And so be there no ignorant of me anywhere and ever!
Beware, do not be ignorant of me!
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored and the despised.
I am a whore and a saint.
I am a wife and a virgin.
I am a mother and a daughter.
I am the limbs of my mother’s body.
I am barrenness and its many sons.
I am the one whose marriages there are plenty of, and the one who has never been married.
I relief childbirth and have never born a child.
I am the soothing in my childbirth sufferings.
I am the bride and the groom.
And my husband is the one who bore me.
I am my father’s mother and my husband’s sister, while he is my offspring.
Ancient Egyptian Hymn to Isis
Isis is one of the greatest goddesses of the ancient times, who has become a sample for understanding the Egyptian ideal of womanliness and motherhood. In Egyptian mythology she is the goddess of fertility, water and wind, the symbol of womanliness and marital fidelity, the goddess of seafaring, the daughter of Geb and Nut, the sister and wife of Osiris. Isis helped Osiris to make Egypt civilized and taught women to weave, spin, cure illnesses and started the institute of marriage. Isis was one of the major and most ancient goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon. Her cult as of mother-goddess was reflected in Christianity.
The name of Isis means “throne”, which is her headdress. As the embodiment of throne she was an important representative of pharaoh’s power. The pharaoh himself was considered her child sitting on the throne, which she presented to him.
The symbols of the composition
The center of the composition is goddess Isis. She is holding a magic Lotus wand or the wand of the Harbinger in her right hand. Egyptian scientists consider Isis the priestess of magic, she used her wand for healing and self-manifestation in the real world. On goddess’s neck there is Ankh -the most sacred cross of Egyptians, which was connected with the concept of eternal life. All gods were depicted with this symbol. Every being’s life, both divine and mortal, depended on possessing this symbol. Gods presented it to kings and souls, justified in the Courtroom, and the ones who obtained it lived for “a hundred thousand million years”.
The image of Isis is placed in a triangle, a symbolic representation of a pyramid. The pyramid stood for the First hill, which was lit by the first ray of the sun, the ray of the Creator, during the creation of the Universe. The solidity and the suppressing power of these constructions were “the challenge of eternity” – the strength of the building denied death itself, and the height and the smooth surface symbolized the absolute unity of the pharaoh buried in the pyramid and the god of sun.
The goddess’s right hand is raised in a gesture attracting attention, Isis says, “I am Isis, the Egyptian mistress of the Nile!
Celebrate your every step. If you learn to appreciate each of your completed deals, each case when you managed to express kindness – and it doesn’t matter how insignificant those events may seem to you – very soon your life will turn into one big holiday. This is your magic elixir for the years to come!”
In many traditions the cow symbolized fertility, abundance, prosperity. In Egypt this symbol was connected with the notion of life warmth. The goddess of heaven and the Great Mother was worshiped as a holy cow, that gave birth to the sun. Isis as the goddess of heaven was depicted as a cow or with cow horns on her head. The legs of the holy cow are the four parts of the world, and on her body there were stars.
Scarab is one of the most honored symbols of Egypt. The small beetle was considered to repeat the way of the sun: just like the Sun travels in the sky eradiating light and warmth, creating conditions for reviving life in all things, the scarab rolls its ball of eggs from East to West until the germs grow and are born. It was believed that all small animals are born from the ooze of the Nile, and only the scarab was born from the sands of the desert. In Egyptian mythology the scarab was honored as a holy insect of the gods of Sun and was considered a symbol of the constructive power of the Sun, revival in afterlife. The motion of scarab with the ball of crap from East to West symbolizes the movement of the Sun in the sky. Egyptians identified the scarab with the mystery of the creation of the star, picturing the Egyptian god Khepri – the creator of world and man – with a scarab’s head.
Falcon in Ancient Egypt was the symbol of royal power, since its look mesmerizes birds the same as the pharaoh’s image mesmerizes his enemies. Because of its high flight this predator was the allegoric image of God Gore, the great God of Heaven. Gore was depicted as a falcon or a man with a falcon’s head. The high flight and the glorious battle courage of the falcon determined its special place in cult worshiping. Even at the times of pyramids the image of the falcon as a sign stands for divinity. As the king of the air falcon became a sacred bird of the king of Gods, Gore, and a symbol of divine royal power.