Category Archives: Isis Demeter

Who is the Goddess Neotera?

The Ptolemaic Queen Berenike II as Isis-Aphrodite

Starting in the late-Ptolemaic period, we begin to hear of a Goddess called Neotera or Thea Neotera, the “Younger One” or the “Younger Goddess.” She’s a bit enigmatic because researchers aren’t sure exactly Who (or even who) She (or she) is.

Egyptologists have made a number of suggestions as to Her identity. Some identify Her as a Goddess, while others say she is a deified queen. (Hence my earlier capitalization ambiguity.)

A coin with Kleopatra Thea Neotera

Let’s look at the deified queen part first. Because that deified queen was most likely to have been Kleopatra VII; yes, THAT Kleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, last ruler of an independent Egypt.

The Ptolemaic queens were into identification with Goddesses, Isis and Aphrodite being their top picks. Kleopatra, as mother of baby pharaoh Ceasarion, claimed for herself the title Nea Isis, “the New Isis.” What’s more, there actually were coins of the time bearing her image and the title of Thea Neotera. These were made by Kleopatra and Marcus Antonius for places outside of Egypt and meant to bolster her image in the greater world.

Isis-Kore-Persephone with Hades and His hound Kerberos/Cerberus

In Egypt, as you know, it was not unusual for there to be funerary cult maintained for rulers after their death and so we learn of a “great Kleopatreion” surviving at Rosetta (40 miles east of Alexandria, where the Rosetta Stone was found) into the 4th or 5th century CE. Alexandria was particularly resistant to Roman rule and it seems likely that, as Egypt’s last ruler, Kleopatra would have become popular with the people and her cult kept for long after her death. So Neotera certainly was Kleopatra VII in some instances.

Close up of Isis Kore with sistrum

But that is by no means the end of this quest.

Let’s move over to the Goddess side of the ledger. When Demeter and Persephone (also called Kore, “the Girl”) are named together, Kore is sometimes given the title Thea Neotera. She is the Younger Goddess in comparison with Her mother Demeter. Alexandria had a very famous festival of Kore, duly groused about by the Christian polemicist Ephiphanius. You can read his grouse here; you’ll need to scroll down. At Her temple at Denderah, the Great Goddess Hathor is called Aphrodite Thea Neotera (recall that this is a mostly Ptolemaic temple).

Isis Tyche with Isis knot, rudder, and cornucopia

Yet we also find all these Goddesses as separate Beings. In one of the many papyri found preserved in the trash dump in the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, we have a document that records the return of certain temple properties in which we learn that Oxyrhynchus had separate temples to Kore and to Neotera. Among the Neotera temple goods was a bronze statuette of Neotera as well as a rudder that was one of Her symbols.

So that’s a bit of a clue about Neotera’s nature. The rudder makes Her a guiding Goddess. We also have a small gemstone with an inscription on both sides. On the obverse, the inscription refers to Sarapis. On the reverse, the inscription is “Great Fortune of the Invincible Neotera.” And so Neotera is also associated with good fortune. Since Fate and Fortune were considered to be “invincible” powers, our Goddess Neotera must be even more invincibly powerful as the one Who rules them.

Now, since the gem also has Sarapis on it, Isis would be a good candidate for Neotera; Sarapis is Her consort in this period. And one of Isis’ sacred symbols is indeed the rudder. Plus, as Isis-Tyche and Agathetyche, She is well known as the Lady of Fate and Good Fortune. But, Isis is not usually considered the younger one. In the Egyptian myth, She is, in fact, the older sister.

Isis Demeter

From Gerasa, modern Jordan, we have an inscription that accompanies an image of Zeus-Helios-Great Sarapis, Isis, and Neotera. The article I’m reading wonders whether Neotera here is Hathor-Aphrodite or Nephthys, but then rejects both options. Yet, it seems to me that Nephthys is a good option here. The combined God Zeus-Helios-Sarapis is common at that time and the God Sarapis is a later development from Osiris. It would be natural to have Isis and Neotera-Nephthys with Him.

A later grousing Christian, Athanasius, complains that Isis, Kore, and Neotera were human women who became deified “among the Egyptians.” So, for Athanasius at least, Neotera is known to be Egyptian, though Her name/epithet is Greek. And She is separate from Isis and Kore. An Italian Egyptologist, L. Moretti, (and some others, but I’m still looking for those) has indeed suggested that Neotera was a Greek interpretation of Nephthys. And while I like the idea that Gerasa’s Neotera might be Nephthys, it would have been quite unusual for Nephthys to be among the exported “Egyptian Gods” at that time. When people outside of Egypt referred to the Egyptian Gods then, they meant specifically Isis, Sarapis, Anubis, and Harpokrates.

Isis, Nephthys, and the Osiris (the dead person)

A scholar of Hebrew texts notes that a cult of Neotera-Isis was practiced in Roman Palestine—and the people there would also have been exposed to the prior Kleopatra Thea Neotera coins. He further notes that the worship of Isis was to be found in Israel at Raphia, Gaza, and Ashkelon. According to a rabbinical text, however, if you should happen to find evidence of that worship—such as an image of a breastfeeding woman, a ring with a moon or Sarapis on it—you were supposed to take it and toss it into the Dead Sea. (Let’s excavate!)

Isis Tyche with Isis Knot, rudder, and cornucopia

So, now I must come to the disappointing conclusion that, except where we see the epithet Neotera with another name—Kore Neotera or Kleopatra Thea Neotera, for example—we have no definitive answer as to Who the Goddess Neotera is. I thought I was going to be able to identify Her with Isis’ Younger Goddess sister. But so far, there’s just not enough evidence. Some scholars have suggested that, over time, the epithet Neotera got separated from (perhaps) Kleopatra’s Thea Neotera epithet and eventually became a separate Goddess; an egregore Goddess, we might say?

Yet our best clue as to Her nature still comes from the rudder symbol and the gemstone naming Her as Fortune. Thus, we can invoke Neotera for Good Fortune and for steering our lives in the right direction with Her wise rudder.

But, of course, we already have a Goddess Who just happens to also cover those areas: Isis, She of the Rudder, Giver of Good Fortune, Ruler of Fate.

Is Isis a Virgin Goddess?

Seen this about a million times? Yeah, me, too.

It’s that time of year when we (once again) see all those articles comparing the Divine Mother Mary with the Divine Mother Isis, followed by either outrage or approbation, depending on who’s doing the writing.

Recently, in relation to this, a friend of this blog asked a very excellent question. It had to do with Isis’ status as a Virgin Goddess. Basically, is She or isn’t She? She is often compared with the famously Virgin Mary, and the images of the two Goddesses, nursing Their holy babes, are strikingly similar. And then there’s all of this.

Well, as is often the way with Goddesses, the answer is both no and yes.

Art by A-gnosis; see more work here.

We’re all pretty familiar with the sexual relations between Isis and Osiris. All the way back to the Pyramid Texts we hear about it, rather explicitly we might add. Pyramid Text 366 says, “Your [Osiris] sister Isis comes to You rejoicing for love of You. You have placed Her on your phallus and Your seed issues into Her…” Plutarch, in the version of the story he recorded, tells us that Isis and Osiris were so in love with each other that They even made love while still within the womb of Their Great Mother Nuet. And, of course, we have the sacred story of how Isis collected the pieces of the body of murdered-and-dismembered Osiris, all except the phallus. Crafting a replacement of gold, the flesh of the Gods, She was able to arouse Her Beloved sufficient for the conception of Horus. The mourning songs of Isis and Nephthys have Her longing for His love. The priestess, in the Goddessform of Isis, sings that “fire is in Me for love of Thee” and She calls Him Lord of Love and Lord of Passion. She pleads, “Lie Thou with Thy sister Isis, remove Thou the pain that is in Her body.” (For more on the Songs or Lamentations, go here.)

So, is that all there is to it? Isis is not a virgin?

Well, not quite. Because Isis is a Goddess.

Isis is the Goddess of 10,000 Names and 10,000 Forms. Among those forms are the sexual Lover of Osiris and the Mother of Horus. Among Her many Names are syncretisms with famously virginal Goddesses such as Artemis, Hekate, and Athena, as well as heroines such as Io, a virgin priestess of Hera (a Goddess Who Herself renews Her virginity on the regular). Isis is identified with both Demeter the Mother and Persephone the Kore, the Young Girl, Who were sometimes seen as a single unit, Mother-Daughter, containing All in Themselves. Goddesses can be many things, all at once, without any contradiction—or perhaps with every contradiction, which is one of the ways of Goddesses.

Perhaps no text shows us these Divine Feminine contradictions/not-contradictions as clearly as “The Thunder, Perfect Mind,” a text found among the Nag Hammadi texts. It is a long poem in the voice of a Feminine Divine Power that some scholars have linked to Isis; or at least they think that Her worship influenced the content of the text. Could be, but in my opinion, the Divine Speaker may be better understood as Sophia—with Whom Isis is also identified. The Coptic (late Egyptian) manuscript from which the text comes is dated to roughly 350 CE. Here’s a brief excerpt from this amazing work:

For I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter. I am the members of my mother. I am the barren one and many are her sons. I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband.

The Thunder, Perfect Mind

Clearly, Isis is syncretized with Virgin Goddesses throughout the Mediterranean world. And it is not at all unusual for such Goddesses to be both virginal and associated with fertility. What about Egyptian sources?

The ancient Egyptians were not quite so concerned with virgins—by which I mean, in this case, a young person who has not yet had sex—as were the Greeks and some other Mediterranean peoples. For instance, there was no requirement that young women, or young men for that matter, be sexually inexperienced when they married. Many young women probably were—particularly those who were married very young to older husbands. But prior to marriage, young people might engage relatively freely with each other. After marriage, sexual exclusivity with demanded, especially for women. The penalties for non-compliance could be very harsh, especially for women.

The Two Sisters

This is not to say that Egyptian virginity was not valued or even required under certain circumstances. The text that included the lamentation songs of Isis and Nephthys noted above specifies that the priestesses taking the roles of Isis and Nephthys be “pure of body and virgin” and also that they are to have their body hair removed, wigs on their heads, tambourines in their hands, and the names of Isis and Nephthys inscribed on their arms.

This text, one of very few we have, is from the Ptolemaic period, when Egypt had been influenced by Greek rule. I wonder whether virginity would have been considered necessary earlier. Perhaps the priestesses would have only had to abstain from sex for a period of time before their ritual service. We know that people serving in Egyptian temples had to abstain from sex for a time (at least a day, often a number of days) as part of their purification. But they weren’t virgins.

Ankhnesneferibre, God’s Wife of Amun

The God’s Wife of Amun, the highest of high priestesses and usually a female relation of the king, was virgin for life. Beginning in the 2nd Intermediate Period, the position of the God’s Wife gained a great deal of power, eventually becoming second only to the king. Interestingly, it was an “Isis”—Iset, the virgin daughter of Ramesses VI—who began the tradition of the God’s Wife being celibate. Later, in the Roman period, some Roman priestesses of Isis maintained lifelong virginity. And we know that the Roman Isiacs might maintain a 10-day period of pre-ritual chastity known as the Castimonium Isidis or Chastity of Isis.

Isis Herself is called the Great Virgin in one of the inscriptions from the Isis Chapel at Abydos. In Egyptian, this is Hunet Weret. Hunet is the word for girl or maiden, weret is the feminine form of great. Hunet is also the Egyptian name for the pupil of the eye and is connected to the Hermetic treatise known as the Kore Kosmou, the “Virgin of the World.” You can read about those maidenly connections here. (And read about the Kore Kosmou here, here, and here. )Just like Greek parthenos, hunet could mean a virgin, a girl, a maiden, or just youthful. And all Egyptian Goddesses are forever young. A young boy or youth is hunu.

Parthenogenesis was not unknown in Egypt, either. The First Creators in many Egyptian myths, such as the God Atum and the Goddess Neith, created everything from Themselves alone. Some Egyptian queens, such as Ahmose, Hatshepsut’s mother, were said to have given birth to pharaohs after sexual union with a God.

So, is Isis a Virgin Goddess? Yes. Does She have sex with Her Divine Husband? Yes. She is, as so many Goddesses are, Both And. She is a patroness of marital sexual desire and bliss and She is an ever-renewing, ever-youthful Virgin Goddess. On this holy day and every day, may She bless you with the gifts you most desire.

Is Isis a Virgin Goddess?

Seen this about a million times? Yeah, me, too.

It’s that time of year when we (once again) see all those articles comparing the Divine Mother Mary with the Divine Mother Isis, followed by either outrage or approbation, depending on who’s doing the writing.

Recently, in relation to this, a friend of this blog asked a very excellent question. It had to do with Isis’ status as a Virgin Goddess. Basically, is She or isn’t She? She is often compared with the famously Virgin Mary, and the images of the two Goddesses, nursing Their holy babes, are strikingly similar. And then there’s all of this.

Well, as is often the way with Goddesses, the answer is both no and yes.

Art by A-gnosis; see more work here.

We’re all pretty familiar with the sexual relations between Isis and Osiris. All the way back to the Pyramid Texts we hear about it, rather explicitly we might add. Pyramid Text 366 says, “Your [Osiris] sister Isis comes to You rejoicing for love of You. You have placed Her on your phallus and Your seed issues into Her…” Plutarch, in the version of the story he recorded, tells us that Isis and Osiris were so in love with each other that They even made love while still within the womb of Their Great Mother Nuet. And, of course, we have the sacred story of how Isis collected the pieces of the body of murdered-and-dismembered Osiris, all except the phallus. Crafting a replacement of gold, the flesh of the Gods, She was able to arouse Her Beloved sufficient for the conception of Horus. The mourning songs of Isis and Nephthys have Her longing for His love. The priestess, in the Goddessform of Isis, sings that “fire is in Me for love of Thee” and She calls Him Lord of Love and Lord of Passion. She pleads, “Lie Thou with Thy sister Isis, remove Thou the pain that is in Her body.” (For more on the Songs or Lamentations, go here.)

So, is that all there is to it? Isis is not a virgin?

Well, not quite. Because Isis is a Goddess.

Isis is the Goddess of 10,000 Names and 10,000 Forms. Among those forms are the sexual Lover of Osiris and the Mother of Horus. Among Her many Names are syncretisms with famously virginal Goddesses such as Artemis, Hekate, and Athena, as well as heroines such as Io, a virgin priestess of Hera (a Goddess Who Herself renews Her virginity on the regular). Isis is identified with both Demeter the Mother and Persephone the Kore, the Young Girl, Who were sometimes seen as a single unit, Mother-Daughter, containing All in Themselves. Goddesses can be many things, all at once, without any contradiction—or perhaps with every contradiction, which is one of the ways of Goddesses.

Perhaps no text shows us these Divine Feminine contradictions/not-contradictions as clearly as “The Thunder, Perfect Mind,” a text found among the Nag Hammadi texts. It is a long poem in the voice of a Feminine Divine Power that some scholars have linked to Isis; or at least that Her worship influenced the content of the text. Could be, but in my opinion, the Divine Speaker may be better understood as Sophia—with Whom Isis is also identified. The Coptic (late Egyptian) manuscript from which the text comes is dated to roughly 350 CE. Here’s a brief excerpt from this amazing work:

For I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter. I am the members of my mother. I am the barren one and many are her sons. I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband.

The Thunder, Perfect Mind

Clearly, Isis is identified with Virgin Goddesses throughout the Mediterranean world. And it is not at all unusual for such Goddesses to be both virginal and associated with fertility. What about Egyptian sources?

The ancient Egyptians were not quite so concerned with virgins—by which I mean, in this case, a young person who has not yet had sex—as were the Greeks and some other Mediterranean peoples. For instance, there was no requirement that young women, or young men for that matter, be sexually inexperienced when they married. Many young women probably were—particularly those who were married very young to older husbands. But prior to marriage, young people might engage relatively freely with each other. After marriage, sexual exclusivity with demanded, especially for women. The penalties for non-compliance could be very harsh, especially for women.

The Two Sisters

This is not to say that Egyptian virginity was not valued or even required under certain circumstances. The text that included the lamentation songs of Isis and Nephthys noted above specifies that the priestesses taking the roles of Isis and Nephthys be “pure of body and virgin” and also that they are to have their body hair removed, wigs on their heads, tambourines in their hands, and the names of Isis and Nephthys inscribed on their arms.

This text, one of very few we have, is from the Ptolemaic period, when Egypt had been influenced by Greek rule. I wonder whether virginity would have been considered necessary earlier. Perhaps the priestesses would have only had to abstain from sex for a period of time before their ritual service. We know that people serving in Egyptian temples had to abstain from sex for a time (at least a day, often a number of days) as part of their purification. But they weren’t virgins.

Ankhnesneferibre, God’s Wife of Amun

The God’s Wife of Amun, the highest of high priestesses and usually a female relation of the king, was virgin for life. Beginning in the 2nd Intermediate Period, the position of the God’s Wife gained a great deal of power, eventually becoming second only to the king. Interestingly, it was an “Isis”—Iset, the virgin daughter of Ramesses VI—who began the tradition of the God’s Wife being celibate. Later, in the Roman period, some Roman priestesses of Isis maintained lifelong virginity. And we know that the Roman Isiacs might maintain a 10-day period of pre-ritual chastity known as the Castimonium Isidis or Chastity of Isis.

Isis Herself is called the Great Virgin in one of the Egyptian hymns to Osiris (I believe it is from the Isis Chapel at Abydos; still checking into it.) In Egyptian, this would is Hunet Weret. Hunet is the word for girl or maiden, weret is the feminine form of great. Hunet is also the name for the pupil of the eye and is connected to the Hermetic treatise known as the Kore Kosmou, the “Virgin of the World.” You can read about those maidenly connections here. (And read about the Kore Kosmou here, here, and here. )Just like Greek parthenos, hunet could mean a virgin, a girl, a maiden, or just youthful. And all Egyptian Goddesses are forever young. A young boy or youth is hunu.

Parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction), was not unknown in Egypt, either. The First Creators in many Egyptian myths, such as the God Atum and the Goddess Neith, created everything from Themselves. Some Egyptian queens, such as Ahmose, Hatshepsut’s mother, were said to have given birth to pharaohs after sexual union with a God.

So, is Isis a Virgin Goddess? Yes. Does She have sex with Her Divine Husband? Yes. She is, as so many Goddesses are, Both And. She is a patroness of marital sexual desire and bliss and She is an ever-renewing, ever-youthful Virgin Goddess. On this holy day and every day, may She bless you with the gifts you most desire.