She wanted to bring back her dead husband Osiris who was the god of the underworld and regeneration. His brother, Set, who was the god of violence and destruction, murdered him with the help of his 72 associates.
The number 72 is significant because it comes up in a lot of places. For example, 72 hidden masters who are supposed to be ruling the world and 72 letters that occur in the Hebrew name of God. Isis gave birth to the son of Osiris named Horus, who was a holy child and somehow was Osiris himself.
It is not difficult to identify Isis in the Isis cult. Her image comes out of every image of another grieving goddess—the Virgin Mary. Their pictures are virtually identical. Virgin Mary holding Jesus and Isis holding Horus look-alike.
Similarly, Mary mourning the body of Jesus and Isis mourning the body of Horus look almost identical. Furthermore, Isis standing on her solar boat and Mary standing on a crescent look similar.
Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus. Navigium Isidis meaning Voyage of Isis was the main festival of the Isis cult. It was held in the month of March.
A procession was taken out from the temple to the harbor. People of the Isis cult dressed very well, usually in the guise of mythological characters. They indulged in full revelry with dance and music. It was like the Mardi Gras festival, minus bare breasts and strands of beads. For luck, an egg was broken on the hull.
The boat was then set loose and moved away carrying all the offerings and prayers. It also bore similarities to the sacred ways of the Eleusinian cult. She is known today by her Greek name Isis; however, the ancient Egyptians called her Aset. Sometimes she is also depicted with the vulture headdress of the goddess Mut, and other times with a disk with horns on the sides, attributed to the goddess Hathor. She took on their headdresses as she assimilated their traits. Every Pharaoh was her child.
This divine trinity, Osiris, Isis, and Horus, legitimated the power of the person sitting on the throne of Egypt. The Pyramid texts repeatedly mention her, like inside Unas pyramid, the King, now Osiris, directly addresses her.
Isis shared her ability to overcome death with ordinary Egyptians. She mourned in the form of a kite, a bird whose shrill cry sounds like the piercing screams of a grieving mother. Then, she magically resurrected the dead. Here are the words one hoped to hear Isis say in the afterlife. A maternal goddess, Isis was a reassuring figure, with the power to solve many life problems. She would save a child bitten by a deadly snake, as she saved Horus. A spell against snake bites calls for her motherly protection.
From the average person to Pharaoh, Isis helped with fertility, childbirth, love, healing, travel, and in due course, eternal life.
No wonder that Isis gave hope to millions of Egyptians. Isis gained her astonishing magical powers from the sun god, tricking Ra into giving her his powers. She was said to have ten thousand names. Among them were :. Originally, Isis only was associated to others in temples. Perplexed by the animal-human gods, both had no problem adopting a human, motherly figure. From the 4th century BC, Isis was worshipped in Greece.
By the Roman era, there was a sanctuary of Serapis in Athens and a small temple to Isis at the foot of the Acropolis. Towering above the city, the Serapeum was the most important Roman temple to Egyptian deities.
And Rome was the largest center for Egyptian gods outside Egypt. Even Romans uninterested in her ate bread made with Egyptian grain, transported by the Isis, the imperial carrier boat. It is said that a statue of Isis adorned a Parisian church until The son of Isis and Osiris was Horus. Other names by which Isis was known in Egypt are Auset, Aset, or Eset, which are words that were often associated with the word for "throne.
She was both the sister and wife of Osiris but in ancient Egypt, incest was seen as normal in the lives of the Egyptian Gods as it maintained the sacred bloodline of the gods. Isis was also touted as the mother and protector of the Pharaohs. The main function of Isis was as the goddess of magic, love, motherhood, and fertility.
She was a member of the Ennead and a part of the nine most important gods in ancient Egypt. The symbols used for her were the 'throne' headdress, the moon disk with cow's horns, the sycamore tree, the kite hawk, outspread wings, and the throne. Isis was usually represented as a woman donning a long sheath dress and an empty throne as her headdress. The empty headdress represented the death of her husband and her role as the seat of the power of the pharaoh.
In some scenes, she is seen as a woman with a headdress of a solar disc and horn.
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