How many people worshipped isis

The celebrate especially eagerly the festival of Artemis at Bubastis. Second in importance is the festival of Isis at Busiris. The greatest temple of Isis is in this city and the city is located in the middle of the Delta of Egypt. Isis is known as Demeter in the Greek language. The festival of Athena in Sais is the third most important; the festival of Helios at Heliopolis is fourth; the festival of Leto at Buto is fifth; the festival of Ares at Papremis is sixth.

Whom they mourn is not appropriate for me to say. As many Carians as live in Egypt do more than this: they cut their foreheads with knives, a clear sign that they are not Egyptians, but foreigners. This inscription from Piraeus, the port of Athens, mentions a sanctuary of Isis built by Egyptians. This is the first record of a permanent cult site of Isis in Greece. Member of the presiding committee Phanostratus of Philaidai 30 called for a vote.

It was decided by the people. Lycurgus son of Lycophron of Boutadai spoke concerning the things which were thought lawful by the Kitian traders 35 who were asking to supplicate the people for a piece of land on which they could found a shrine of Aphrodite. It was referred to the people to give to the Kitian traders 40 a piece of land on which to found a shrine of Aphrodite just as the Egyptians have founded a shrine of 45 Isis. This inscription from Perinthus in Thrace demonstrates the association of Isis with Aphrodite.

Artemidorus, son of Heraiiskos, serving as priest to Isis Aphrodite. Plutarch describes Isis as representing the female aspect of the natural world and connects the goddess with fertility.

She has an innate love of the first and governing principle of all things, which is the same as the good. That is what she desires and pursues. She flees and pushes aside the part that comes from evil.

Being both the locus and material of both good and evil, she leans always toward the better of these and allows it to reproduce and to sow its emanations and likenesses in her.

In these she rejoices and she is happy when she becomes pregnant and is filled with the creations. For creation is an image of being in matter and its product is a representation of truth. Attributes including a cornucopia and a rudder identify this Isis as connected with the goddess of good fortune. Pharian Isis [ 2 ]. The worship of Isis in Greece and Italy resembled the rituals associated with mystery cults. Mystery cults were religious groups that required participants to be initiated.

Associated with a particular god or goddess, the mystery cult offered initiates the promise of a better afterlife in return for their worship. From this work, we gather that initiates underwent purifying baths, confessed and asked forgiveness for their sins, and dressed in linen clothing.

The sistrum, a bronze rattle, was shaken during the worship of Isis, perhaps to ward off evil spirits with its sound. Pausanias describes the result of entering a shrine of Isis without being invited by the goddess via a dream or vision. The shrine he describes is near Tithorea, which is in the vicinity of Mt.

Approximately forty stadia from the shrine of Asclepius is the precinct and sacred shrine of Isis. This shrine is the most sacred of all those the Greeks have established to the Egyptian goddess. For the Tithoreans do not consider it right to live adjacent to it and entry to the shrine is not granted to any other than those whom Isis herself honors with an invitation via their dreams. The gods of the underworld do the same thing in the cities above the Maeander: they send manifestations in dreams to those whom they wish will come to their shrines.

In their country, the Tithoreans hold a festival of Isis twice a year in the spring and fall. On the third day before each of the festivals, those for whom it is permitted to enter clean the shrine in a certain secret way. Whatever remains they find of offerings that were thrown in during previous festivals, they take to the same place and bury them there. We judge this place to be two stadia from the shrine.

On this day, they do these things around the shrine; on the next day, traders put up booths made from reeds and other sticks they find; on the last day of the three, they celebrate by selling slaves, all sorts of herd animals, clothing, silver, and gold. After the middle of the day, they turn their attention to sacrifice. As Ptolemaic influence spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean, worship of Isis also traveled along the trade routes to the coastlines of modern-day Syria, Israel, and Turkey.

She became linked with regional deities. In Greece Isis was originally linked with Demeter, goddess of agriculture. In and around Lebanon she was associated with the Middle Eastern goddess Astarte. In Roman cities she was linked with Fortuna, goddess of luck, and Venus, goddess of love.

The first- and second-century A. Here's how the Greek's changed the way we think about life after death. Temples to Isis were erected throughout the Mediterranean world. Among them was the Temple of Isis on Delos in the Aegean, a tiny, arid island that became an important trading post in the Ptolemaic era.

The impressive Doric Temple of Isis, whose ruins still stand on the island, was built in the early second century B.

Roman merchants operating on Delos adopted the Isis cult they found there and took it back with them when they returned to Naples, Campania, Ostia, Rome, and Sicily. Isis had become an emblem of Ptolemaic hegemony; by the first century B.

In addition to her traditional roles as wife, mother, healer, and protector of the dead, Isis was worshipped as the goddess of good fortune, the sea, and travel. Sailors revered her: A festival held every spring became associated with Isis and was later known across the Roman world as Navigium Isidis. Many cities that depended on maritime trade, such as Pompeii, looked to Isis to defend them from the caprices of Neptune.

One of the best preserved temples of Isis can be found in Pompeii. Built in the first century A. By the first century B. Participation in these sects was highly secretive, and few details of their ceremonies survive. In the writings of Plutarch, a few can be found. Initiates donned colorful robes and shaved off their hair. During their initiations and other rituals, they carried the sistrum, a large rattle associated with the goddess.

Historians remain unsure of certain details, such as how the religion was organized and if there was any hierarchy at all. Rome tried to suppress the popular cult several times. In the first century B. When she and Mark Antony challenged the authority of Octavian the future Roman emperor Augustus , the cult of Isis became a symbol of foreign corruption. Later emperors ordered her temples to be destroyed, but worship of Isis was reinstated in Rome in the first century A.

The great double temple of Isis and Serapis near the Campus Martius in Rome became an important religious center. The cult of Isis grew and reached its peak in the Roman Empire during the second century A. Worship of the goddess spread throughout the Roman world, reaching as far north as Britain and as far east as Asia. The growth of a new faith, Christianity, led to a steady decline in the popularity of Isis. In the mid-sixth century, Emperor Justinian closed her temple at Philae in southern Egypt and expelled her priests, extinguishing the official flame of Isis that had burned steadily in Egypt for 2, years.

All rights reserved. History Magazine News. Worship of this Egyptian goddess spread from Egypt to England Egyptians adored Isis, divine protector of the dead, for two millennia before her cult spread beyond the Nile to the rest of the Roman Emprie. In this 13th-century B. The cult of Isis spread and was successful originally because of the relationship that Isis and Sarapis had, the way that the two gods went together and encompassed most of what people wanted out of a deity.

Together they ruled over life, death, fate, the seas, the heart, justice, everything and that was a big pull for people in the Greco-Roman world who had hundreds of other gods to worship to. Isis was the mother goddess, the more powerful queen of heaven [5]. Isis was a universal goddess, she reigned as a queen in heaven and was a maternal life force on earth. This was a main theme for the cult of Isis, a powerful mother-like goddess who ruled over most everything.

Inscriptions show that she had a large presence in Delphi, Eleusis, and Delos [6]. She won the love and loyalty of innumerable men and women as her wisdom was without measure and had healing abilities for the sick.

Isis suckled the pharos of Egypt to life, she healed the sick, she was regarded as the source of all things that lived. She was the authority on animal worship in Egypt, where animals were considered sacred and she provided healing for those who needed it. Another theme of Isis was redemption. She provided those who had lived bad lives a way out, by being initiated into the mysteries and living their lives through her she would give them redemption for their bad lives.

Isis was an important goddess for the women in the Greco-Roman world because she represented a mother. She was the mother goddess, was thought to be the mother of pharos in Egypt [7], and had established herself as the patron of the female sex. She was a savior goddess, redemption could happen by participating and being initiated into her mysteries. He follows and worships her blindly, all this because she promised him redemption and that she would look after him as a human. Women seem to find great comfort in the redemption aspect of Isis, many men do not associate religion with morality but the women seem to take more stock in it.

Another reason that women were drawn to Isis is because she provided them with acceptable ways to have emotional outlets. This anger was often directed toward men who had wronged a woman, women still utilized the emotional outlets for they had often done wrong but it was less often that they would be outwardly punished like the men.

Isis is also viewed as a calm and spiritual goddess who ruled over love and the ways of the heart. Her protection of women and her support of their love are all reasons that women are drawn to Isis over some of the other deities that they worship. Isis was an attractive cult for women in the Greek world as we can see, their participation in the cult, however, was not as frequent as we might believe. In inscriptions on the cult of Isis and those who worship it there was only that mentioned women [10].

However there were more women who participated in the cult outside of Greece, in Asia and Africa, the women were more prominent in their roles in the ritual sacrifices, as shown by their literature and writing.

This could be because when Isis and Sarapis first came to the Greek world, Sarapis was more popular. Lending to more priests than priestesses [11]. In the Roman empire, the amount of female priestess in the Isis cult was many. Those paintings show women preforming important ritualistic and sacrificial duties. One such painting depicts a group of women dressed in black, wearing Greek clothing but have Egyptian features [12].

This was a festival that women actively participated in. Though this festival was public, the mourners who were initiates seemed to be more affected by the mourning than simple bystanders [13]. Though the participation of women tended to arise suspicion of members that were not initiated into the cult, they saw the gatherings of Isis worshippers as seduction dens.

This is because there were so many women gathered together and they believed Isis to have an air of sexual impurity about her rituals and desires [14]. That did not stop the women from actively participating though because Isis was their goddess, and she looked out for them. The cult of Isis has lasted throughout history, and though it has changed over time it has still maintained the integrity of how it was once practiced.

The mysteries of the cult have restricted what we know about the actual rituals of Isis but the legend of Isis and the power of the mother goddess has lived on in the knowledge of people. The distance that the religion spread as well as the diversity of the people who practiced it, made the cult of Isis one of the largest and most important cults in the Hellenistic period.

This cult is written about in literature, Apuleius, celebrated in Egypt, and is one of the only cults from the Hellenistic period to still be worshipped other than the Abrahamic religions. The cult of Isis has changed history and impacted the people of the Mediterranean and Africa for thousands of years as a strong religion.

Isis in the Graeco-Roman World. New York: Cornell Univerity Press, Late Antiquity in Practice. Princeton:Princeton University Press, The Cult of Isis among women in the Greco-Roman world.

Leiden: Brill, Cott, Johnathan. Isis and Osiris: exploring the goddess myth. New York: Doubleday, This work was a very helpful resource because the author Jonathan Cott went to many different areas to research Isis and Osiris. He took information from Egyptian secret sects to the founder of a fellowship of Isis in Ireland. This gathering of information not only tells us how current the worship of Isis is and how it has lasted all these years but also how wide spread the cult of Isis really was, enough so that it had strong enough roots to stay relevant and worshipped in present.

Heyob, Sharon Kelly. This book was primarily used to look at the role of women in the cult of Isis, both their participation as well as how they perceived Isis. The different ways that the cult incorporated morality teachings into the lives of the people was, if not a new thing, then an unpopular way to look at life.

This book has a section on the morality and those aspects in the cult and it presented an interesting way to look at the cult as set apart from others. Not only did this book give us insight into the cult of Isis as it had to do with women but it also gave history on the cult.