ISIS AND THOTH

More than a dozen Egyptian deities were worshipped outside Egypt in Hellenistic and Roman times in a series of interrelated cults, though many were fairly minor.[178] Of the most important of these deities, Serapis was closely connected with Isis and often appeared with her in art, but Osiris remained central to her myth and prominent in her rituals.[179] Temples to Isis and Serapis sometimes stood next to each other, but it was rare for a single temple to be dedicated to both.[180] Osiris, as a dead deity unlike the immortal gods of Greece, seemed strange to Greeks and played only a minor role in Egyptian cults in Hellenistic times. In Roman times he became, like Dionysus, a symbol of a joyous afterlife, and the Isis cult increasingly focused on him.[181] Horus, often under the name Harpocrates, also appeared in Isis's temples as her son by Osiris or Serapis. He absorbed traits from Greek deities such as Apollo and served as a god of the sun and of crops.[182] Another member of the group was Anubis, who was linked to the Greek god Hermes in his Hellenized form Hermanubis.[183] Isis was also sometimes said to have learned her wisdom from, or even be the daughter of, Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing and knowledge, who was known in the Greco-Roman world as Hermes Trismegistus.[184][185]

Isis also had an extensive network of connections with Greek and Roman deities, as well as some from other cultures. She was not fully integrated into the Greek pantheon, but she was at different times equated with a variety of Greek mythological figures, including Demeter, Aphrodite, or Io, a human woman who was turned into a cow and chased by the goddess Hera from Greece to Egypt.[186] The cult of Demeter was an especially important influence on Isis's worship after its arrival in Greece.[187] Isis's relationship with women was influenced by her frequent equation with Artemis, who had a dual role as a virgin goddess and a promoter of fertility.[188] Because of Isis's power over fate, she was linked with the Greek and Roman personifications of fortune, Tyche and Fortuna.[189] At Byblos in Phoenicia in the second millennium BCE, Hathor had been worshipped as a form of the local goddess Baalat Gebal. Isis gradually replaced Hathor there in the course of the first millennium BCE[190] and became syncretized with another goddess from the region, Astarte.[191] In Noricum in central Europe, Isis was syncretized with the local tutelary deity Noreia,[192] and at Petra she may have been linked with the Arab goddess al-Uzza.[193] The Roman author Tacitus said Isis was worshipped by the Suebi, a Germanic people living outside the empire,[194] but he may have mistaken a Germanic goddess for Isis because, like her, the goddess was symbolized by a ship.[195]

Many of the aretalogies include long lists of goddesses with whom Isis was linked. These texts treat all the deities they list as forms of her, suggesting that in the eyes of the authors she was a summodeistic being: the one goddess for the entire civilized world.[196][197] In the Roman religious world, many deities were referred to as "one" or "unique" in religious texts like these. At the same time, Hellenistic philosophers frequently saw the unifying, abstract principle of the cosmos as divine. Many of them reinterpreted traditional religions to fit their concept of this highest being, as Plutarch did with Isis and Osiris.[198] In The Golden Ass Isis says "my one person manifests the aspects of all the gods and goddesses" and that she is "worshipped by all the world under different forms, with various rites, and by manifold names," although the Egyptians and Nubians use her true name, Isis.[199][200] But when she lists the forms in which various Mediterranean peoples worship her, she mentions only female deities.[201] Greco-Roman deities were firmly divided by gender, thus limiting how universal Isis could truly be. One aretalogy avoids this problem by calling Isis and Serapis, who was often said to subsume many male gods, the two "unique" deities.[202][203] Similarly, both Plutarch and Apuleius limit Isis's importance by treating her as ultimately subordinate to Osiris.[204] The claim that she was unique was meant to emphasize her greatness more than to make a precise theological statement.[202][203]