otherwise inexplicable: matters that today we explain by science. To address the fundamental need for understanding, to explain creation and death, each priesthood devised a mythology featuring their own particular god. Hathor, Lady of Perfume, was celebrated as the daughter of the sun god Re; an uninhibited goddess of motherhood, music, love and drunkenness. In some tales she assumed the role of the Golden One to accompany Re on his daily journey across the sky. In others she was the gentle cow who suckled the king of Egypt. At Memphis she was the Mistress of the Sycamore, who sustained the dead with food and drink; at Thebes she became the compassionate Mistress of the West, who cared for the dying sun. But when she was roused, mild-mannered Hathor transformed into Sekhmet, the Powerful One. Sekhmet, an uncompromising lion-headed goddess who breathed fire and was armed with plagues and pestilence, was the protector of Egypt’s kings. From the reign of Narmer onwards, the cult of Hathor grew in importance until it became Egypt’s dominant female-based cult.
Isis, several centuries younger than Hathor, is first named as a protective goddess, ‘the Great Isis’, in the 5th Dynasty Pyramid texts, where she appears as one of the nine original gods (the Ennead) of Heliopolis. Her name, Aset in the original Egyptian, is represented by the sign of a throne, and Isis herself often appears with a small thronesign topping her crown. Alternatively Isis could be identified with the cobra or uraeus worn on the royal brow. This obvious connection between the goddess and kingship, both living and dead, would persist as long as the cult of Isis survived. As the dynastic age progressed, Isis grew in status and power, absorbing the roles, traditions and accessories of other Egyptian goddesses, including the once-dominant Hathor, so that by the start of the Ptolemaic age Hathor and Isis were virtually indistinguishable in appearance. Both were beautiful women who wore the tall cow horn and solar disc headdress, and both carried the sistrum or sacred rattle whose rhythms could stimulate the gods.
Outside Egypt the cult of Isis was spread by the sailors, merchants and travellers who regularly sailed around the eastern Mediterranean, using the Greek island of Delos, home to a flourishing cult of Isis, as a trading post. Herodotus, writing in c . 450, was tolerably familiar with the goddess:
All Egyptians use bulls and bull-calves for sacrifice, if they have passed the test for ‘cleanness’; but they are forbidden to sacrifice heifers, on the ground that they are sacred to Isis. The statue of Isis shows a female figure with cow’s horns, like the Greek representations of Io… 5
Just as she had absorbed Hathor, Isis gradually assimilated the attributes and appearance of several Greek goddesses. The earth mother Demeter, the wise Athene, the sister-consort Hera, the virgin huntress Artemis and, most particularly, the beautiful and loving Aphrodite all donated aspects of their mythology, allowing Isis to develop into a versatile, powerful, universal goddess with an appeal strong enough to make her, in the first century AD , a serious rival to the growing cult of Christianity. 6 The first apparent reference to a cult of Isis in mainland Greece comes from Piraeus, the port of Athens, and pre-dates Alexander’s arrival in Egypt. The next, more firmlyestablished reference dates to the second century BC . In Rome, the first temple to Isis was raised on the Capitoline Hill in c . 80. It was destroyed almost immediately, then quickly replaced. Successive temples were destroyed (and subsequently rebuilt) in 58, 53, 50 and 48 and in AD 19. Meanwhile, the official Roman attitude to Isis was both cautious and inconsistent. Julius Caesar refused the priesthood of Isis permission to enter Rome, yet the triumvirate permitted a sanctuary dedicated to the gods of Egypt, Isis included, in 43.
This Graeco-Roman Isis was a healer, a wise woman and a
Isis, several centuries younger than Hathor, is first named as a protective goddess, ‘the Great Isis’, in the 5th Dynasty Pyramid texts, where she appears as one of the nine original gods (the Ennead) of Heliopolis. Her name, Aset in the original Egyptian, is represented by the sign of a throne, and Isis herself often appears with a small thronesign topping her crown. Alternatively Isis could be identified with the cobra or uraeus worn on the royal brow. This obvious connection between the goddess and kingship, both living and dead, would persist as long as the cult of Isis survived. As the dynastic age progressed, Isis grew in status and power, absorbing the roles, traditions and accessories of other Egyptian goddesses, including the once-dominant Hathor, so that by the start of the Ptolemaic age Hathor and Isis were virtually indistinguishable in appearance. Both were beautiful women who wore the tall cow horn and solar disc headdress, and both carried the sistrum or sacred rattle whose rhythms could stimulate the gods.
Outside Egypt the cult of Isis was spread by the sailors, merchants and travellers who regularly sailed around the eastern Mediterranean, using the Greek island of Delos, home to a flourishing cult of Isis, as a trading post. Herodotus, writing in c . 450, was tolerably familiar with the goddess:
All Egyptians use bulls and bull-calves for sacrifice, if they have passed the test for ‘cleanness’; but they are forbidden to sacrifice heifers, on the ground that they are sacred to Isis. The statue of Isis shows a female figure with cow’s horns, like the Greek representations of Io… 5
Just as she had absorbed Hathor, Isis gradually assimilated the attributes and appearance of several Greek goddesses. The earth mother Demeter, the wise Athene, the sister-consort Hera, the virgin huntress Artemis and, most particularly, the beautiful and loving Aphrodite all donated aspects of their mythology, allowing Isis to develop into a versatile, powerful, universal goddess with an appeal strong enough to make her, in the first century AD , a serious rival to the growing cult of Christianity. 6 The first apparent reference to a cult of Isis in mainland Greece comes from Piraeus, the port of Athens, and pre-dates Alexander’s arrival in Egypt. The next, more firmlyestablished reference dates to the second century BC . In Rome, the first temple to Isis was raised on the Capitoline Hill in c . 80. It was destroyed almost immediately, then quickly replaced. Successive temples were destroyed (and subsequently rebuilt) in 58, 53, 50 and 48 and in AD 19. Meanwhile, the official Roman attitude to Isis was both cautious and inconsistent. Julius Caesar refused the priesthood of Isis permission to enter Rome, yet the triumvirate permitted a sanctuary dedicated to the gods of Egypt, Isis included, in 43.
This Graeco-Roman Isis was a healer, a wise woman and a
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