Isis

EYE-sis

egyptian: jst · greek: Ἶσις

Definition

Isis (Egyptian Aset, jst, "throne") is one of Egypt's greatest goddesses — sister and wife of Osiris, mother and protector of Horus, and a powerful worker of magic. Her astral identity is Sopdet, the star Sirius (the Greeks called her Sothis): in this celestial form she is the female half of the great star-pair, rising just before her consort Sah/Orion. Her name was written with the hieroglyph for a seat or throne. (For the star itself, see Sopdet (Sirius).)

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat Isis as the goddess who, in the later periods, rose to be Egypt's most important — yet her origins are obscure, with no certain attestations before the 5th Dynasty even though she appears over eighty times in the Pyramid Texts assisting the dead king. Her identification with Sirius (Isis-Sothis) is a syncretism that grew firm in the Ptolemaic era: the Egyptian star-goddess Sopdet was the older identity, and Isis was layered onto her.

In Practice

In Egyptian astral religion Isis matters most through her Sopdet/Sirius identity. Her star's heliacal rising — its first pre-dawn reappearance after roughly seventy days hidden in the Sun's glare — anchored the Egyptian year and heralded the Nile flood, and because Sopdet (Isis) rises just before Sah (Osiris) the two stars re-enact the myth of Isis recovering her husband. Some scholars read the great astral parent-pair of the Pyramid Texts as Isis and Osiris in this stellar guise. A separate Northern-sky figure, the hippopotamus-goddess named Isis-Djamet on Senenmut's ceiling, shows how her name was also attached to a circumpolar constellation linked to portions of Draco. Keep her deity identity distinct from the star-goddess entry Sopdet (Sirius).

Historical Origin

Isis is attested in the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts (Dynasties 5-6) as a protector of the dead king, and is equated with Sirius as Isis-Sothis chiefly from the Ptolemaic period. The Isis-Djamet hippopotamus constellation is named on the Senenmut astronomical ceiling (c. 1473 BCE) and the Seti I Hall K ceiling, discussed in Clagett, *Ancient Egyptian Science* Vol II. Standard reference: Richard H. Wilkinson, *The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt* (2003).

Further Reading

  • Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
  • Marshall Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science, Volume II: Calendars, Clocks, and Astronomy