ISIS

Isis is the Greek name of Aset (or Iset ), the protective and saving goddess of the Egyptian Mythologie. It belongs to large the Ennéade of Iounou (Héliopolis).

Isis seems to have been at old times the personification of the throne; its name in hiéroglyphes Iset , means the seat . In the inscriptions, it is represented under the features of a capped woman of a seat (which resembles a stool with three steps).

Later, its representation changes; one sees it like a woman carrying the horns of the cow enclosing a lunar sphere (especially not to be confused with Hathor).

Goddess-mother

It may be that she is the heiress of a prehistoric goddess-mother venerated in the delta, where, according to the Mythe she raised the child Horus. One also supposed his relationship with a démone mésopotamienne, the Lilith of the myth of Gilgamesh. At the end of, it is mentioned in the Textes of the Pyramids, where it protects the late king from the putrefaction. The Ramessides built to him sanctuaries with Memphis and Abydos in particular. At the time gréco-Roman, it became the universal goddess, called upon both in Egypt and in all the Mediterranean basin and beyond. One builds the temple of Philae to him, on the Nile, which it was necessary to move on the island of Agilika because of the stopping of Aswan.

Isis is the Large Goddess par excellence.

In the myth osirien, it is the wife and exemplary sister who, thanks to her magic capacities and with the assistance of her sister Nephtys, succeeds with ressusciter Osiris, her brother and husband, the time of a union from which was born the god Horus. She found thirteen of the fourteen parts of the body of her beloved (the missing part being the sex, which she reconstituted out of clay), assassinated and cut up by Seth, his/her jealous brother. Isis insufflated the breath of the life to him, and gave him a son, Horus. It is myth osirien which came to Pharaonic Egypt the habit to arrange incestueux marriages in the royal family, not only to preserve family and royal pure blood, but also to perpetuate this divine rite which made them gods (because Pharaon and the queen were gods as well as those enumerated Ci-high)

Symbole of femininity in its biological aspects, it is by it that achieves the mystery of the life. In language freudien, one could even say that Isis represents the matrix, the female cut which receives the male principle.

As a magician having brought back Osiris to the life, it is also goddess healer and protective children. The patients carried sometimes amulets to its effigy.

As a mother of Horus, it is dispenser of life and goddess guardian who takes care on her child. In this role, it is often represented in Isis lactans at the time Roman, carrying the Horus child in his arms and giving him the center. The Virgin nursing Christ is certainly not without relationship with the memory of the wife of Osiris and the Christian black virgins are as many reminiscences of it.

As a widow of Osiris, it is a protective divinity of the late one. With Nephtys, Neith and Serket, it is guardian of the sarcophagus which it protects from her deployed arms, whereas Imsety, wire of Horus, day before on one of the four vases canopes containing the internal organs of the late one: vase with head of man who contains the liver.

Attributes

Isis took the aspect and the attributes of several other goddesses like Serket, Hathor, Neith and Nout, to melt them in only one and single divinity.

Its attributes, which it shares with other divinities, are:

the ânkh, the ansée cross symbol of life;
the sistre and the collar menat of Hathor;
the solar disk and horns of Hathor;
the cap in the shape of vulture, attribute of the celestial goddesses.
Before being represented with the cap in vulture, it carried a crown in the shape of royal throne.

Greek and Roman Panthéons

Greek , then the Roman , inserted it in their respective Pantheon.

Ancient Greece

Under the Lagides, Isis crosses the borders of Egypt. It was comparable with many Greek or Roman goddesses such as Déméter, Perséphone, Diane of Dictys, Séléné, Cérès or Minerve Cécropienne.

Ancient Rome

Rome officially adopted it at the time imperial. With Pompéi, she was adored with Osiris-Sérapis and Anubis. The emperor Caligula was an excessively pious person of Isis. In its villa with Tivoli, Hadrian made build a temple dedicated to the husband of the goddess, Osiris-Sérapis; Caracalla even built a temple of Isis to Rome.

Roman provinces

The worship of the saving goddess was spread in the Roman provinces, around the the Mediterranean, but also in Pannonia, Gaulle, sometimes giving his name to certain sites such that of Izieux (Place of Isis) in the south-west of Saint-Chamond in the department of the the Loire as on the edges of the Rhine or in Brittany. Like the Déméter of Eleusis, Isis, in its Large Mysteries, ensured immortality the initiates. At the Lower Empire, only the initiatory worship of the Iranian god Mithra will exceed to it his by the number of the faithful ones. Well after the advent of Christianity, one continued to adore Isis, in the temple of Philae and elsewhere. Its worship died out in Philae only towards 535, under the emperor Justinien.

Isis is at the origin of one of the richest Mythe S of the humanity, whose tradition remained alive in arts and the literature.

Places of worships of Isis

In arts and the literature

Jean-Baptiste Lully composed in 1677 a lyric Tragédie entitled Isis , recalling the adventures of the nymph Io which becomes thanks to Jupiter the Isis goddess at the end of the opera, connecting mythologies thus Greek and Egyptian. This opera, also baptized the opera of the musicians because of the many musical instruments emphasized, is characterized by a prolog triumphing with trumpets drinking cups and drums, celebrating the glory of Louis {{XIV}} after the victories of this one in the Netherlands. A noticed passage is the chorus of the tremblers.

Isis is the first novel of Villiers of Isle-Adam, where criticisms, such Bernard Christmas, agree to see a great beauty of writing which in fact a masterpiece of the French literature.

the search of Isis is the third volume of the prospects dépravées for Jurgis Baltrusaitis, test on the legend of a myth.

the buckled image of Know is a poem of Friedrich von Schiller in connection with the veil of Isis (1795).

Isis is a song of Bob Dylan published on the “Desired” album.

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