the opposite side, holding two children, the emblem of maternal fecundity. (See MADONNA). On another gem the beetle is not cut on the stone, but the stone is formed into the shape of the insect, and on the convex back is represented Isis, or the Egyptian Ceres, reclining beside the Nile, with two vases of Egyptian corn, the emblem of vegetable prolificness, naturally expressed by the emblem of the sun's rays and the Nile: from the head issues the lotus, and in one hand is held a nilometer, or perhaps a spade. It is the exact form of the same agricultural instrument as used at this day in the East. An amulet of Isis was held in great sanctity. (See EGYPT).
See Herod. 2, c. 59; Ovid, Metam. 9, 776; Bunsen, Egypt's Place, 1, 413; Wilkinson, Manners and Cust. 3, 276; 4:366; Birch, Gall. Ant. p. 31; Reichel, De Isis apud Romanos cultu (Berlin, 1849); Pierer, Universal Lexikon, 9, 82; Smith, Dict. of Class. Mythol. s.v.
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