CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D.

The Egyptian goddess Isis came to be immensely popular throughout the ancient world following Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt and the founding of his namesake city. The Egyptian triad of Isis, her husband Osiris and their son Horus was transformed by Alexander's successors, the Ptolemies, into Isis, Serapis and Harpokrates, the divine family mirroring the Ptolemaic royal family (see Bricault, “Traveling Gods: The Cults of Isis in the Roman Empire,” in Spier, Potts and Cole, eds., Beyond the Nile, Egypt and The Classical World, p. 224). No doubt due to the presence of Egyptian and Alexandrian traders, the cult was established outside of Egypt in port cities throughout the Mediterranean, including in Piraeus, the port of Athens, by the late 4th century B.C. In Rome, despite some attempts at suppressing the cult, Isis and Serapis were eventually to be included in the official pantheon by the early Imperial Period.

Images of Isis are ichnographically distinct from other female deities, recognizable by the fringed mantle tied into the characteristic “Isis” knot between the breasts (also worn by her priestesses), and the long corkscrew curls framing her face, or, alternatively, an Egyptian style wig. Other attributes may include an Egyptian crown, the Basileion, composed of Hathor horns, a solar disk and upright plumes, and a sistrum and situla held in her hands. The example presented here, the underside of which is carved for insertion, recalls the head from a standing figure of the goddess found in a villa at the Porta Latina in Rome (no. 34 in Tinh, “Isis,” LIMC, vol. V). Both share the spade-shaped forehead, arching brows, heavy-lidded eyes and voluptuous lips, as well as center-parted hair and corkscrew curls falling along the neck. Our Isis preserves a mortice and remains of an iron pin on the crown of the head behind the center part of the hair, likely for insertion of the Basileion. The back and sides of the head are roughly finished and preserve several smoothed areas and mortices, suggesting that either this was originally finished in marble dust stucco or that she wore a separately-made veil. For a closely-related veiled goddess from the Egyptian sanctuary at Gortyna, Crete, now in the Heraklion Archeological Museum, see no. III.20 in Arslan, et al., Iside, Il Mito, Il Mistero, La Magia.