Isis- Egyptian GodDeity"Great of Magic"

The Search for Osiris

When Set sealed Osiris in a gilded cedar chest and cast it into the Nile, Isis refused to accept her husband's death. She cut her hair and tore her garments. She searched the length of Egypt and beyond, following the chest's path until she traced it to Byblos in Phoenicia, where it had washed ashore and been enclosed within a tamarisk tree that grew magnificent around it. The king of Byblos, marveling at the tree's beauty and fragrance, had it cut down and fashioned into a pillar for his palace. Isis arrived in disguise, won the favor of the queen as nursemaid to the young prince, and by night placed the infant in divine fire to burn away his mortality while she circled the pillar as a swallow, crying in grief. When the queen discovered the ritual and screamed, breaking the spell and costing her son his chance at immortality, Isis revealed her divinity and claimed the pillar. She split it open and drew out her husband's body. She returned to Egypt, but Set found the body hidden in the Delta marshes. He tore it into fourteen pieces and scattered them across the land.

The Resurrection

Isis and her sister Nephthys searched the length of the Nile, finding thirteen pieces of Osiris. At each site Isis established a shrine. The fourteenth piece, his phallus, had been swallowed by a Nile fish. Isis fashioned a replacement from gold. Transforming into a kite, she spread her wings over the reassembled body and, hovering above her dead husband, breathed enough life into him to conceive their son Horus. Her tears for Osiris became the annual flood of the Nile, and her star Sirius heralded its coming each midsummer.

Mother in the Marshes

Isis fled with the infant Horus into the papyrus marshes of Khemmis in the Delta, raising him in hiding from Set's agents. In the tale of the Seven Scorpions, she traveled in disguise with scorpion guardians; when a wealthy woman refused her shelter, the scorpions stung the woman's child. Isis healed the boy. She cured Horus when scorpions stung him and snakes bit him. The cippi of Horus, stone stelae showing the child god trampling crocodiles and serpents, stood in Egyptian households. Mothers poured water over the carved spells and gave it to sick children to drink.

The Champion of Horus

When Horus came of age and challenged Set before the divine tribunal, Isis fought for his claim. She argued his case with such persuasive force that Set demanded she be barred from the proceedings. The Ennead agreed and moved to the Island in the Middle, with the ferryman Nemty ordered to refuse passage to any woman. Isis disguised herself as an old crone and bribed Nemty with a gold ring to cross to the island. There she transformed into a beautiful young woman and approached Set with a parable: a stranger had stolen her son's cattle, his rightful inheritance from his dead father. What should be done? Set, failing to recognize her, declared indignantly that the son should have the cattle. He had condemned himself from his own mouth, admitting before the assembled gods that a son's inheritance was inviolable. The tribunal recognized that Set had judged his own case, and Ra-Horakhty declared for Horus.

The Secret Name of Ra

Isis desired supreme magical power, and she devised a plan to take it from Ra himself. She collected the aged god's spittle as it dripped to the ground and mixed it with earth to fashion a venomous serpent. She set it in his path. When the serpent bit Ra, he was wracked with a poison even he could not cure. His limbs trembled and the fire of the sun guttered within him. Ra called the other gods to heal him, but none could. Isis offered to heal him, but only if he revealed his true, secret name, the hidden word that was the source of his authority over all creation. Ra tried to deflect her, offering his known names, but Isis recognized these were public titles, not the secret name hidden in his body. After great suffering, Ra yielded. The name passed from his heart to hers. With that hidden word, she held power over all creation, and she would pass it to her son Horus.

Great of Magic

The tyet, a blood-red amulet of jasper or carnelian shaped like her knotted girdle, was placed at the throats of mummies. The Book of the Dead prescribed the words spoken over it: "You have your blood, Isis. You have your power, Isis. You have your magic, Isis."

On the Metternich Stela, the spells Isis spoke over Horus in the marshes were carved in stone for healers to recite over poisoned children. The healer spoke as Isis, declaring "I am Isis" to channel her power through their own voice.

The Mourning Goddess

Professional wailing women at Egyptian funerals were called "the two kites" after Isis and Nephthys in their bird forms. They flanked the bier just as the goddesses had flanked the body of Osiris. The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys, preserved in the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus, was performed annually at the Khoiak festival by two priestesses who embodied the goddesses, chanting antiphonally over an effigy of Osiris. Their keening voices summoned the god's spirit back to his body. In funerary art, Isis appears at the foot of coffins, wings spread, while Nephthys stands at the head. In the Book of the Dead, Isis speaks protective spells over the deceased, guiding them past the serpents and gates of the Duat.

She of Ten Thousand Names

At her temples, aretalogies inscribed on stone proclaimed her powers in the first person: "I am Isis, the mistress of every land. I divided the earth from the heavens. I showed the paths of the stars. I ordered the course of the sun and the moon." Her temple at Philae remained active until the sixth century CE, among the last pagan sanctuaries in Egypt.