taking on the attributes of lesser goddess forms and subsuming them into her cult. In her aretalogy or self-praise, Isis utters as comprehensive a list of her abilities as any that appear in the mouth of wisdom in the Bible: I gave and ordained laws for men, which no one is able to change… I am she that is called goddess by women... I divided the earth from the heaven. I showed the paths of the stars. I ordered the course of the sun and the moon. I devised business in the sea. I made strong the right. I brought together women and men. I appointed to women to bring their infants to birth in the tenth month. I ordained that parents should be loved by children. I laid punishment upon those disposed without natural affection toward their parents. I made with my brother Osiris an end to the eating of men. I revealed mysteries unto men. I taught men to honor images of the gods... I made the right to be stronger than gold and silver. I ordained that the true should be thought good... I am the Queen of rivers and winds and sea. No one is held in honor without my knowing it. I am the Queen of war. I am the Queen of the thunderbolt. I stir up the sea and I calm it. I am in the rays of the sun... I set free those in bonds... I overcome Fate.2 This comprehensive list enumerates the pagan virtues as understood in the ancient world. Isis shows herself in the likeness of Maat, or Demeter Thesmophorus as an upholder of justice, a lawgiver, and creator as well as one who reforms the nature of spirituality and even fate—heimarmene, most feared by the ancients for its capricious convolutions. Significantly another aretalogy says of her, “Thou didst make the power of women equal to that of men.”3 The turning point in Isis’ career happened when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt. The Ptolemaic dynasty, founded by Ptolemy I, a Macedonian, brought a Greek influence to bear upon Egypt. The Ptolemaic dynasty immediately assimilated itself to Egyptian modes of kingship, but the assimilation of Egyptian and Greek religious traditions was more difficult. The Greeks were keen to understand the universal language of symbolic correspondence between their own deities and those of the Egyptians. Ptolemy I appointed two priests to modify the disparate polytheisms into a coherent order: Manetho, an Egyptian, and Timotheus, a Greek. The long history of Egyptian tradition had, over the centuries, accommodated itself to some strange inconsistencies, which these two ironed out, incorporating Greek concepts and deistic analogies that made Egyptian worship more ecumenical.4 Plutarch takes up the Egyptian Isis and Hellenizes her in his study Isis and Osiris.The Greek-Egyptian experience is truly a catalyst
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 21:37:45 +0000
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