Isis (redirected from Cult of Isis)

Isis, in Egyptian religion

Isis (ī`sĭs), nature goddess whose worship, originating in ancient Egypt, gradually extended throughout the lands of the Mediterranean world during the Hellenistic period and became one of the chief religions of the Roman Empire. The worship of Isis, combined with that of her brother and husband Osiris and their son Horus, was enormously resistant to the influence of early Christian teachings, and her mysteries, celebrating the death and resurrection of Osiris, were performed as late as the 6th cent. A.D. The functions of many goddesses were attributed to her, so that eventually she became the prototype of the beneficent mother goddess, the bringer of fertility and consolation to all. She was the daughter of the sky goddess Nut and the earth god Geb. Her symbol was a throne and later the cow, and she was frequently represented with a cow's head or cow's horns. During the Hellenistic period, her image outside Egypt became increasingly Hellenic, with ideal features and locks framing her face. Isis was also a goddess of magic, and legends tell of her ability to counteract evil by casting spells.

Bibliography

See R. E. Witt, Isis in the Greco-Roman World (1981).

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Isis, river, England

Isis: see Thames, river, England.

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Isis

One of the major goddesses of ancient Egypt, the wife of Osiris. When Osiris was killed by Seth, she gathered up the pieces of his body, mourned for him, and brought him back to life. She hid their son Horus from Seth until Horus was fully grown and could avenge his father. Worshiped as a goddess of protection, she had great magical powers and was invoked to heal the sick or protect the dead. By Greco-Roman times she was dominant among Egyptian goddesses, and her cult reached much of the Roman world as a mystery religion.

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Isis¹

the local name for the River Thames at Oxford

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Isis²

an ancient Egyptian fertility goddess, depicted as a woman with a cow's horns, between which was the disc of the sun; wife and sister of Osiris

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1.		ISIS - A toolkit for implementing fault-tolerant distributed systems, developed at Cornell and now available commercially
2.		ISIS - A dialect of JOSS. [Sammet 1969, p. 217].

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Isis 

in ancient Egyptian mythology, one of the most revered goddesses. Her cult became widespread outside Egypt as well (in Asia Minor, Syria, Greece, Italy, Gaul, and elsewhere). The wife and sister of Osiris and the mother of Horus, Isis was considered the personification of conjugal fidelity and motherhood. She was also revered as the goddess of fertility, water and wind, and magic and was considered to be the protectress of the dead and, later, the goddess of navigation. She was depicted as a woman with the head or horns of a cow. The preserved representations of Isis, with the infant Horus in her arms, influenced the iconography of the Virgin Mary.