Burnett 1

Erin Burnett
CNRS 501
Wilson
1 October 2008

She Whose Names Cannot Be Numbered

“‘[H]ere I am-- I, the mother of the universe, the mistress of all the elements, the firstborn

offspring of the world of time; I, the highest of the powers above, the queen of the shades below,

the first of all who dwell in the heavens; I, the one true face and manifestation of all the gods and

goddesses…. [T]he Egyptians, those paragons of ancient lore and learning, who worship me in

ceremonies that are truly my own, call me by my true name, Queen Isis.’”1 This introduction,

given to Apuleius in the Metamorphoses by the goddess Isis herself, provides a concise summary

of the place of that goddess in the later Greco-Roman world. Isis is seen as virtually omnipotent

by the time of her cult’s end in the fifth century CE, assuming almost all other deities’ functions

and roles, and constantly conflated with any number of the members of the Greek and Roman

pantheon. Perhaps no other deity or cult competes so well with the emerging Christianity, for

Isis, with her ability to assume the abilities and roles of other deities, seems to have an almost

universal appeal. But Isis’ cult does not begin with such an appeal; in fact, in her earliest

appearances, Isis has a specific niche, as the mourning wife and sister who by her grief resurrects

Osiris and causes the yearly flooding of the Nile, and she is a purely Egyptian deity. By the time

of the Ptolemies, however, her cult is being actively exported, and her priests are proselytizing as

actively as Christian priests later would. As her cult expands its membership and its boundaries,

Isis evolves from her beginnings as a fertility goddess into something much more powerful, a

goddess who can perform the functions of her husband and sisters, but also of nearly every

1 Lucius Apuleius. Metamorphoses, 235-236.

 Burnett 2

member of the Greek and Roman pantheon. Along the way, she absorbs much of the

iconography of these deities. To see how her evolution and later Hellenization progresses,

however, we must begin at her beginnings.

The traditional Egyptian mythology of Isis emphasizes the maternal and wifely qualities

of the goddess, but the story can be difficult to discern, as the tales of the various events in the

life of Isis and Osiris are not collected together until Plutarch’s treatise, De Iside et Osiride.

Further, Plutarch’s work details the legend as it stood in the late first or early second century of

the common era; there is no indication that Plutarch knows anything of the original Egyptian

legend.2 Still, the basic story can be gleaned, if not all of the details. Isis and Osiris are brother

and sister, children of the sky goddess Nut and the earth god Geb, and they are said to have fallen

in love and coupled in Nut’s womb.3 Osiris dies, drowning in an earlier version of the story, but

usually being murdered at the hands of his brother and foe, Seth. 4 In Plutarch’s version, Seth

tricks Osiris into lying down into a chest or casket, and then he nails the chest shut, covers it with

melted lead, and places the chest into the mouth of the Nile, where it is carried into the sea.5 The

chest lands in Byblos, in Phoenicia, where a tree grows around it and encloses it; the tree is

subsequently cut down for use in a palace by a king whom Plutarch names as Melkander, and

Isis, informed by demons as to the chest’s location, goes to Byblos and, after some time, removes

Osiris’ casket from the tree.6 Her son, Horus, is conceived through a necrophilous and somewhat

2 Budge, E. A. Wallis. The Legends of the Gods, lxxx.

3 ibid., 217-218.
4 Witt, R. E. Isis in the Graeco-Roman World, 36.
5 Budge, 219.
6 ibid., 221, 223.
 Burnett 3

mystical union with the dead Osiris, and she conceals the body in the marshes at Buto, where she

rears her son. Seth, however, finds the body, dismembers it, and scatters the pieces (fourteen

according to Plutarch, twenty-six according to Diodorus Siculus) throughout the Egyptian

world .7 With the help of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of embalming and Osiris’ son by

Nephthys, sister to both Isis and Osiris, Isis manages to find all the pieces of Osiris’ body, except

the phallus, which was thrown into the Nile and, according to Plutarch, eaten by fish. 8 Wherever

Isis found a piece of her husband’s body, she buried it and erected a tomb, but she also was able

to reassemble his body and to restore him to life. The means of his resurrection are vague in the

earlier tales, but by the New Kingdom (ca. 15th-11th centuries BCE), the details are thus: Ra (an

ancient Egyptian sun god whose worship seems to predate that of Isis, Osiris, and the Ennead)

allows Anubis to embalm and mummify Osiris’ corpse, and then Isis, transformed into a sparrow,

breathes life into his body by beating her wings.9

The primary story of Isis, then, is one of motherhood and of overwhelming wifely

devotion, and earliest Egyptian depictions of her reflect this. She is generally shown in standard

Egyptian style, bearing a throne on her head (the throne is a part of the hieroglyphic for the

names of both Isis and Osiris), mourning Osiris with her sister Nephthys, kneeling by either his

corpse or his sarcophagus. A relief from the temple complex at Dendera, for example, shows

Isis and Nephthys on either side of Osiris’ sarcophagus, Isis wearing a throne upon her head and

Nephthys with the hieroglyphs for her name, a basket upon a house, upon her head.10 Another

7 Turcan, R. The Cults of the Roman Empire, 79.

8 Budge, 226-227.
9 Witt, 37.
10 Merkelbach, R. Isis Regina, Zeus Serapis, 8.
 Burnett 4

relief from the same complex seems to depict the resurrection of Osiris-- Isis and Nephthys, both

shown as swallows, hover over the dead god’s corpse.11 Nephthys is an important figure in early

Egyptian mythology and particularly in the Osiris tales, but though she and Isis are most often

depicted together in the earlier reliefs, later depictions generally leave Nephthys out, focusing

instead on the relationship between Isis, Osiris, and Horus, and on the evil deeds of Seth.

As worship of Isis evolves in Egyptian times, she develops a standard regiment of

symbols, with which she is almost always depicted. These include the throne upon her head, the

sistrum, a sort of rattle popular in the Egyptian worship of goddesses, the Isiac knot, a knot

roughly in the shape of an ankh, which rests between her breasts, and the hydreion, from which

she pours out the water of the Nile. The ankh-- the Egyptian symbol for eternity and life-- is also

prominent in her iconography, as she is a goddess associated with the life-giving Nile waters and

with eternal life via the resurrection of Osiris. One relief at Philae depicts Isis, wearing the horns

and solar disc of Hathor, suckling Horus (who has a human, rather than falcon’s, head); she is

seated between Thoth and Amun-Re. Amun-Re is touching an ankh to her lips, and the podium

she sits upon is decorated with five more ankhs.12

In later Egyptian times, but before any real Hellenistic influence, she begins to be

associated with two other goddesses-- Hathor, the cow goddess of the sky whose cult centered at

Dendera; and Bast, the cat goddess of the Nile worshipped primarily at Bubastis. Both

goddesses are associated with serpents and with the sistrum, and both goddesses were frequently

depicted with a disc representing the sun upon their heads, and Isis even in pre-Hellenistic times

11 ibid., 14.
12 ibid., 18.
 Burnett 5

is associated with both these goddesses.13 Certainly by Greco-Roman times, she has taken over

the functions of both and is worshipped as the mother of all life and as the goddess of both sky

and the Nile waters. She has also become associated with Sothis, or Sirius, the star whose rising

coincided with the yearly inundation of the Nile, which was said to be caused by Isis’ tears of

grief over Osiris.14 She also readily assimilates animals from her fellow deities; initially, it

seems, she has no special animal particular to her cult, but she rapidly gains a number of cult

animals-- the falcon, associated with Horus; the crocodile, a symbol of the Nile; the asp or

serpent, associated with both Hathor and Bast; the vulture, a symbol of her sister, Nephthys; the

ibis, the symbol of the god Thoth; the cat, a symbol of Bast; and the cow, a symbol of Hathor.15

So by the time of the Ptolemies, Isis can be seen wearing the horns and solar disc of Hathor, the

uraeus (an upright asp or cobra) upon her head, and bearing a sistrum.16 The sistrum itself was

generally decorated with the head of a cat, betraying its earlier association with Bast.

Isis’ entry into the larger Greco-Roman world was not the easiest of journeys. Certainly

by the fourth century BCE, the cult of Isis had been installed in Athens and nearby Piraeus by

Egyptian traders, and by the second century BCE, her image was appearing on coins in Attica,

but the larger infiltration of her cult did not take place until the rule of the Ptolemies, largely in

the third century BCE.17 It was at this time that either Ptolemy Soter or Ptolemy Philadelphus

undertook to create, with the assistance of Timotheus, a Eumolpid from Eleusis, and Manetho, an

13 Witt, 28.
14 Turcan, 80.
15 Witt, 31.
16 ibid., 73.
17 Turcan, 76.
 Burnett 6

Egyptian priest, the cult of Serapis, a syncretic Greek- Egyptian deity who all but replaced Osiris

in Isiac worship and who was designed to be associated with both Pluto and Dionysus, for the

purpose of exporting Egyptian influence into the larger Mediterranean.18 In the third and second

centuries BCE, then, Isis and Serapis, along with other Egyptian deities, spread throughout the

Hellenic world, excepting the Peloponnese, even to the Black Sea. By the end of the third

century BCE, Isis has reached Sicily, and by the early first century BCE, the goddess is making

inroads in lower-class Rome.19 Her cult is not legally established in Rome, however, until the

time of Caligula, and before his reign, her temples and shrines are routinely demolished (and

then, of course, reconstructed by devoted worshippers). After Caligula, the cult of Isis receives

no challenge until Constantine and Theodosius.20

Upon her entrance into the larger Mediterranean, Isis readily assumes the symbols and

functions of Greek and Roman deities, as easily as she overtook the goddesses of her homeland.

She largely retains her indigenous iconography despite her assimilations, so that even depicted as

Isis-Demeter or Isis-Artemis, she often carries the sistrum and the situla or hydreion, and even in

Greek or Roman garb, she by and large will still wear the Isiac knot, the horns and disc of

Hathor, and the uraeus.21 Her features, however, evolved to match the Greco-Roman styles; a

bust from the Hellenistic era depicts Isis with her traditional Egyptian emblems, but the features

of the face are Greek, except for the Egyptian eyes.22 A later statue shows Isis bearing the

18 ibid., 78.
19 ibid., 83-85.
20 ibid., 89.
21 Witt, 55.
22 ibid., 74.
 Burnett 7

sistrum and hydreion, but the features of the face are fully Hellenized; at a glance, there is

nothing to distinguish this statue from that of Demeter.23

Demeter is the goddess with whom Isis is most easily and readily assimilated; having

previously assumed the functions of Hathor, the mother goddess, and having long been

associated with the Nile and the crop cycle, Isis is easily interpreted as simply a fertility goddess.

She shares as well with Demeter the loss of and quest for a loved one, mourning and searching

for Osiris in the same way Demeter grieves for Persephone/Kore. Each goddess is a provider of

bread and at the same time a harbinger of the death of vegetation and the approach of winter. A

statuette of uncertain provenance now in the Louvre depicts Isis in a standard pose, left foot

forward, and with the Isiac knot between her breasts, but instead of a throne upon her head, she

wears what appears to be a modius, or grain-measure, a standard symbol of Demeter, goddess of

the harvest.24 Another statue, clearly from Hellenistic times, shows Isis in Greek dress, with

Greek features; on her head is what appears to be lotus flower, a standard Egyptian symbol of

Isis, and in her hand, instead of the expected sistrum or hydreion, she is carrying ears of corn.25

Interestingly, Isis is also associated with Aphrodite, a relationship that may seem

counterintuitive initially; nowhere in the Egyptian evidence do we find depictions of Isis similar

to those of Greek Aphrodite, and nowhere is Isis shown nude before Hellenistic times. In Egypt,

in fact, the goddess of love is Hathor, the cow goddess, whom the Greeks bristled at comparing

to Aphrodite. Isis, however, has already assumed the functions of Hathor, and this makes it

much easier for her to be joined to Aphrodite as a goddess of love. No longer is Isis solely the

23 ibid., 75.
24 Merkelbach, 692.
25 Witt, 75.
 Burnett 8

mournful wife of Osiris; she is a goddess of marriage and love and female fertility, and the

depictions of Isis-Aphrodite demonstrate this. She is frequently portrayed nude, with neither a

chiton nor even an Isiac knot to identify her; often the only means of distinguishing Isis from

Aphrodite in these statues are the emblems on her head. 26 For example, a statue now in the

Musée royal in Brussels depicts Isis as a nude woman in the standard style of Aphrodite; we can

only tell that she is, in fact, Isis by the horns of Hathor and solar disc on her head.27 A factor that

perhaps helped this association was Isis’ identity as Isis Pelagia, or Isis of the Sea; Aphrodite, of

course, was born of the foam of the sea.

Another conflation which may initially give pause is that of Isis and Artemis, but the two

were certainly successfully assimilated by the second century CE, perhaps even just shortly after

the time of Paul. As in the case of Isis-Demeter, Isis’ earlier assumption of the functions of

another Egyptian goddess, in this case Bast, smoothes the way for her association with Artemis,

for Artemis is explicitly identified with Bast, and Isis’ relationship with Bast is apparent in the

numerous sistra adorned with cats found throughout the Greek and Roman world. Isis, despite

bearing the solar disc, is, like Artemis, associated with the moon, for the cow’s horns she wears

form a crescent shape and are explicitly likened to the crescent moon.28 The virgin Artemis,

perhaps counter-intuitively, is also the goddess of childbirth, and Isis, of course, is first and

foremost a goddess of maternity and family. The association with Artemis, as well as Isis’

remarkable ability to absorb the emblems of other deities, can be clearly seen on a silver patera

from Boscoreale. Isis is shown wearing her uraeus and carrying her sistrum, and behind her right

26 ibid., 126.
27 Merkelbach, 96.
28 Witt, 147.
 Burnett 9

shoulder are the bow and quiver of Artemis; she also carries the cornucopia of Tyche, and upon

the cornucopia is a crescent moon.29 Another common depiction of the goddess is as Isis Pharia,

guardian of the lighthouse and harbor at Pharos, as on a Greek Imperial coin of Alexandria, on

which she stands before the lighthouse; Artemis, too, is a guardian of harbors, and certainly this

shared duty helped in the conflation of the two deities.30

Perhaps one of the most common associations is that of Isis and Tyche or Fortuna. Isis as

an almost omnipotent and salvific figure, as she becomes in later Hellenistic times, is easily

conflated with the goddess of luck or fortune, and images abound of Isis bearing both her own

emblems and those of Fortuna, as in a relief from Xanthos, in which she and Serapis both hold

cornucopiae.31 A painting from a kitchen in Pompeii shows Isis as Fortuna, crowned with a

laurel wreath and a lotus flower rather than a uraeus, bearing a cornucopia in her left hand and in

her right the rudder of Isis-Pelagia, which rests upon a globe. Another image of Isis in the same

house depicts the goddess with a crescent moon, a lotus, and a star upon her head, holding again

the cornucopia and the rudder, her right foot on a globe, and her right elbow leaning on a pillar

with a sistrum on top. 32 A bronze from Herculaneum depicts Isis as Fortuna-Pelagia-- upon her

head she has two tall feathers and a laurel wreath; the characteristic Isiac knot is on her girdle;

and she holds a rudder in her right hand and cornucopia in her left, two snakes winding around

the cornucopia. Interestingly, there is also a pomegranate on her head, tying her to Persephone

29 ibid., 171.
30 ibid., 229.
31 ibid., 114.
32 ibid., 83.
 Burnett 10

rather than to Demeter, though the pomegranate, with its many seeds, can be a generic symbol of

fertility.33

The cult of Isis provides a striking example of the ability of the Greeks (and later the

Romans) to actively convert the figures and symbols of another culture to those of their own. By

the outlaw of Roman paganism with the Theodosian Code in 426 CE, she has become one of the

most popular goddesses worshipped in the Greco-Roman world-- and one of the most constantly

conflated. The Greeks, of course, had the practice, as most cultures do, of projecting their own

symbols and beliefs onto those of another culture, as a means, perhaps, of understanding foreign

concepts, and this is how the Hellenization of Isis begins; it ends, finally, with her being

recognized within her cult as “‘the one true face and manifestation of all the gods and

goddesses.’”34 She absorbs the emblems of other deities unceasingly, absorbing with them those

deities’ powers and abilities, until she is the omnipotent figurehead of one of the most

widespread mystery cults to exist and worshipped throughout the Roman empire. Despite this

constant conflation and absorption, however, she is never fully Hellenized-- she always retains

some aspect of her earlier Egyptian identity. Perhaps this is due to the Greek reverence for the

Egyptian culture and its antiquity, or perhaps it is a fascination with the exoticism of Egyptian

culture and the animals associated with the Isis cult. Perhaps, though, it is some special feature

of Isis, her ability to retain her Egyptian essence in spite of bombarding influences from all sides,

and perhaps it is this feature which makes her cult a powerful competitor of Christianity and

which intrigues us still today.

Word Count: 3018

33 Merkelbach, 573.
34 Apuleius, 235.
 Burnett 11

Bibliography

Beard, M., J. North, and S. Price. Religions of Rome, Volume I: A History. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Budge, E. A. Wallis. The Legends of the Gods. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Truebner and

Co., 1912.

Lucius Apuleius. Metamorphoses, or, The Golden Ass. J. C. Relihan, trans. Indianapolis, IN:

Hackett Publishing Company, 2007.

Merkelbach, R. Isis regina, Zeus Sarapis. Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1995.

Turcan, R. The Cults of the Roman Empire. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

Witt, R. E. Isis in the Graeco-Roman World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971.