Isis
（
Ἶσις). The divinity most extensively worshipped, with
her brother and husband Osiris, by the Egyptians, among whom she represented the feminine,
receptive, and producing principle in nature. As the goddess of procreation and birth her
symbol was the cow. On monuments she is mostly represented as of youthful appearance with a
cow's horns on her head, between the horns the orb of the moon, and with a sceptre of flowers
and the emblem of life in her hands. Her greatest temple stood at Busiris (i. e. Pe-Osiri, or
Abode of Osiris) in the midst of the Delta of the Nile, where, amidst the fruitful fields, the
inhabitants worshipped the mightiest god and goddess with cere
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Egyptian Isis and Horus (Harpocrates). (Berlin Museum.)
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monies which typified the search and discovery of Osiris by his mourning wife after
his murder by Typhon. Like Osiris she was a divinity who ruled over the world below. In the
course of the fusion of religions which took place under the Ptolemies, Isis and Osiris were
confounded with all manner of Asiatic and Greek gods. In process of time she became in her
power the most universal of all goddesses, ruling in heaven, on earth, and on the sea, and in
the world below, decreeing life and death, deciding the fate of men, and dispensing rewards
and punishments. Her worship spread over Greece, and after the Second Punic War obtained a
firm footing in Rome in spite of repeated interference by the State. In the days of the Empire
it obtained recognition by the State and established itself in all parts of the Roman
dominions. The attractiveness of the service of Isis lay in the religious satisfaction which
it was calculated to insure. Through abstinence from food and from sensual
pleasures, and through expiations and purifications, it promised to lead its votaries to
sanctification of life and to a true perception of the life divine. The ritual consisted in
part of a morning and evening service to the god, partly in annual festivals celebrated in
spring at the return of the season for navigation, and also in the late autumn before the
advent of winter. At the former festival, held on the fifth of March, and called the ship of
Isis (
Isidis navigium), in recognition of her being the patroness of
navigation, and inventress of the sail, the people in general, with the devotees and priests
of Isis, went in solemn procession down to the seashore, where a sailing-vessel painted in the
Egyptian manner and laden with spices, was committed to the sea (
Ov.
Met. xi. 8-17, esp. 11; Matern.
De Err. Prof. Relig.
2).
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Isis. (Cairo Museum.)
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The other feast was emblematic of the grief of Isis at her loss and her joy at finding again
her husband Osiris and her son Horus. Besides these popular feasts there were also certain
special mysteries of Isis, which in all their essentials were borrowed from the Eleusinian
mysteries of Demeter. (See
Mysteria.) In these, all
who were called thereto by the goddess in a dream were admitted to the select circle of the
worshippers of Isis. These devotees, like the priests, were recognized by their linen robes
and their shaven heads, and had to devote themselves to an ascetic life. Oracular responses
received in dreams were as much associated with the temples of Isis as with those of
Serapis (q.v.). In Greek art the goddess is represented
as similar to Heré. Her attributes are a serpent, a cornucopia, ears of corn,
lotus, moon and horns, as well as the
sistrum (q. v.), a metal rattle,
specially employed in her service.
See Chantepie de la Saussaye,
Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, vol. i.
(1887); R.
Lepsius, Ueber den ersten ägyptischen
Götter kreis (1851); Brugsch Pasha,
Religion und Mythologie
der alten Aegypter, vol. i.
(1884);
Lefébure,
Étude de la Religion Égyptienne (1886).
