60 Fun Facts About Isis Goddess

What hieroglyph did Isis originally wear on her head as a sign of her identity?

The sign spelled the sounds of her name, and some scholars think she was originally a personification of the royal throne itself.

During the New Kingdom, Isis took on the sun-disk headdress of which other Egyptian goddess?

Hathor may have been counted as Horus's mother before Isis took over that role along with her crown.

Isis and her three siblings were the children of which two deities?

Geb and Nut were the earth god and the sky goddess, lovers held apart by the air god Shu, who is shown standing between them and lifting her arched body overhead.

Which sister helped Isis search for and reassemble the pieces of Osiris's body?

Nephthys was the wife of Set, the brother who killed Osiris, yet she sided with Isis, and the sisters' work on the body became the mythic model for mummification.

In Plutarch's version, how does Set trap Osiris?

In a chest built to his exact measurements: at a feast Set offered it to whoever fitted inside, and once Osiris lay down the plotters nailed the lid shut and threw it in the river.

According to Plutarch, which part of Osiris's body did Isis have to reconstruct because fish had eaten it?

His penis: Plutarch says three kinds of Nile fish fed on it, which is why, he adds, Egyptians would not eat those fish, and Isis made a replica to take its place.

In Plutarch's telling, Osiris's body drifted to which Phoenician city, where a tree grew up around it?

Byblos: its king had the trunk cut into a pillar for his palace, unaware of what it held, so Isis took service in the queen's household to get near it.

Where, in the developed myth, does Isis give birth to Horus after a difficult labor?

The marshes of the Nile Delta: there, among the papyrus, Isis kept Horus hidden from Set until he was grown, and her efforts to heal him there became the model for Egyptian healing spells.

In one story, seven minor deities travel with Isis as her bodyguard in the form of which creatures?

Scorpions: when a rich woman shut her door on Isis, they stung the woman's son in revenge, and the goddess took pity and cured the blameless child herself.

In one myth Horus beheads Isis in a rage, and her head is replaced with that of which animal?

A cow: Horus lashed out after Isis took pity on Set in mid-battle and let him go, and the tale explains the horned crown she wears.

In a famous spell, Isis creates a snake to bite which god so she can extract his secret name?

Ra, poisoned by the snake she had shaped, could be cured by Isis alone, and she held out until he gave up the name, which he let her pass on only to her son Horus.

In 'The Contendings of Horus and Set', Isis tricks Set into condemning himself by taking what form?

A beautiful young woman: she told Set that a stranger was threatening to take her dead husband's herd from her son, and when he called it unjust she taunted him for judging his own case.

Isis and her sister were often shown mourning Osiris in the form of which bird?

The kite's cry may have recalled wailing women, or its search for carrion the sisters' search for their brother.

What is the tyet, an emblem of Isis often placed on mummies?

A knot likened to her blood: the Book of the Dead calls for a tyet of red jasper at the mummy's neck, so that the power of Isis would guard the body.

Which instrument, borrowed from another goddess's cult, became one of Isis's attributes?

Sistrum: this sacred rattle spread across the Roman Empire with the cult of Isis, and a close cousin of it is shaken in Ethiopian church services.

The Pyramid Texts closely link Isis with Sopdet, the goddess of which star?

Sirius rose again at dawn just before the Nile's yearly flood, so the star, and Isis with it, was credited with bringing the water that made Egypt's fields grow.

Which sacred bull, worshipped at Memphis as a living god, was said to be the son of Isis?

Apis was a living bull recognised by its markings, and when one died it was mourned, mummified like a king and buried in underground galleries at Saqqara.

Which papyrus tells of Isis serving as a midwife at the birth of three future kings?

Westcar Papyrus: in its last tale Isis and other deities arrive disguised as wandering performers to deliver the triplets, and she calls each boy by name as he is born.

Josephus says a seduction scandal led which Roman emperor to destroy Isis's temple and throw her statue in the river?

Tiberius acted, Josephus says, after priests of Isis were bribed to tell a noblewoman that a god of the temple wished to dine with her, when the caller was really a suitor she had turned down.

Isis's temple at Philae outlived Egypt's other great temples, until which Byzantine emperor ordered it closed?

Justinian I sent his commander Narses to close it and carry its statues off to Constantinople; until then peoples from beyond the frontier in Nubia had kept the sanctuary going.

In Plutarch's telling, Isis sought out and raised which god, the abandoned child of her sister and Osiris?

Anubis: his mother abandoned the newborn for fear of her husband Set, and Isis tracked him down with the help of dogs and raised him to be her guardian.

Philae's temple of Isis was taken apart and rebuilt in the UNESCO rescue that also moved which monument?

Abu Simbel was moved in the 1960s, and Philae's temples followed in the 1970s, rebuilt on the nearby islet of Agilkia, which was levelled and reshaped to receive them.

Plutarch says which animals never harm people in papyrus boats, because Isis once searched for Osiris in one?

Crocodiles: Isis was gathering the pieces of Osiris by papyrus skiff, and in the tradition Plutarch reports she held a funeral for each where she found it, hence Egypt's many tombs of Osiris.

Which Greek historian of the fifth century BCE likened Isis to Demeter?

Herodotus wrote that 'Isis is in the tongue of the Hellenes Demeter'; each goddess was known for wandering the world in search of a lost loved one, a daughter or a husband.

The first Ptolemies promoted which new god, blending Osiris with Greek gods, as Isis's consort?

Serapis was given the look of a bearded Greek god so that the Ptolemies' Greek and Egyptian subjects could share one cult, centred on his great temple at Alexandria.

Which Greek island, a trading hub, was an early cult center that launched Isis's worship into Italy?

Delos became a free port thick with Italian traders in the second century BCE, the route by which the Egyptian cults reached Italy; a temple of Isis stands among its ruins.

After conquering Egypt, Octavian banned shrines to the Egyptian gods inside which of Rome's limits?

The pomerium was Rome's sacred inner boundary: keeping the shrines outside it, fresh from the war with Egypt, branded her gods as foreign without driving them from the city.

Which Roman dynasty, first hailed to power in Alexandria, treated Isis and her consort as divine patrons of its rule?

The Flavians owed Egypt their rise: its legions were the first to swear loyalty to Vespasian, and when fire destroyed Rome's great temple of Isis in 80 CE the dynasty rebuilt it.

Which second-century novel ends with its hero Lucius being initiated into the cult of Isis?

The Golden Ass: Lucius, turned into a donkey by a botched spell, is restored when Isis appears to him and tells him to eat the roses a priest will carry in her procession.

Rome looked to Isis Pelagia, 'Isis of the Sea', to protect which Egyptian cargo its people depended on?

Grain: Egypt's harvests fed the city of Rome, so the goddess who watched over the crossing from Alexandria came to be seen as guarding the wellbeing of the whole empire.

Harpocrates, the child Horus worshipped beside Isis, was taken by Greeks and Romans for a god of what?

Silence: Egyptian art showed any child with a finger at the mouth, and Greeks and Romans read the pose as a hush, so the boy became their god of secrets.

Pinturicchio painted the story of Isis and Osiris on the Vatican ceilings of which Renaissance pope?

Alexander VI, the Borgia pope, had a bull on his family arms, and the ceiling's tale of Isis, Osiris and a sacred Egyptian bull tied that emblem to divine favour.

As Isis-Fortuna, what did the goddess hold in her right hand to represent control of fate?

A rudder: Fortune was thought to steer human lives as a pilot steers at sea, and in her left hand Isis-Fortuna carried a horn of plenty.

Which future emperor escaped the burning Capitol in Rome's civil war of 69 CE disguised as a follower of Isis?

Domitian, then eighteen, walked out past his enemies among the priests of Isis and stayed hidden across the river until his father's army had taken the city.

Priests of Isis were known for which distinctive appearance drawn from Egyptian tradition?

Shaven heads and white linen: Plutarch explains that hair and wool alike were held to grow from the body's waste and so to be impure, so the priests shaved smooth and wore only flax.

What did Isis temples built in Hellenistic times often include to imitate the Nile flood?

Underground cisterns of sacred water: the water in them rose and fell to mimic the river's yearly rise, and one surviving Roman temple keeps a sunken room with a basin for Nile water.

Each March, worshippers of Isis opened the sailing season by launching what from the shore?

A ship laden with offerings: in one Roman account the crowd pours milk on the waves and heaps the new vessel with spices and gifts until a fair wind carries it out of sight.

Which English poet likened Truth to the body of Osiris, torn apart and gathered limb by limb by Isis?

John Milton used the image in Areopagitica, his 1644 attack on press licensing, to argue that truth is recovered by piecing scattered fragments together, never by censorship.

The Lychnapsia, Rome's August festival of lamps, is thought to have marked what for Isis?

Her birthday: Egyptians marked it on the fourth of the five extra days that closed their year, which on one theory matched August 12 when Rome took up the festival.

A Roman jug scratched with the address 'at the temple of Isis' was dug up in 1912 in which British city?

London: the jug reads 'Londini ad fanum Isidis', and an altar found in 1975 records a Roman governor ordering her temple rebuilt after it had collapsed with age.

Which Egyptian god was sometimes said to be the father of Isis and the source of her wisdom?

Thoth was the god of writing and knowledge, the Greeks' Hermes, and Plutarch notes that many writers called Isis his daughter because she too was held to be wise.

Pompeii's Temple of Isis had been rebuilt from the ground up after which disaster struck the town in 62 CE?

An earthquake: the temple was rebuilt in the name of a six-year-old boy, whose freedman father was buying his son a place among the town's elite, seventeen years before Vesuvius buried it.

In which Mozart opera do the priests of Isis and Osiris test the hero with trials of initiation?

The Magic Flute is thought to draw its temple trials from Sethos, a French novel of 1731 that invented an Egyptian initiation rite, which Masonic lodges of the century also copied.

In Phoenicia, Isis became syncretized with which local goddess during the first millennium BCE?

Astarte: the borrowing ran both ways, for Egyptians had worshipped the Phoenician goddess in their own country since the New Kingdom, and she had a temple at Memphis.

Which Roman author reported that the Germanic Suebi worshipped Isis?

Tacitus wrote in the Germania that some of the Suebi sacrificed to Isis and that her emblem looked foreign to him; modern scholars suspect he had mistaken a Germanic goddess for her.

Statues of Isis holding the infant Horus on her lap may have shaped the earliest images of which figure?

The Virgin Mary: Isis was hailed as Queen of Heaven long before that title passed to the mother of Jesus, though how much Mary's cult borrowed from hers is disputed.

The name Isidore derives from a Greek name meaning what?

Gift of Isis: the same Greek ending gives Theodore, 'gift of God', and the pagan name outlived her worship because saints such as Isidore of Seville carried it.

Which nineteenth-century occultist titled her first major book Isis Unveiled?

Helena Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy, was playing on an old image: a statue of Isis at Sais was said to be inscribed 'my robe no mortal has yet uncovered', and her 1877 book promised to lift it.

Which Italian writer told Isis's story as that of a mortal queen in his book On Famous Women?

Boccaccio treated the goddess as history: his Isis is a queen of Egypt who taught humankind the arts of civilization, one of the women's lives he gathered in the 1360s.

An old legend, taken seriously into the 1800s, held that which European capital's name meant 'beside Isis'?

Paris: the legend split its Latin name into 'Para Isis', and in 1811 Napoleon had the goddess added to the city's coat of arms, though the name really comes from the Gaulish Parisii.

Isis's cult was ended by the rise of which religion between the fourth and sixth centuries CE?

Christianity won slowly: emperors outlawed pagan worship in the late fourth century, yet festivals of Isis were still being celebrated in Italy in the 410s.

Isis was said to be the mother of which feline goddess?

Bastet was Artemis to the Greeks, which may be how Isis herself came to be equated with Artemis.

In Plutarch's telling, the five days on which Isis and her siblings were born were won at a board game from whom?

The moon: the sun had cursed their mother to bear no child in any month or year, so a god who loved her won a seventieth of each night's moonlight and made five new days of it.

In Egyptian healing spells, what does Isis threaten to do unless her son Horus is cured?

Stop the sun in its course: in the spell carved on the Metternich Stela her cry of grief brings the sun god's boat to a standstill in the sky until Horus is healed.

An obelisk unearthed near Rome's ancient temple of Isis now rides on the back of which marble animal designed by Bernini?

An elephant: the Latin on its pedestal says the strongest of beasts bears Egypt's wisdom to show that it takes a robust mind to carry solid wisdom; the obelisk turned up in 1665 beside Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

Which Ptolemaic queen styled herself 'the new Isis'?

Cleopatra VII, the last ruler of Egypt before Rome annexed it, appeared in public in a robe sacred to Isis; Cleopatra III had gone further and used the goddess's name in place of her own.

Isis and Osiris are first named under which Old Kingdom dynasty, the one after Giza's pyramid builders?

The Fifth Dynasty gives the first sure mentions, and its last king, Unas, had the Pyramid Texts carved inside his pyramid, where Isis already comes to the aid of the dead king.

The Temple of Debod, a Nubian shrine to Isis and Amun that Egypt gave to Spain, now stands in which city?

Madrid received it as Egypt's thanks for Spain's help in the 1960s campaign that saved Nubia's temples from flooding behind a new dam; it was rebuilt stone by stone in a city park.

New Kingdom temple reliefs show the king doing what with Isis to signal his divine right to rule?

Nursing at her breast was a claim kings made in stone: Ramesses II had himself carved at Beit el-Wali in Nubia as a child being suckled by Isis.

Kush, whose people built Isis temples as far south as Wad ban Naqa, moved its capital from Napata to which city?

Meroe took over after an Egyptian army under Psamtik II sacked Napata in the 590s BCE; the old capital kept its great temple of Amun and remained the kingdom's chief religious centre.