Custom search
Enter
Registration
Authorization
No account?
Register now!
Login *
Password *
Remember me
Remind me of my password
Remind me of my username
Registering a new user
Fields marked with an asterisk ( * ) are required.
Name *
Login *
Password *
Confirm password *
Email *
E mail *
Verification code *
Reload Captcha
Registration
Register or log in using the social network.networks to get advanced features
Main
The Pharaohs
00 Dynasty
0 Dynasty
I Dynasty
II Dynasty
III Dynasty
IV Dynasty
V Dynasty
VI Dynasty
VII Dynasty
VIII Dynasty
IX Dynasty
X Dynasty
XI Dynasty
XII Dynasty
XIII Dynasty
XIV Dynasty
XV Dynasty
XVI Dynasty
Abydos
XVII Dynasty
XVIII Dynasty
XIX Dynasty
XX Dynasty
XXI Dynasty
XXII Dynasty
XXIII Dynasty
XXIV Dynasty
XXV Dynasty
XXVI Dynasty
XXVII Dynasty
XXVIII Dynasty
XXIX Dynasty
XXX Dynasty
Macedonian
The Ptolemies
Categories
Chronology
The Pharaohs
Queens
Dynasties
Religion
The Gods
Priests
Society
Calendar
Crafts
Crowns
Architecture
Valley of the Kings
Art
Statues
Literature
Map of Egypt
Egyptology
Media Center
Video materials
About the project
Print
E mail
Facebook
Twitter
My world
Vkontakte
Classmates
Google+
Isis
The article is located in the categories
Religion
Egyptian Gods
0
The content of the article The origins of the cult The Myth of Osiris and Isis The myth of Ra and Isis Symbols Centers of worship of Isis in the ancient tradition
The name of Isis in hieroglyphs
sida (Isis) (Egypt. js. t, etc. - Greek .σσις, Lat. Isis) is one of the greatest goddesses of antiquity, who became a model for understanding the Egyptian ideal of femininity and motherhood.
She was revered as the sister and spouse of Osiris, the mother of Horus, and, accordingly, the Egyptian kings, who were originally considered the earthly incarnations of the sokol headed god.
1. The origins of the cult
Being very ancient, the cult of Isis probably originates from the Nile Delta.
Here was one of the oldest cult centers of the goddess, Hebet, called by the Greeks Iseion (modern Behbeit el Hagar), currently lying in ruins.
Probably, initially she was a local deity of the Sebennite, but already the "Pyramid Texts" of the V Dynasty indicate the key role of this goddess in the general Egyptian pantheon.
Initially associated with the god Horus, due to the rise of the popular cult of Osiris, Isis is already the sister and wife of Osiris and the mother of Horus.
Its original features in the period of the New Kingdom are transferred to Hathor.
In the Heliopolitan theological system, Isis, the younger deity of the Ennead, was worshipped as the daughter of the god Heb and the goddess Nut, respectively, as the great granddaughter of Ra.
In the myths, some of which have come down to our time only in the well known retelling of Plutarch ("About Isis and Osiris"), the goddess is well known as the faithful spouse of Osiris, whose body she found in long wanderings after the god was killed by his brother Seth.
After collecting the remains of Osiris cut into pieces, Isis, with the help of the god Anubis, made the first mummy out of them.
Isis fashioned a phallus out of clay (the only part of the body of Osiris that Isis could not find was the phallus: it was eaten by fish), consecrated it and attached it to the assembled body of Osiris.
Turning into a female vulture — the bird of Khat, Isis spread her wings over the mummy of Osiris, uttered magic words and became pregnant.
In the temple of Hathor in Dendera and the temple of Osiris in Abydos, relief compositions have been preserved, which show the secret act of conception of a son by the goddess in the image of a falcon stretched over the mummy of her husband.
In memory of this, Isis was often depicted in the form of a beautiful woman with bird wings, with which she protects Osiris, the king or simply the deceased.
Isis often appears on her knees, wearing a white afnet bandage, mourning each deceased person as she once mourned Osiris himself.
According to legend, Osiris became the ruler of the afterlife, while Isis gave birth to Horus in a reed nest in the swamps of Hemmis (Delta).
Numerous statues and reliefs depict the goddess breastfeeding her son, who took the form of a pharaoh.
Together with the goddesses Nut, Tefnut and Nephthys, Isis, who bears the epithet "Beautiful", is present at the birth of each pharaoh, helping the queen mother to be delivered from the burden.
Isis is "the great enchantress, the first among the gods", the mistress of spells and secret prayers; she is called in trouble, her name is pronounced to protect children and family.
According to legend, in order to acquire secret knowledge and gain magical power, the goddess fashioned a snake from the saliva of the aging god Ra and earth, which stung the solar deity.
In exchange for healing, Isis demanded that Ra tell her his secret name, the key to all the mysterious forces of the universe, and became "the lady of the gods, the one who knows Ra in his own name."
With her knowledge, Isis, one of the patron deities of medicine, healed the baby Horus, who was stung by scorpions in the swamps.
Since then, like the goddess Selket, she was sometimes revered as the great lady of the scorpions.
The goddess gave her secret powers to the Mountain, thereby arming it with great magical power.
With the help of cunning, Isis helped Horus to gain the upper hand over Set during the dispute over the throne and inheritance of Osiris and become the ruler of Egypt.
3. The myth of Ra and Isis
Isis.
A painted relief from the tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings.
The XIX dynasty.
Isis, having a reputation among people as a sorceress, decided to test her powers on the gods.
In order to become the mistress of heaven, she decided to find out the secret name of Ra.
She noticed that Ra had become old by that time, saliva dripped from the corners of his lips and fell to the ground.
She collected drops of Ra's saliva, mixed it with dust, made a snake out of it, pronounced her spells over it and put it on the road along which the sun god passed daily.
After a while, the snake bit Ra, he screamed terribly, and all the gods rushed to his aid.
Ra said that despite all his spells and his secret name, he was bitten by a snake.
Isis promised him that she would heal him, but he must tell his secret name.
The sun god said that he was Khepri in the morning, Ra at noon and Atum in the evening, but this did not satisfy Isis.
And then Ra said: "Let Isis search in me, and my name will pass from my body to hers."
After that, Ra disappeared from the sight of the gods on his boat, and the throne in the Boat of the Lord of Millions of Years became free.
Isis agreed with Horus that Ra should swear that he would part with his two Eyes (the Sun and the Moon).
When Ra agreed that his secret name should become the property of the sorceress, and his heart was taken out of his chest, Isis said: "Expiring, Poison, come out of Ra, Eye of Horus, come out of Ra and shine on his lips.
It is I who conjure, Isis, and it was I who caused the poison to fall to the ground.
Truly, the name of the great god is taken from him, Ra will live, and poison will die; if poison lives, Ra will die."
4. Symbols
The symbol of Isis was the royal throne, the sign of which is often placed on the head of the goddess.
Since the era of the New Kingdom, the cult of the goddess has become closely intertwined with the cult of Hathor, as a result of which Isis sometimes has a headdress in the form of a solar disk framed by cow horns.
The sacred animal of Isis as the mother goddess was considered the " great white cow of Heliopolis — - the mother of the Memphis bull Apis.
One of the widespread symbols of the goddess is the amulet tet - "the knot of Isis", or "the blood of Isis", often made of red minerals carnelian and jasper.
Like Hathor, Isis commands gold, which was considered a model of incorruptibility; on the sign of this metal, she is often depicted kneeling.
The celestial manifestations of Isis are, first of all, the star Sepedet, or Sirius, the "lady of the stars", with the rising of which the Nile spreads from one tear of the goddess; as well as the formidable hippopotamus Isis Hesamut (Isis, the terrible mother) in the guise of the constellation Ursa Major, who keeps the leg of the dismembered Seth in the heavens with the help of her crocodile companions.
Also, Isis, together with Nephthys, can appear in the form of gazelles that keep the horizon of heaven; the emblem in the form of two gazelles of the goddesses was worn on diadems by the younger spouses of the pharaoh in the era of the New Kingdom.
Another incarnation of Isis is the goddess Shentait, who appears in the form of a cow, the patroness of funeral veils and weaving, the mistress of the sacred sarcophagus, in which, according to the Osiric ritual of the mysteries, the body of Osiris killed by his brother is reborn.
The side of the world that the goddess commands is the west, her ritual objects are the sistrum and the sacred vessel for milk — the situla.
Together with Nephthys, Neith and Selket, Isis was the great patroness of the deceased, protected the western part of the sarcophagi with her divine wings, commanded the anthropomorphic spirit Imseti, one of the four "sons of Horus", the patrons of canopes.
5. Centers of worship
Terracotta statue of Isis mourning Osiris.
The XVIII dynasty.
Louvre, Paris
The famous sanctuary of Isis, which existed until the disappearance of the ancient Egyptian civilization, is located on the island of Philae, near Aswan.
Here the goddess, revered in many other temples of Nubia, was worshipped until the VI century AD, at a time when the rest of Egypt was already Christianized.
The sanctuary of Isis and Osiris on Philae remained outside the scope of the edict of Emperor Theodosius I on the prohibition of pagan cults in 391 by virtue of an agreement reached by Diocletian with the rulers of Nobatia, who visited the temple in Philae as an oracle.
Finally, the Byzantine emperor Justinian I sent the military commander Narses to destroy the religious buildings on the island and deliver their relics to Constantinople.
Other centers of worship of the goddess were located throughout Egypt; the most famous of them is Koptos, where Isis was considered the consort of the god Min, the lord of the eastern desert; Dendera, where the sky goddess Nut gave birth to Isis, and, of course, Abydos, in whose sacred triad the goddess was included together with Osiris and Horus.
A Gnostic hymn associated by some researchers with Isis
Let there be no one who does not know me anywhere and never!
Beware, do not be ignorant of me!
For I am the first and the last.
I am revered and despised.
I am a harlot and a saint.
I am a wife and a virgin.
I am a mother and daughter.
I am the members of my mother's body.
I am infertility, and there are many of her sons.
I am someone whose marriages are many, and I have not been married.
I am the one who facilitates childbirth and the one who did not give birth.
I am a consolation in my labor pains.
I am a newlywed and a newlywed.
And my husband is the one who gave birth to me.
I am my father's mother and my husband's sister, and he is my offspring.
(Thunder.
A Perfect Mind.
Hymn from the library of Nag Hammadi, I III centuries AD)
6.
Isis in the ancient tradition
The Temple of Isis in Pompeii
The goddess was well known to the Greeks and Romans.
The wife of Osiris.
She was identified with Demeter.
She invented sails when she was looking for her son Harpocrates (Horus).
Identified with Io, the daughter of Inah, the Egyptians so called Io.
Some believe that she became the constellation of Virgo.
I put Sirius on the Dog's head.
The fish that helped her became the constellation of the Southern Fish, and her sons became Pisces.
The famous work of the ancient author Apuleius "Metamorphoses" describes the initiation ceremonies into the servants of the goddess, although their full symbolic content remains a mystery.
The cult of Isis and the mysteries associated with it acquired a significant spread in the Greco Roman world, comparable to Christianity and Mithraism.
As the universal mother goddess, Isis enjoyed wide popularity during the Hellenistic era not only in Egypt, where her cult and sacraments flourished in Alexandria,but also throughout the Mediterranean.
Its temples (Latin Iseum) in Byblos, Athens, Rome are well known; the temple discovered in Pompeii is well preserved.
The alabaster statue of Isis of the III century BC, discovered in Ohrid, is depicted on a Macedonian banknote of 10 denars.
In the late Antique era, the sanctuaries and mysteries of Isis were widely distributed in other cities of the Roman Empire, among which the temple in Lutetia stood out (modern times).
Paris).
In Roman times, Isis far surpassed the cult of Osiris in its popularity and became a serious rival to the formation of early Christianity.
Caligula, Vespasian and Titus Flavius Vespasian made generous offerings to the sanctuary of Isis in Rome.
In one of the images on the triumphal arch of Trajan in Rome, the emperor is shown donating wine to Isis and the Mountain.
The Emperor Galerius considered Isis his patroness.
Some authors of the XIX XX centuries saw echoes of the cult of Isis in the veneration of "Black Madonnas" in Christian churches in medieval France and Germany.
There was also an opinion about the iconographic influence of the image of Isis with the infant Horus Harmachis on the image of the Virgin with the infant Jesus, as well as parallels between the motive of the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt from the persecution of Herod and the story of how Isis hid the young Horus in the reeds, fearing the wrath of Set.
According to the well known ethnographer and religious scholar James Fraser, the elements of the cult of Isis had a significant impact on the Christian rite:
The majestic ritual of Isis — these priests with tonsures, matins and evening services, bell ringing, baptism, sprinkling with holy water, solemn processions and jewelry images of the Mother of God <...> — in many respects resembles the magnificent ceremonial of Catholicism.
However, a number of similarities mentioned by Fraser are controversial.
For example, Fraser mentions the tonsure of the priests of Isis, although, according to Plutarch, the priests of Isis completely removed the hair on the head and body.
Sources
Website " Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia"
Published: April 26, 2012
Updated: May 28, 2015
Views: 2119
Alphabetical index
A B C G D E F Z I K L M N O P R S T U F X H W E Y I 0-9 A Z
Please join us...
Vkontakte
In Odnoklassniki
If you notice an error in the text, select the necessary fragment and press Ctrl+Enter to inform the site administrator about it
Categories
Chronology Religion Society Architecture Art Literature Map of Egypt Egyptology
Media Center
Video materials
Search
Rubricator Search form
About us
About the project VKontakte Group Group in Odnoklassniki
Account
Log In Registration
Copyright © 2013- 2017.
Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt v.3.
Reprinting and using the author's materials of the site on other resources is allowed only if there is an active link to the source.
The information on the site is provided solely for review, some of it was taken from open Internet sources.
If you believe that your rights are being violated on this site, please report it to egyptopedia@mail.ru
