Osirian
Isis
ꜣstHow it changed
The clearest case of a god growing. A relatively minor figure in the Pyramid Texts, she absorbs Hathor's iconography, acquires universal claims in the Late Period, and by Roman times has temples from Britain to the Euphrates. Her cult outlasted Egyptian religion itself.
Cult centre
Philae, and Behbeit el-Hagar
Best attested
Old Kingdom onward, with her greatest reach in the Late and Graeco-Roman periods
Family
Daughter of Geb and Nut; sister-wife of Osiris; mother of Horus.
Epithets
- “Great of magic”
- “Mother of the god”
How to recognise the figure
A woman wearing a throne hieroglyph on her head, or later the horns-and-disc crown borrowed from Hathor.
Appears in
Alluded to from c. 2400 BCE; told as a connected narrative only c. 100 CE
The murder of Osiris
The one Egyptian myth everyone can name, and the one where the famous version is Greek.
c. 1160 BCE, Twentieth Dynasty
The Contendings of Horus and Set
Eighty years of divine litigation, with bribery, shapeshifting and open comedy at the gods' expense.
c. 1300 BCE, Nineteenth Dynasty
Isis and the secret name of Ra
A goddess poisons the sun god in order to blackmail him for his real name.
c. 1500 BCE onward, in royal tombs
The twelve hours of the night
The sun does not set. It dies, travels through the underworld, unites with Osiris at midnight, and is reborn.
Carries
Worshipped at
Others in this group