 Isis,
in Egyptian mythology, goddess of fertility and motherhood. According to
the Egyptian belief, she was the daughter of the god Keb ("Earth") and
the goddess Nut ("Sky"), the sister-wife of Osiris, judge of the dead,
and mother of Horus, god of day. After the end of the New Kingdom in the
4th century BC, the center of Isis worship, which was then reaching its
greatest peak, was on Philae, an island in the Nile, where a great temple
was built to her during the 30th Dynasty. Ancient stories described Isis
as having great magical skill, and she was represented as human in form
though she was frequently described as wearing the horns of a cow. Her
personality was believed to resemble that of Athor, or Hathor, the goddess
of love and gaiety. The cult of Isis spread from Alexandria throughout
the Hellenistic world after the 4th century BC. It appeared in Greece in
combination with the cults of Horus, her son, and Serapis, the Greek name
for Osiris. The Greek historian Herodotus identified Isis with Demeter,
the Greek goddess of earth, agriculture, and fertility. The tripartite
cult of Isis, Horus, and Serapis was later introduced (86 BC) into Rome
in the consulship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla and became one of the most
popular branches of Roman religion. It later received a bad reputation
through the licentiousness of some of its priestly rites, and subsequent
consuls made efforts to suppress or limit Isis worship. The cult died out
in Rome after the institution of Christianity, and the last remaining Egyptian
temples to Isis were closed in the middle of the 6th century AD. |
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