I sis had a cult that spread throughout Egypt and parts of Europe. People worshiped Isis as the ideal, fertile mother. Women worshiped in her cult and, at times, were her primary worshipers. Another way Egyptians honored Isis was through the images and statues placed in her temples. She was part of a triad of deities along with Osiris and Horus.

Isis is often shown nursing Horus or the pharaoh. Some aspects of her as a mother might have influenced early Christian ideas about the Virgin Mary. People believed her priests could cure illness and they celebrated festivals for her and her four siblings. These took place on five successive days at the end of the year.

Temples

Two of the primary temples dedicated to Isis (in Egypt), were at Behbeit el-Hagar and Philae. Behbeit el Hagar’s construction began during the Late Period and it was in use through the Ptolemaic Period. The builders of this temple were the kings of the Thirtieth Dynasty, who worshiped Isis with devotion. Behbeit el Hagar served as a match to Isis’ temple at Philae, in Upper Egypt.

Construction of the temple on the island of Philae began during the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. But it was not a prominent temple until the Greco-Roman period. Scholars moved Isis’ temple at Philae during the 1960s to save it from flooding after the building of the Aswan Dam. This temple is intact because people did not remove its stones to construct other buildings.

symbols are associated with Isis:

Sept: a star that marked the beginning of a new year and the start of the Niles’s flooding.

Thet: the buckle or knot of Isis. The thet might represent a stylized uterus with its ligatures and a vagina. It was usually made of a red substance and represents blood and life.

Sacred Animals: cow, scorpion and snake.

Sacred Birds: dove, hawk, swallow and vulture.

T
he temple, which sits on a raised podium in the centre of the courtyard, has a porticoed entrance (B) with niches on either side of the entrance to the cella. The walls were originally covered in white stucco in imitation of opus quadratum, while along the back wall was a raised plinth (C) designed to support statues of Isis and Osiris. In a niche at the rear of the podium was a statue of Dionysus with a panther, a gift of Numerius Popidius Ampliatus.

The temple’s main altar (D) (pictured lower left) sits to the left of the steps with a second altar (E) on the south side of the podium. On the eastern side of the complex is a small temple-like structure (F) (pictured below) with a stairway leading down to an underground cistern containing the sacred waters of the Nile. The small temple is referred to as the Purgatorium, the place where purification rites were performed. The facade has a broken triangular pediment and a frieze with two processions of priests converging towards the centre. Mars with Venus and Perseus with Andromeda are shown in relief on the exterior side walls. A detail from the east side wall is shown lower left.

To the west of the temple court is a large room (G), known as the Ekklesiasterion. This hall was found virtually intact with a black mosaic floor and fine fourth style frescoes. On the north wall (a contemporary drawing is shown below) was the central scene of the liberation of Io by Hermes while the south wall contained the scene of Io’s arrival at Canopus in Egypt (bottom left). (Both frescoes are in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples).

To the south of this hall is a room referred to as the Sacrarium, used to store cult objects, which has a fresco of snakes guarding a wicker basket adorned with lunar symbols.

In the south east corner of the complex a series of rooms (I) open off the south side of the portico. These rooms were the living quarters (Pastophorion) of the priests and include a kitchen, triclinium and cubiculum.