Isis and Horus

Isis had over time absorbed characteristics of other goddesses. An example here is her headdress, comprising a sun disc set between flaring cow horns (broken on the proper left side), which is typically associated with the goddess Hathor. The uraeus ornamenting the front of her wig signals Isis’ close ties to royalty. In myth, this is affirmed through Isis’ relationship as sister and wife of Osiris, with whom the deceased pharaoh was identified, and as mother of Horus, the divine counterpart of the living pharaoh. Her tight, ankle-length sheath and tripartite wig harken back to traditional pharaonic iconography, as does the positioning of Harpokrates at a right angle to her, which is comparable to an Old Kingdom statue of the Sixth Dynasty pharaoh Pepi II (c. 2300-2206 BCE) seated on his mother’s lap (1). Holding her right hand to her left breast, Isis epitomizes maternal love (2).

As her popularity increased during the Late Period onward, Isis acquired universal traits as a mother goddess, and her cult continued perhaps as late as the sixth century CE, when the temple of Isis at Philae was closed by the emperor Justinian (3). The representation of her suckling the infant Horus seen in this statuette may have served as the source for Christian iconography of the Virgin Mary nursing the infant Jesus.

NOTES:

1. In the Brooklyn Museum; see W. Stevenson Smith, The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt, 3rd edn. (New Haven, 1998) fig. 142.

2. For a discussion on the increased emphasis of Isis as mother of Horus from the Late Period onward, see M. Hill and D. Schorsch, eds., Gifts for the Gods: Images from Egyptian Temples, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 2007) 149-50, no. 57.

3. See J. H. F. Dijkstra, “A Cult of Isis at Philae after Justinian? Reconsidering ‘P. Cair. Masp.’ I 67004,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 146 (2004) 137-54, esp. 151-54.

Marian Feldman