{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_The_Golden_Bough_Isis/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_The_Golden_Bough_Isis","id":"wikisource_The_Golden_Bough_Isis","license":"Public Domain / CC-BY-SA (see source)","rights_basis":"wikisource_site_inclusion_policy","source":"wikisource","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough/Isis","summary":null,"tags":["Headers_applying_DefaultSort_key","Subpages"],"text":"CHAPTER XLI\n\nISIS\n\nThe original meaning of the goddess Isis is still more difficult to\ndetermine than that of her brother and husband Osiris. Her\nattributes and epithets were so numerous that in the hieroglyphics\nshe is called \"the many-named,\" \"the thousand-named,\" and in Greek\ninscriptions \"the myriad-named.\" Yet in her complex nature it is\nperhaps still possible to detect the original nucleus round which by\na slow process of accretion the other elements gathered. For if her\nbrother and husband Osiris was in one of his aspects the corn-god,\nas we have seen reason to believe, she must surely have been the\ncorn-goddess. There are at least some grounds for thinking so. For\nif we may trust Diodorus Siculus, whose authority appears to have\nbeen the Egyptian historian Manetho, the discovery of wheat and\nbarley was attributed to Isis, and at her festivals stalks of these\ngrains were carried in procession to commemorate the boon she had\nconferred on men. A further detail is added by Augustine. He says\nthat Isis made the discovery of barley at the moment when she was\nsacrificing to the common ancestors of her husband and herself, all\nof whom had been kings, and that she showed the newly discovered\nears of barley to Osiris and his councillor Thoth or Mercury, as\nRoman writers called him. That is why, adds Augustine, they identify\nIsis with Ceres. Further, at harvest-time, when the Egyptian reapers\nhad cut the first stalks, they laid them down and beat their\nbreasts, wailing and calling upon Isis. The custom has been already\nexplained as a lamen for the corn-spirit slain under the sickle.\nAmongst the epithets by which Isis is designated in the inscriptions\nare \"Creatress of green things,\" \"Green goddess, whose green colour\nis like unto the greenness of the earth,\" \"Lady of Bread,\" \"Lady of\nBeer,\" \"Lady of Abundance.\" According to Brugsch she is \"not only\nthe creatress of the fresh verdure of vegetation which covers the earth, but is actually the green corn-field itself, which is\npersonified as a goddess.\" This is confirmed by her epithet Sochit or Sochet, meaning \"a corn-field,\" a sense which the word still\nretains in Coptic. The Greeks conceived of Isis as a corn-goddess,\nfor they identified her with Demeter. In a Greek epigram she is\ndescribed as \"she who has given birth to the fruits of the earth,\"\nand \"the mother of the ears of corn\"; and in a hymn composed in her\nhonour she speaks of herself as \"queen of the wheat-field,\" and is\ndescribed as \"charged with the care of the fruitful furrow's\nwheat-rich path.\" Accordingly, Greek or Roman artists often\nrepresented her with ears of corn on her head or in her hand.\n\nSuch, we may suppose, was Isis in the olden time, a rustic\nCorn-Mother adored with uncouth rites by Egyptian swains. But the\nhomely features of the clownish goddess could hardly be traced in\nthe refined, the saintly form which, spiritualised by ages of\nreligious evolution, she presented to her worshippers of after days\nas the true wife, the tender mother, the beneficent queen of nature,\nencircled with the nimbus of moral purity, of immemorial and\nmysterious sanctity. Thus chastened and transfigured she won many\nhearts far beyond the boundaries of her native land. In that welter\nof religions which accompanied the decline of national life in\nantiquity her worship was one of the most popular at Rome and\nthroughout the empire. Some of the Roman emperors themselves were\nopenly addicted to it. And however the religion of Isis may, like\nany other, have been often worn as a cloak by men and women of loose\nlife, her rites appear on the whole to have been honourably\ndistinguished by a dignity and composure, a solemnity and decorum,\nwell fitted to soothe the troubled mind, to ease the burdened heart.\nThey appealed therefore to gentle spirits, and above all to women,\nwhom the bloody and licentious rites of other Oriental goddesses\nonly shocked and repelled. We need not wonder, then, that in a\nperiod of decadence, when traditional faiths were shaken, when\nsystems clashed, when men's minds were disquieted, when the fabric\nof empire itself, once deemed eternal, began to show ominous rents\nand fissures, the serene figure of Isis with her spiritual calm, her\ngracious promise of immortality, should have appeared to many like a\nstar in a stormy sky, and should have roused in their breasts a\nrapture of devotion not unlike that which was paid in the Middle\nAges to the Virgin Mary. Indeed her stately ritual, with its shaven\nand tonsured priests, its matins and vespers, its tinkling music,\nits baptism and aspersions of holy water, its solemn processions,\nits jewelled images of the Mother of God, presented many points of\nsimilarity to the pomps and ceremonies of Catholicism. The\nresemblance need not be purely accidental. Ancient Egypt may have\ncontributed its share to the gorgeous symbolism of the Catholic\nChurch as well as to the pale abstractions of her theology.\nCertainly in art the figure of Isis suckling the infant Horus is so\nlike that of the Madonna and child that it has sometimes received the adoration of ignorant Christians. And to Isis in her later character of patroness of mariners the Virgin Mary perhaps owes her beautiful epithet of Stella Maris, Star of the Sea,\" under which\nshe is adored by tempest-tossed sailors. The attributes of a marine\ndeity may have been bestowed on Isis by the sea-faring Greeks of\nAlexandria. They are quite foreign to her original character and to\nthe habits of the Egyptians, who had no love of the sea. On this\nhypothesis Sirius, the bright star of Isis, which on July mornings\nrises from the glassy waves of the eastern Mediterranean, a\nharbinger of halcyon weather to mariners, was the true Stella Maris, \"the Star of the Sea.\"","title":"The Golden Bough/Isis","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":981}