B. Isis

Unlike Caelestis, Isis has been written about so often in recent years that a short summary of her cult will here suffice.^[101] Isis emerged as the most popular goddess in Egypt after a long period of development.

According to ancient Egyptian mythology, Isis came into being at the third level of creation. The wife of Osiris, she was a celestial divinity. However, for the Egyptians the “heavens” were also the primordial ocean, the water from which everything came. As wife of Osiris and mother of the sun-god, Horus, she was deeply connected with the origin of life. In the myth of Osiris, best known to us from the account of Plutarch,^{[102] [103] it is Isis who resurrects her dead husband, saves her child Horus, and even protects Seth, the murderer of Osiris. Thus viewed as one in possession of powerful magic, the mother of god who could bestow immortality, Isis grew in importance.}

As the Greeks began to identify the Egyptian divinities with their own, Isis became Demeter, a nature goddess who also pre­sided over a powerful mystery. Osiris became Dionysus, and Horus, Apollo.^[104] The real popularity of Isis in the Greco-Roman world, however, began in Hellenistic times when she became associated with the new god, Sarapis.^[105] When and exactly how this happened is a controversial topic. However, at this time a new Isis cult developed and quickly spread into Greece and Italy. In the fourth century B.C. there was already a sanctuary of Isis in Athens, and possibly a hundred years later she was known in Sicily. From there the cult spread northward into other Italian cities, including Pompeii, where excavations yielded evidence that the cult flourished there by the first century A.D.

In Rome the atmosphere was not favorable for foreign, espe­cially oriental, cults. Isis had a stormy history there, sometimes tolerated, sometimes forbidden, depending on the mood of the Senate and later, the emperors. It was only Caligula (37-41 A.D.) who finally gave official recognition to the cult. Isis became a very popular goddess, even though a great number of oriental mysteries competed for people’s loyalties in the early empire. Isis flourished even under the pressure of the growing and increas­ingly aggressive Christian movement. By the end of the fourth century, pagan cults were deliberately and violently extermi­nated. As a result of this systematic persecution, Isis, too, slowly disappeared in a process similar to that of Caelestis.

Two great festivals, the Isia and the Navigium Jsidis, belonged to the cult of Isis. The first, a dramatic presentation of the story of Osiris, was celebrated in Rome at the beginning of November. After Osiris was brutally murdered by Seth and his body was cut into pieces, Isis wandered through the land, weeping and looking for the corpse of her husband. All this was reenacted during the festival. When the corpse was found, the participants cried out in joy: “We have found it, let us rejoice together!” Then Osiris was raised from the dead and there was general rejoicing.^[106] No doubt this mystery play made as deep an impression on the pagans as the reenactment of the passion of Jesus Christ made upon Chris­tians. People wept and beat their breasts over the death of Osiris; with loud jubilation they rejoiced when the body was found and Osiris was resurrected. Christian and non-initiated Roman au­thors made fun of this ritual; to them, this grieving and rejoicing made no sense since, to them, nothing was lost and nothing was found. But readers who are familiar with Good Friday and Easter celebrations will understand that for Isiac initiates these were deeply meaningful rites; they dealt with the mysteries of death and resurrection and evoked in the participants a sense of eternal life.

The Navigium Isidis (irXotacpEcria = “Navigation of Isis”) was held on March 5, as a festival commemorating either the launch­ing of the ship of Isis to Phoenicia, searching for Osiris, or her arrival from Phoenicia. The celebration marked the beginning of the new season of seafaring and it was a festive and joyful gather­ing. Apuleius {Metamorphoses 11.7-17) described such a procession. Soon after sunrise the streets were already full of people. All nature seemed joyful, birds were singing melodiously “making sweet welcome... to the mother of the stars, the parent of times and mistress of all the world.” The trees seemed to rejoice in their fertility, and the sky was fair and clear.People came dressed in the habits of various professions: one came as a warrior, another as a hunter, another as a gladiator, yet another as a fisherman, and so forth. In the midst of the multitude one might see the “saving goddess” triumphantly marching forward. Women, dressed in white and wearing garlands on their heads, spread herbs along her way; others held mirrors in their hands turned toward the goddess; yet others had ivory combs in their hands, indicating that they were trained to adorn the hair of the goddess. Some people dropped balm and precious ointments on the way, and a multitude of men and women held lamps, candles, and torches in their hands in honor of the one who was “born of the celestial stars.” Then came a group of singing youths in white vestments, followed by trumpeters and musicians with pipes and flutes. The initiates followed, all in glistening white linen dresses. The women had their hair anointed but the heads of the men were shaven. In their hands they held brass timbrels which gave out a shrill sound. Now came the principal priests, carrying ceremo­nial objects, and then people dressed as the gods: Anubis wearing the head of a dog, then a cow representing the great and youthful “mother of all.” Following them came the officials who carried in precious boxes the secrets of the religion, which nobody could see.

And now Apuleius describes the initiation of Lucius into the mysteries of Isis as the conclusion of the whole story, for Meta­morphoses, as the title of the book indicates, is the account of a con­version.^[108] The conversion of Lucius was so complete that he rented for himself a place within the temple precinct of Isis and lived there until the time for initiation arrived. Prior to that, he had to go through various rites of purification, and on the great appointed day and in the presence of a multitude of priests (the laity and the uninitiated were dismissed), he was given a new linen robe and taken to the most sacred, secret place of the temple. This is the mystery which he cannot divulge, he says, but to satisfy the curiosity of the reader he indicates so much:

... I approached near into hell, even to the gate of Proserpine, and after that I was ravished throughout all the elements, I returned to my proper place: about midnight I saw the sun brightly shine, I saw likewise the gods celestial and the gods internal, before whom I presented myself and worshipped them.^[109]

On the second day of the ceremonies he was introduced to all the people as a new priest. Vested in fine linen decorated with symbolic flowers and images of animals, he stood on a pulpit before the image of the goddess. This was a celebration of the “nativity of his holy order,” which was followed by a sumptuous banquet. This was repeated on the third day.

The mysteries of Isis had sanctuaries in which the important ceremonies of the cult took place. These contained an open court with altars where the morning sacrifices were conducted, an inner chamber with the image of the goddess, and an under­ground crypt. This probably represented the underworld, where Lucius, too, underwent his initiation. These crypts contained water and the rite performed on Lucius must have been a sym­bolic drowning with Osiris and a rising again to new life.^[110] While various activities took place in these temples, the most important was the worship of the goddess before her image.

Sacrifices and prayers offered to Isis are often depicted on frescoes and reliefs.

The services included the singing of hymns and music with several instruments. The nature of the mysteries demanded that some parts of the services were open only to initiates, while in others everybody could participate. People attracted to the Isiac mysteries were thus divided into three groups: priests, initiates, and laymen.

The priesthood had a number of grades and functions. The highest rank was the chief priest and prophet, after whom came the stolist, who was in charge of the goddess’s clothing. The pastophors were responsible for carrying the statue, while the neocorus took care of the temple. There were also scribes, astrologs, who observed the hours, and ^zn/orswho performed the ritual chanting.

The initiates were called by the goddess personally, usually in a dream. As is told of Lucius in the Metamorphoses, they went through a series of ceremonies which included fasting, ritual cleansing and baths. These initiatory rites led eventually to a lower order of the priesthood — in the case of Lucius, to admission into the rank of the pastophor.

Laymen, if they so desired, could join a cult association, of which there were many.

A special feature in the mysteries of Isis was the participation of women. This has been researched by Sharon Kelly Heyob in her book The Cult of Isis Among Women in the Graeco Roman Worlds Many women were among the office holders of the cult.

Although most of the principal priests appear to have been men, women priests became increasingly common from the first century A.D. onward, especially in the Roman sphere. Women devotees are frequently mentioned in inscriptions and are also de­picted on the wall paintings of Herculaneum. The Metamorphoses (Chap. 11) mentions them several times, and there is much epigraphical information to show that they were present in the cult associations.^[111]

68

Heyob, loc. tit.

This was so, Heyob asserts, because Isis was perceived as a goddess who presided over fertility and birth and who was looked upon as the protectress of lovers. From the very beginning she was associated with the generative forces of nature, and so Lucius addressed her as “the original and motherly source of all fruitful things in the earth” and “the celestial Venus, who in the begin­ning of the world coupled together male and female with an engendered love.”^[112] As wife she could be looked upon as a proto­type of earthly relationships and as mother she was often depicted in statues holding her infant son in her lap. This theme later developed into Isis lactans, i.e., Isis nursing her son. In the proces­sion described by Apuleius^[113] the goddess who nourishes was represented by a golden vessel shaped as a breast from which milk flowed down. Women thus saw Isis as the divine protectress who on a celestial level already experienced everything that a woman can experience in her life cycle;^[114] to all her devotees she was the divine image of the female sex, protectress of all female functions.

Many religions know ablutions and sprinklings as means of spiritual purification, but in the cult of Isis water seems to have played a more important role. An indication of that is hinted at in the story of Lucius, whose first thought after the initial appearance of the goddess was to sprinkle himself with seawater. Then, before his initiation, he had to take an ordinary bath after which he was sprinkled by the priest in the sanctuary.^[115] Indeed, ablution facilities found in many sanctuaries of Isis reveal elaborate sys­tems of waterworks built for this purpose. (This aspect of the Isiac mystery was researched and analyzed by Robert A. Wild, who collected much archaeological material for his book, quoted above, and enhanced his research with diagrams and pictures to shed light on the subject.) Nile-water was especially valued by her devotees and in many sanctuaries containers for such water were present. The blessings which the flooding of the Nile be­stows on the land and people of Egypt is well know; the Egyptians, however, attributed a greater potency to water. As Plutarch says, “They call not only the Nile but all moisture generally the efflux of Osiris, and in honor of the god the water-pitcher always leads the procession of the sacred ceremonies.”^[116] This mystical connec­tion between the god and water may account for Plutarch’s also stating that such purifications were conducive to health: the use of water had a hygienic effect.^[117]

The connection of Isis with water goes back to her very origin: as a celestial divinity she was the daughter of Geb, god of earth, and Nut, the heavenly queen, the divinity of the primordial water, heaven, the “mother of all the gods.”^[118] According to this identification of waters and heaven, therefore, Isis was not only a queen of heaven but a creative, generative principle whose pri­mordial connection with water gave to that element a mysterious purifying and vivifying potency. For the followers of the Isiac mysteries, ablutions and sprinkling with water were a sacra­mental experience, i.e., a physical action available to the senses in which a spiritual gift was given to the partakers. This can be compared to Christian Baptism, for Christians regard baptismal water as laden with spiritual potency by virtue of that water’s union with the Holy Spirit.^[119] Similarly, Isis was regarded as a savior goddess.

In the Metamorphoses 11.2, Lucius addressed Isis as “Queen of Heaven” and “Heavenly Venus.”^[120] Since the titles are the same as those given to Juno Caelestis in Carthage, Apuleius, whose birth­place of Madaurus was not very far from Carthage, may have been influenced by the overwhelming popularity of Caelestis. If indeed he applied the epithets of Caelestis to Isis, he did some­thing that in the middle of the second century was not surprising, for that creative power which “illumines all city walls with its feminine light... nourishing the happy seeds... ” cannot vary greatly, regardless of the name or ceremony by which she is invoked.^[121]

Since messages from Isis were usually received in the form of a dream, incubation, that is, sleeping in the temple at night, was often practiced. The worshipper rented a room in the temple com­pound, spent the night there, and waited for the appearance of the goddess or the god. The opportunity for vicious rumors, especially when incubation was practiced by women, was ever present, and sometimes illicit activities may have taken place. Best known is the story reported by Josephus,^[122] according to which a Roman knight, by bribing the priests, was able to have an illicit relation with a lady in the temple of Isis. He appeared to the lady dis­guised as Anubis, and the lady, believing that a great honor was bestowed upon her and that she actually had a union with the god, told of her experiences to everybody, including her husband. The fraud was discovered and exemplary punishments were meted out to all guilty parties. Many other veiled and not so veiled references can be found in Roman literature about the supposed tendency of Isis to encourage sexual misconduct. Heyob made a valiant attempt to prove these charges false and to exonerate Isis.^[123] Her arguments seem convincing, but an additional remark needs to be made: nothing pleased adherents of one religion more than to level charges of sexual misbehavior and aberration against another cult. Ancient history is full of such incidents, perhaps because they were so easy to make and many people liked them and did not ask for substantiation. The Romans made such charges against Christians, and one has only to read the Octavius by Minucius Felix to see how vicious some people could be. But Christians returned the favor, as the examples we quoted concern­ing Caelestis should suffice to illustrate. If occasional wrongs took place within the religion of Isis, that was not its outstanding characteristic. In fact, the opposite appears to be true.

The similarities between the cult of Isis and certain Christian practices have been pointed out many times. Scholarly commen­taries on the books of the New Testament usually contain refe­rences to parallel ideas and concepts. Christian iconography also has been compared to that of Isis, especially the representations of the Virgin Mary with the child Jesus, which indeed resemble closely those of Isis nursing her son. The similarities are im­pressive. When one looks at the illustrations of Isis reprinted by Tran Tam Tinh in Isis Lactans it is easy to understand why so many scholars consider Isis to be the prototype of Mary. Most recently, R. E. Witt called Isis the “Great Forerunner,” empha­sizing Paul’s familiarity with Isiac liturgy.^[124] But Tran Tam Tinh pointed out the large chronological gap between the statues of Isis Lactans and Maria Lactans. In the West the first representations of Mary nursing her son date from the twelfth century.^[125] The theo­logical roots of Mariology are very probably in Asia Minor rather than in North Africa. And even though, as Witt points out, the cult of Isis was known in Asia Minor, the major female divinity, whose influence overshadowed everything else there, was not Isis but Cybele, the Great Mother. This is not to underestimate the influence of Isis upon the later praxis pietatis directed toward Mary. Pious Christians observing their pagan neighbors offering devo­tion to Isis could not fail to be impressed by the many attractive features of her rituals. But this was also the case at places where a goddess other than Isis was venerated.

Mariology is much too complex a phenomenon to be derived from a single source; there are many “forerunners” of the vene­ration of Mary. It is not isolated and sometimes superficial simi­larities that we must look for, but rather, general and broad principles which apply wherever a goddess is worshipped. We find these in the cult of Isis. This was a cosmic religion which held out the hope of personal salvation by an intimate reinte­gration into a totality. In the mysteries of Isis this totality was represented by the primordial waters. Over and above the chaotic divisions and separations in the world, Isis pointed to an essential order in the universe and offered a way to attain it. In this the cult of Isis came very close to the teachings of Pauline Christianity as expressed in Ephesians 1 and Colossians 1 as well as to the concept of a “unio mystica” of man with God which played such an impor­tant role in early Christian theology. Of course, other mysteries did the same, and we now turn to review another of these, the rites of the Syrian Goddess.