Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Deities

Isis

EYE-sis
Egyptian Deities

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As the Egyptian face of Chiron, Isis embodies healing, magic, and restorative love. Isis is the great Egyptian goddess of magic, motherhood, healing, and protection, the wife and sister of Osiris and the mother of Horus. When Set murdered Osiris and scattered his dismembered body, Isis wandered the land to gather every piece, and with her powerful magic revived him long enough to conceive their son, then hid and healed the infant Horus in the marshes of the Delta, becoming the very model of the devoted, protecting, healing mother. Her mysteries and her tender maternal power spread across the whole Roman world. She embodies healing, potent magic, and the restoring love that mends what death has broken.

Facts
Belief
Theology
Polytheistic: many gods 2
Cult
Principal Cult Centre
Philae, and Behbeit el-Hagar in the Delta 1
Attributes and Iconography
Crowned with the throne hieroglyph, later with cow horns and sun disc 1
Attributes and Iconography
Winged, or in the form of a kite 1
Worship and Practice
Her cult spread far beyond Egypt in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, reaching temples as distant as Pompeii and the Rhine frontier. 2
Practice
Lineage
Egyptian genealogy places Isis among the children of Geb, the earth, and Nut, the sky, sister and wife to Osiris and sister to Nephthys and Set, making the drama of Osiris's death and revival at root a conflict within one family of the Ennead. 2
Function
Domain / Function
Motherhood 1
Domain / Function
Kingship and sovereignty 1
Domain / Function
Magic and sorcery 1
Domain / Function
Healing and medicine 1
Attestation
Era of Attestation
2400 BCE to 537 CE 1
Veneration Today
Historically attested; no continuous cult 1
Historicity
Not a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 2
Origins
Origin of the Name
The name Isis renders the Egyptian Aset, generally read as throne, and she is often shown wearing the hieroglyph for throne as her headdress. 2
Attributions
Mythic Association
Isis is credited in Egyptian myth with tricking the aging sun god Ra into revealing his secret true name by fashioning a serpent from his own spittle mixed with earth to bite him, a poison only she could cure once he told her the name, an episode that established her mastery of magical and healing power. 2
Identity
Gender
Female 1
Position Profile
Key Text
The fullest surviving ancient account of the Isis and Osiris myth is Plutarch's essay De Iside et Osiride, part of his Moralia, though it was written by a Greek author in the first century CE, centuries after the core Egyptian myth had taken its classical shape, and scholars weigh its details against earlier Egyptian sources with that gap in mind. 3
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The One Who Reassembled a God

Isis (Egyptian Aset) is defined by an act of devotion. When her husband and brother Osiris is murdered and dismembered by their brother Seth, it is Isis who searches out the scattered pieces of his body, binds them together, and by her magic revives him long enough to conceive their son Horus. She is thus the model of the grieving and faithful wife, the protective mother, and the mistress of heka, Egyptian ritual power, all at once. A well-known myth even has her win Ra's secret name, and with it a share of the sun-god's own power, by cunning.

The fullest connected narrative of this story survives, ironically, in Greek: Plutarch's On Isis and Osiris, written centuries later, gathers a version that the fragmentary Egyptian sources only allude to. The Egyptian texts assume the story rather than tell it whole, so the historian reads them alongside Plutarch while remembering that he was an outsider systematising material for a Greek audience.

Her devotion had a practical edge for every Egyptian: as the mother who hid and healed the infant Horus in the marshes, Isis was invoked in spells to protect children and cure the bites and fevers that threatened them.

From an Egyptian Goddess to a Mediterranean One

Isis is the ancient Egyptian deity who travelled furthest. In the Hellenistic and Roman periods her cult spread out of Egypt across the entire Mediterranean, carried by traders and soldiers; temples to her stood at Pompeii, in Rome, and as far as Roman Britain. Recast as a universal goddess who answered personal prayer and offered her initiates a hope beyond death, she became one of the leading mystery religions of the Roman Empire. Apuleius, in The Golden Ass, gives a famous first-person account of an initiate for whom Isis is the single goddess behind all others' names.

Scholars have long noted, carefully, the resemblance between images of Isis nursing the infant Horus (Isis lactans) and later Christian images of the Madonna and Child, and between aspects of her devotion and later Marian piety. The relationship is debated and should not be overstated into simple derivation, but the visual and devotional continuities across late antiquity are real and much studied.

Her worship in Egypt itself outlasted almost everything around it: the temple of Isis at Philae, in the far south, remained active into the sixth century CE, among the last functioning temples of the old Egyptian religion.

Correspondences & Relations

Archetypes

Pantheons

Planetary Faces

Isis acquired a healer's reputation from the myth in which she reassembles Osiris and from her cures of the infant Horus, which is why modern writers attach her to Chiron. The body was found in 1977 and carries no ancient attribution.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Isis directly: "332 to 30 BCE, showing the goddess Isis seated with her infant son Horus on her lap, an image of protection and rebirth carried into the Ptolemaic period from long Egyptian tradition."

This source names Isis directly: "open-access collection API record for "Isis with Horus," a marble statue on a limestone base, Ptolemaic Period, 332 to 30 BCE."

This source names Isis directly: ""They Came to Destroy": ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis, issued by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic under the United Nations Human Rights Council in..."

Source "They Came to Destroy": ISIS Crimes Against the YazidisIndependent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, United Nations
Anubis, Figures

This source names Isis directly: "In the Osiris myth he assists Isis and Nephthys in embalming Osiris's body after Set's murder, becoming the model and patron for every mummification that follows."

Source The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient EgyptDonald B. Redford (ed.)

This source names Isis directly: "Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Isis, Nephthys, Horus, Hathor, and the paired personifications Hu, the divine utterance, and Sia, perception."

This source names Isis directly: "The vessel carries figures of Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, and Harsiese alongside the sky goddess Nut, shown in her form as a tree-goddess."

This source names Isis directly: "as a tree-goddess, alongside Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, and Harsiese."

This source names Isis directly: "Goddess in her many forms, especially Isis, founded at Clonegal Castle in Ireland."

Geb, Figures

This source names Isis directly: "As father of Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys, Geb stands at the head of the succession myth running through his children: later tradition holds he himself relinquished the throne of Egypt to Osiris..."

Source The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient EgyptDonald B. Redford (ed.)

The Great Hymn to Osiris celebrates Isis for recovering the god's body and conceiving Horus.

This source names Isis directly: "set it out chiefly in two large works, Isis Unveiled in 1877 and The Secret Doctrine in 1888."

Source The Theosophical EnlightenmentJoscelyn Godwin

This source names Isis directly: "as a discipline by George Sarton's Isis in 1913."

Horus, Figures

This source names Isis directly: "Horus is the falcon-headed son of Isis and Osiris."

Source Moralia, Volume V: Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride)Plutarch; Frank Cole Babbitt (translator)

This source names Isis directly: "own collection record for its bronze Isis-Fortuna statuette, accession 54.943, giving its material, dimensions, 1912 acquisition by Henry Walters from the Lambros-Dattari sale, and a detailed..."

This source names Isis directly: "initiation into the mysteries of Isis."

Source Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass)Apuleius

This source names Isis directly: "interpretation of the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris, written in the late first or early second century CE, presented here in the standard Loeb Classical Library edition with Frank Cole Babbitt's..."

Source Moralia, Volume V: Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride)Plutarch; Frank Cole Babbitt (translator)
Nut, Figures

This source names Isis directly: "Nut bore Osiris, Horus the Elder, Set, Isis and Nephthys, one child to a day."

Source Moralia, Volume V: Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride)Plutarch; Frank Cole Babbitt (translator)
Osiris, Figures

This source names Isis directly: "Osiris's sister-wife Isis recovers and reassembles the pieces, using her magic to briefly revive him long enough to conceive their son Horus, who is raised in hiding and eventually challenges Set..."

Source Moralia, Volume V: Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride)Plutarch; Frank Cole Babbitt (translator)
Philae, Sacred Sites

The last temple in Egypt to keep the old rites, closed under Justinian.

Source The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient EgyptDonald B. Redford (ed.)
Selket, Deities

Co-guardian of the canopic shrine and the dead alongside Isis, who guards Imsety.

Source The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson

This source names Isis directly: "for a separate, fragmentary sandstone Isis-Fortuna statue in its own collection, used here only to corroborate the syncretic Isis-Fortuna type's iconography (the Isis knot, cornucopia, rudder) and..."

Source Moralia, Volume V: Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride)Plutarch; Frank Cole Babbitt (translator)

This source names Isis directly: "recorded talks kept by former member Isis Aquarian, the group's self-appointed archivist."

Theosophy, Religions

This source names Isis directly: "set out chiefly in Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine."

Source The Theosophical EnlightenmentJoscelyn Godwin

This source names Isis directly: "designated terrorist groups such as ISIS and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan alongside groups such as Tablighi Jamaat and Hizb ut-Tahrir, and documents 110 administrative prosecutions for..."

Source US Department of State, 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom: KazakhstanUnited States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom

This source names Isis directly: "the Temple of Ptah and the Temple of Isis."

Source Wikipedia, "Aida"

Child Of

Geb, Deities

Isis is one of the four children of Geb and Nut.

Source The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson
Nut, Deities

Isis is one of the four children of Geb and Nut.

Source The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson

Children

Horus, Deities

Horus is conceived by Isis from the dead Osiris and raised to claim his father's throne.

Source The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson

Corresponds To

Sirius, Fixed Stars

Isis is identified with Sirius (Egyptian Sopdet, Greek Sothis) in Egyptian and classical sources; Plutarch's Moralia records the Egyptians naming the star for her, and Sopdet's heliacal rising, after seventy days invisible, announced the Nile's flood and the start of the Egyptian year.

Source Moralia, Volume V: Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride)Plutarch; Frank Cole Babbitt (translator)

Depicted In

Married To

Osiris, Deities

Isis is the sister and wife of Osiris, and gathers his body after Set kills him.

Source The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson

Member Of

The Ennead, Deities

Isis, daughter of Geb and Nut.

Same Figure, Narrative Entry

Isis, Figures

Sibling Of

Nephthys, Deities

Nephthys's own description: "daughter of Geb and Nut, sister of Isis, Osiris and Set."

Source The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient EgyptDonald B. Redford (ed.)
Osiris, Deities

Isis's own description: "the wife and sister of Osiris."

Source Moralia, Volume V: Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride)Plutarch; Frank Cole Babbitt (translator)

Worshipped In

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Isis, who restored Osiris and protected Horus, became the most widely worshipped Egyptian goddess, her cult spreading across the Roman world.

Source The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson
Sources
1. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
Donald B. Redford (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2001s.v. IsisView the Source
2. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
Richard H. Wilkinson, Thames & Hudson, 2003The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, back cover description, Richard H. Wilkinson
Quote, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, back cover description, Richard H. Wilkinson
A comprehensive guide to the deities of ancient Egypt: their origins and their central role in the lives of the Egyptian people. Worshipped for over three fifths of recorded history, Egypt's gods and goddesses are among the most fascinating of human civilization.
View the Source
3. Moralia, Volume V: Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride)
Plutarch; Frank Cole Babbitt (translator), Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1936The connected narrative of Isis gathering Osiris and raising HorusView the Source
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. IsisView the Source

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