Difference between revisions of "Isis"

Isis is part of the Ennead of Heliopolis, a family of nine deities descended from the creator god, [[Atum]] or [[Ra]]. She and her siblings—[[Osiris]], [[Set]], and [[Nephthys]]—are the last generation of the Ennead, born to [[Geb]], god of the earth, and [[Nut]], goddess of the sky. The creator god, the world's original ruler, passes down his authority through the male generations of the Ennead, so that Osiris becomes king. Isis, who is Osiris's wife as well as his sister, is his queen.

Many scholars have focused on Isis's name in trying to determine her origins. Her Egyptian name was written as 𓊨𓏏𓆇𓁐 (ꜣst) and was pronounced Ꜣūsat, which became ⲎⲤⲈ (''Ēse'') in the Coptic form of Egyptian, ''Wusa'' in the Meroitic language of Nubia, and Ἶσις, on which her modern name is based, in Greek. The hieroglyphic writing of her name incorporates the sign for a throne, which Isis also wears on her head as a sign of her identity. The symbol serves as a phonogram, spelling the ''st'' sounds in her name, but it may have also represented a link with actual thrones. The Egyptian term for a throne was also ''st'' and may have shared a common etymology with Isis's name.

Many of the roles Isis acquired gave her an important position in the sky. Passages in the Pyramid Texts connect Isis closely with [[Sopdet]], the goddess representing the star [[Sirius]], whose relationship with her husband [[Sah]]—the constellation Orion—and their son Sopdu parallels Isis's relations with Osiris and Horus. Sirius's heliacal rising, just before the start of the Nile flood, gave Sopdet a close connection with the flood and the resulting growth of plants.[63] Partly because of her relationship with Sopdet, Isis was also linked with the flood, which was sometimes equated with the tears she shed for Osiris.

By Ptolemaic times she was connected with rain, which Egyptian texts call a "Nile in the sky"; with the [[sun]] as the protector of [[Ra]]'s barque; and with the moon, possibly because she was linked with the Greek lunar goddess Artemis by a shared connection with an Egyptian fertility goddess, Bastet. In hymns inscribed at Philae she is called the "Lady of Heaven" whose dominion over the sky parallels Osiris's rule over the Duat and Horus's kingship on earth.

In the dechristianization of France during the French Revolution, she served as an alternative to traditional Christianity: a symbol that could represent nature, modern scientific wisdom, and a link to the pre-Christian past. For these reasons, Isis's image appeared in artwork sponsored by the revolutionary government, such as the Fontaine de la Régénération, and by the First French Empire. The metaphor of Isis's veil continued to circulate through the nineteenth century. Helena Blavatsky, the founder of the esoteric Theosophical tradition, titled her 1877 book on Theosophy ''Isis Unveiled'', implying that it would reveal spiritual truths about nature that science could not.