What did Isis look like?

Answer 1

atop her head was a lunar orb with bulls horns around itor just a small throne on her head

Answer 2

What is Isis depicted to look like? She was most often represented as a beautiful woman wearing a sheath dress and either the hieroglyphic sign of the throne or a solar disk and cow's horns on her head. Occasionally, she was represented as a scorpion, a bird, a sow, or a cow.

Isis is the ancient Egyptian goddess of magic, fertility and motherhood, and death, healing and rebirth. She is the first daughter of Geb (the god of the Earth) and Nut (the goddess of the sky) born on the first day of the first years of creation. She is the sister of Osiris, who later became her husband, as well as Set and Nephthys. She bore a son by Osiris in the person of Horus. In Egyptian, she was known as Auset, Aset or Eset, words that were often associated with the word throne.

Her Symbolism

Isis is depicted as a woman wearing a long sheath dress with and empty throne on her headdress. This symbolized her husband’s absence following his death and her role as seat of the power of the pharaoh. Alternatively, she is also seen as a woman with a headdress of a solar disc and horn. More rarely, she is a woman with the head of a cow.

In some forms, she is a woman with outstretched wings making her the goddess of the wind. Often she is shown with her child son, Horus, with a crown and a vulture. She is also often seen as a woman holding a lotus. In the heavens, her symbol is the star Sept (Sirius).

Her sacred animals include the cows, snakes and scorpions. She is also the patron of hawks, swallows, doves and vultures.

Her Functions and Role

In Being the Most Powerful Goddess and as Goddess of Magic

She became the most of powerful of all the gods and goddesses in ancient Egypt – a throne originally held by the Sun god, Ra. Ra, depicted as the uncaring god, caused great suffering to the people during his reign. Aware of this, Isis – being the people’s goddess who helped her people in many ways, devised a plan to usurp the throne. She mixed some of Ra’s saliva with mud and created a very poisonous snake. The snake bit Ra that caused him great pain and suffering. Isis offered a cure for his predicament to which Ra eventually agreed. Isis told him that she would need his true name to perform the ritual. Reluctant at first, Ra gave in and as the goddess was performing her magic, she uttered his true name. Ra was healed yet the power over life and death was transferred to the goddess making her the most powerful of them all. This great power was used to the benefit of the people.

In The Death of Osiris

Isis loved her brother Osiris dearly. When they married, Osiris became the first king of the Earth, and their brother, Set, became extremely jealous of that fact.

Set tricked Osiris into entering a box made especially for him out of cedar, ivory and ebony. Once in, Set sealed the box and threw it away in the river where it was carried to sea. The box was washed up in Another Country and settled on top of tamarisk tree when the water receded.

In a state of immense grief, Isis went into a fit of insanity, cut off her beautiful black hair, and tore her robes to pieces. Upon regaining emotional stability, she went forth looking for her husband.

She reached Phoenicia and was hired by Queen Astarte (unable to recognize her at first) to be the nurse of her infant son. Having developed a fondness for the infant prince, she decided to make him immortal. While Isis was holding the infant over the fire, Queen Astarte entered the room. Seeing her son smoldering in the fire, she quite instinctively and naively saved her son breaking the magic of Isis.

Queen Astarte demanded an explanation, ans so Isis revealed her true form and told the Queen of her quest to find her husband. The Queen realized that the box containing her husband was at the center of the castle – in the fragrant tamarisk tree. She promptly told Isis of this and Isis was able to find the remains of her husband.

She cradled his broken bones and returned to Egypt for a proper burial. She hid Osiris’ remains in the delta of the Nile. However, on a night of hunting, Set found the box and murdered Osiris once more. To ensure that Osiris would not return, he hacked the remains into 14 pieces and threw them in different directions. He hoped crocodiles would eat the flesh and never be found again.

The goddess Isis searched once more for the remains together with nine dutiful scorpions to accompany and protect her painstaking journey. Each time one piece was found, she promptly rejoined them to reform Osiris’ body. However, the goddess could only recover thirteen. A crab swallowed the last piece, Osiris’ genitals. Isis then fashioned this body part out of gold and wax and attached them to make the body whole. As she invented the rites of embalming using her incredible words of magic, she resurrgods.org/egyptian-gods-isis/