River Isis

“ Sailing from the mouth of the Isis, we passed by the Mogrus, which also is a navigable river, and at the distance of ninety stadia from the Isis. We then entered the Phasis, which is distant from the Mogrus ninety stadia. The water of this river is lighter in the balance, and more changeable in its colour, than any with which I am acquainted. Any person may satisfy himself of the superior lightness of this water by weighing it, or by observing that it floats on the surface of the sea without mingling with it. ”

“ Rash vows are always followed by leisurely repentance.
Isis. From the Celtic uisg, water. The word enters into 164many English river names, notably the “Thames.” The University of Oxford is called Isis from the river upon which it stands.
Islam. From the Arabic islama, to bend. This term expressed an entire submission or resignation to the will of God. By the Mohammedans “Islam” is described as the true faith.
Isle of Bourbon. A French settlement named in compliment to the House of Bourbon. ”

“ Nepthys, his wife, sister of Isis, is the Desert outside of Egypt, but which in a higher inundation of the Nile being sometimes overflowed, becomes productive, and has a child by Osiris, named Anubis. When Typhon shuts Osiris into the ark, it is the summer heat drying up the Nile and confining it to its channel. This ark, entangled in a tree, is where the Nile divides into many mouths at the Delta and is overhung by the wood. Isis, nursing the child of the king, the fragrance, etc., represent the earth nourishing plants and animals. ”

“ And thus among the Egyptians such men say that Osiris is the Nile consorting with the Earth, which is Isis, and that the sea is Typhon into which the Nile discharges its waters and is lost to view and dissipated, save for that part which the earth takes up and absorbs and thereby becomes fertilized. ”

“ In the temples of Isis services were held at daybreak and in the early afternoon daily, and everywhere these were attended by crowds of people. The holy water used in the libations and for sprinkling the people was Nile water, specially imported from Egypt, and to the votaries of the goddess it symbolized the seed of the god Osiris, which germinated and brought forth fruit through the spells of the goddess Isis. The festivals and processions of Isis were everywhere most popular, and were enjoyed by learned and unlearned alike. ”

“ In Egyptian mythology, the tablets represent Isis as a bird. “For she is Isis, the charmer, the avenger of her brother, who seeks him without failing, who traverses the earth with lamentations, without resting 96before she has found him—creating the light with her feathers, producing the wind with her wings, celebrating the sacred dances, and depositing her brother in the tomb ... raising the remains of the god, with immovable heart ... she makes him grow, his arm becomes strong in the great dwelling.” ”

“ In another inscription, on the south wall of the small temple of Isis, the birth of Isis is described thus: “On this beautiful day, ‘of the night of the child in its cradle,’ on the great festival during which the world is re-adjusted, or balanced (sekhek en ta) , the bringing forth of Isis takes place in the interior or centre of Anet (Tentyra) by the goddess Ap, the great, in the chamber of Ap, in the form of a dark red female person, the Khnum ankh, the lovely. Her mother, Nut, exclaimed at the sight of her: behold, (As is) I have become a mother. Thence the origin of the name Isis.... ”

“ Osiris wedded Isis and adopted the young Horus. But this prolific and gentle pair were not representative of all the phenomena of nature. The eastern part of the Delta borders upon the solitudes of Arabia, and although it contains several rich and fertile provinces, yet most of these owe their existence to the arduous labour of the inhabitants, their fertility being dependent on the daily care of man, and on his regular distribution of the water. The moment he suspends the straggle or relaxes his watchfulness, the desert reclaims them and overwhelms them with sterility. ”

“ Would an Egyptian desire to see the sanctuary of Isis and her priests desecrated and destroyed? Perchance he did not worship Ptah or Apis, or other of the gods, but all born upon the Nile venerated Mother Isis, the Queen of Heaven, and bowed to her sovereignty. That was a faith which where’er they wandered and upon whatever altars they burned incense, they never could forget, because through a hundred generations it came down to them with their blood. ”

“ He says, moreover, that his people who rule the land to-day purpose to sink it beneath the Nile that the lands below may be enriched and multiplied. Herein I see an allegory; the temples of Isis are drowned and the learning they held is lost in order that more food may grow to feed the common and the ignorant. Yet to what end, seeing that if there is more food, more men will come to eat it, all of them common and ignorant, while Isis and her wisdom are swallowed in the slime. Thus has it ever been in Egypt, and doubtless elsewhere, for such is Nature’s law. ”

“ It is a kind of heron, either the Ardea cinerea, which is common in Egypt, or else some similar species.
The goddess whom we are accustomed to regard as inseparable from him, Isis the cow, or woman with cow's horns, had not always belonged to him. Originally she was an independent deity, dwelling at Bûto in the midst of the ponds of Adhû. She had neither husband nor lover, but had spontaneously conceived and given birth to a son, whom she suckled among the reeds—a lesser Horus who was called Harsiîsît, Horus the son of Isis, to distinguish him from Haroêris. ”

“ Justly did the ancient people worship in the moon the queenly Isis; for when the silver emblem of the goddess claims the sands for her own, to all save the desert-born they become a place of secrets. Here is a theatre for great dramas, wanting only the tragedian. The outlawed Sheikh of the Bishareen knew this full well, but, unlike others who know it, he had acted upon his convictions and revealed to wondering Egypt what Bedouin craft and a band of intrepid horsemen can do, aided by a belt of sand, and cloaked by night. ”

“ The hearts of their enemies will be hardened to their own destruction to the last conflict. The south will still be disposed to "keep back" Israel from their country. Therefore, leaving Egypt, "Ephraim shall pass through the sea of affliction, and shall smite the waves in the sea, and all the deeps of the river shall dry up: and the pride of Assyria shall be brought down, and the sceptre of Egypt shall depart away." (Zech. 10:10,11) The combined forces of Egypt and Assyria shall be broken as the hosts of Pharaoh, and the horse and his rider be drowned in the depths of the sea. ”

“ The boundaries of the Assyrian empire are given upon the map according to the best authorities. On the north they were the Armenian Mountains, the river Cyrus (now called the Kur) , north of the Araxes, and the [92] northern range of Mount Taurus; on the east, the Caspian Sea and the great salt desert; on the south, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian desert and Upper Egypt; on the west, the Mediterranean and the river Halys. ”

“ Also the Lord at that redemption will dry up Nilus, and Euphrates, and will divide it into seven streames (answerable to his drying up the red Sea when they came out of Ægypt) perhaps that the seven Tribes, which are in those parts, may goe over it; as they passe into their Country, as Isaiah saith in ch. 27.12, 13. And it shall be in that day, and he shall shake off from the bank of the river, (some understand Euphrates) unto the river of Egypt (Nilus) and ye, O children of Israel, shall be gathered one by one. Which was never done in the captivity of Babylon. ”

“ The land of Assyria is but little watered by rain, only enough in fact to nourish the root of the corn; the stalk grows up, and the grain comes to maturity only by being irrigated from the river, not, as in Egypt, by the river overflowing the fields, but by the hand and by engines. The Babylonian territory, like Egypt, is intersected by canals; and the largest of these is navigable, stretching in the direction of the winter sunrise [10] ; and it extends from the Euphrates to another river, the Tigris, on which the city of Nineveh stood. ”

“ Isis typified that beatitude. The goddess, in whose mysteries were taught both the immortality of the soul and the secret of its migrations, was one of Ishtar’s many avatars, the only one whose attributes accorded even remotely with the divine. Egypt adored her. There were other gods. There was Osiris, the father; Horus, the son, who with Isis formed the trinity which India and Persia both possessed, and which [Pg 88] Byzance afterward perpetuated. There were other gods also, a hierarchy of great idle divinities with, beneath them, cohorts of inferior fiends. But the great light was Isis. ”

“ Of all the Egyptian religious beliefs that existed from the Prehistoric period down into Roman times, the oldest and the one most held in veneration was that connected with the worship of Osiris, Isis and Horus. These three, though primarily only local gods, at an early period became prominent deities of all Egypt; and the cult of Isis, more particularly, remained a favourite always, rivalling even that of Osiris in later times. ”

“ The sea and the isles were common expressions for the Gentile nations, (Gen. x. 5,) [pg 091] while the land signifies always the Jews, from Palestine or the Holy Land—see note. Rivers denote in prophetic language, the people residing on their borders. (Isaiah viii. 7.) The river, in particular, signifies the Euphrates and the Eastern nations bordering upon it. This will serve as a key to the meaning of the next verse, which announces the subversion of Paganism in these different countries. Thus, afflicting the sea and smiting the waves, denote its extinction in the West ”

“ Thus Isis is a giver of life and food to the dead in the Duat—that is, she brings with her the fresh air of heaven into the underworld—and as the air-god Tezcatlipoca was identified with justice, so Isis is identified with Maāt, the goddess of justice.
Winged Isis (The wings are in the attitude of protecting Horus) —Photo W.A. Mansell & Co.
Isis may also typify the wind of morning, from which the sun is born. In most countries at the moment of sunrise a wind springs up which may be said to usher the sun into existence. ”

“ Isis, a celebrated deity of the Egyptians, daughter of Saturn and Rhea, according to Diodorus of Sicily. Some suppose her to be the same as Io, who was changed into a cow, and restored to her human form in Egypt, where she taught agriculture, and governed the people with mildness and equity, for which reason she received divine honours after death. According to some traditions mentioned by Plutarch, Isis married her brother Osiris, and was pregnant by him even before she had left her mother’s womb. ”

“ Isis is one of those deities who from fortuitous and other circumstances are fated to achieve greatness. From a Libyan spirit connected in some manner with the growth of the crops, she rose to such supreme importance during her reign of nearly four thousand years in Egypt that every description of attribute was heaped upon her in abundance. This is invariably the case with successful deities. ”

“ Wherever there is some important change in the river, there they are more especially installed and worshipped: Khnûmû at the place of its entering into Egypt, and again at the town of Hâûrît, near the point where a great arm branches off from the Eastern stream to flow towards the Libyan hills and form the Bahr-Yûsuf: Harshâfitû at the gorges of the Fayûm, where the Bahr-Yûsuf leaves the valley; and, finally, Osiris at Mendes and at Busiris, towards the mouth of the middle branch, which was held to be the true Nile by the people of the land. ”

“ Isis, or Ast, must be regarded as one of the earliest and most important conceptions of female godhead in ancient Egypt. In the dynastic period she was regarded as the feminine counterpart of Osiris, and we may take it that before the dawn of Egyptian history she occupied a similar position. The philology of the name appears to be unfathomable. No other deity has probably been worshipped for such an extent of time, for her cult did not perish with that of most other Egyptian gods, but flourished later in Greece and Rome, and is seriously carried on in Paris to-day. ”

“ The Isiac mysteries were a representation of the chief events in the myth of Isis and Osiris—the murder of Osiris, the lamentations of Isis and her wanderings, followed by the triumph of Horus over Seth and the resurrection of the slain god—accompanied by music and an exposition of the inner meaning of the spectacle. These were traditional in ancient Egypt, and in their later development were no doubt affected by the Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter. They appealed powerfully to the imagination and the religious sense. ”

“ Isis wails like the wind, she shrieks in tempest, she carries the fragrance of spices and flowers throughout the country, she takes the shape of a swallow, one of the swiftest of birds and typical of the rapidity of the wind, she employs the element of which she is mistress to revivify the dead Osiris, she possesses wings, as do [Pg 82] all deities connected with the wind, and like the rest of her kind she is constantly travelling up and down the land. ”