Paper short abstract:

The goddess Isis is a paradigmatic example of how a deity is reconfigured in response to new and shifting political, social, economic and cultural contexts. Between the centuries IV and I B.C., the worship of Isis reveals how an Egyptian goddess becomes an all-encompassing Mediterranean goddess.

Paper long abstract:

The cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis crosses over all Pharaonic history up to Ptolemaic period, when it became one of the main deities of Alexandria. In the capital of the Ptolemies, the old Osiris-Isis couple of the multimillenary pharaonic tradition gave way to the inseparable duo Sarapis-Isis. Although without a shrine in the temenos of the Serapeum, Isis had several temples in the island of Pharos and in the islet of Lochias.

While maintaining its traditional attributes of nursing mother goddess (Isis Lactans), Isis is the protective deity of navigation and of sailors (Isis Pelagia and Isis Euploia). She was also depicted either in a traditional way or with new imagery with Greek garments (chiton or peplos and himation).

Transcending Nilotic borders and spreading throughout the Mediterranean, the cult of Isis was the subject of multiple processes of assimilation and appropriation. The Mediterranean Isiac diaspora cult points out to a new level of worship: the transformation of an Egyptian goddess, with a local referent, into a universal goddess.

A most important issue in this dialogue between civilization, which the cult of Isis allows, is to better understand how its coexistence in time (several centuries) and space (different regions) has shaped the iconographic and symbolic images as well as ritual codes and mythological imaginaries that highly diversified communities had about the ancient Egyptian goddess.

Furthermore, numerous areotologies or laudatory texts on the Isiac diaspora have allowed us to identify the image that the faithful outside Egypt had of the goddess, its attributes, its functions and its mythological story.