Category Archives: Queen of Egypt

More from the Temple of Isis at Dendera

The temple of Isis at Dendera

After a few weeks, I’m finally getting back to Dendera and some of the texts inscribed on the walls of the small Isis temple there.

As you may recall, the temple is sometimes called the Birth House of Isis, which celebrates the birth of Isis from Her mother Nuet.

One of the temple walls says explicitly, “On this beautiful day, the day of the Child in His Nest, a great festival throughout the country, Isis is given birth at Dendera by Thoueris [“The Great One;” in this case, meaning Isis’ mother Nuet] in the House of the Noble One [the Noble One is Isis], a woman with black [kemet] hair and red [desheret] skin, full of life, Whose love is sweet.” Her mother Nuet says that She “makes every person rejoice to see You [Isis].”

With Her kemet hair and desheret skin, the Goddess encompasses the Black Land and the Red Land of Egypt. You may also recall from last time that this temple is very much concerned with the sovereignty of Isis over the entire land of Egypt.

From an Isis manga by Tappytoon

Another temple inscription says, “Destiny distinguishes Her on the birthstones. Her heart is rich in all virtue. The south is given to Her until [that is, “as far as”] the [place of the] rising of the Disk, the north until the limits of Darkness. She is mistress of the sanctuaries of Egypt with Her son and Her brother Osiris.” She is “Queen of Upper and Lower Egypt.” She is “Mistress of the cities and Sovereign of the Nomes, the Sovereign of Sanctuaries.”

As this is the temple of Isis’ birth, we have many Birth Goddesses present, including a form of Isis Herself. We find Meskhenet, the Birth Goddess Who sometimes takes the form of a personified birth brick, in four different forms. Meskhenet the Great in the Mound of Tefnut is Tefnut Herself. Meskhenet the Great in the Mound of Birth is Nuet. Meskhenet the Beautiful in the Place of Nativity is Isis. And Meskhenet the Excellent in the Temple of the Menat Necklace is Nephthys.

However, in a different part of the temple, the four Meskhenets are Djedet (Djedet is the principle Goddess of the town of Djedet, also known as Hatmehyt. Learn about Her connection with Isis here.), Nuet, Meskhenet the Beautiful in the Enclosure of Life, Who is Isis, and Meskhenet the Excellent in the Heart of the Land, Who is Nephthys; She is also called Efficient (Akh) for the Daughter of Geb (although Nephthys is Herself a Daughter of Geb, this likely means that Nephthys is akh for Isis).

“Nephthys” by the Popovy sisters

And speaking of Nephthys, here are some more of Her epithets found in this Isis temple: She is The Excellent and The Efficient. She is the One Whose Breast is Shimmering. She is the One Whose Face is Beautiful, the Mistress of Adornments, and Mistress of Light in the Cavernous [Zones]. (See? Nephthys is not always the Dark One!) And both Sisters’ mother Nuet is called The Unknowable. Which I love so much. All my Goddesses are, ultimately, Unknowable.

This small temple is the source of one of the inspirations for what will be one of our ritual acts at SunFest, our local summer solstice festival in June. There is a section of a wall labeled “Spreading a dusting of gold and green earthenware on the ground at the Mound of Birth.” The Mound of Birth is the place where Isis is born. It is also the place where the entire world is born, when it first emerges from the primordial Waters. It is well to honor this sacred place within the temple. Indeed, all temples were considered to be the Primordial Mound where the world first emerged from the Waters.

What caught my eye in this case was the idea of scattering gold dust and powdered green faience in this holy place as a consecration. It reminds me of the colored powders scattered during the Indian Holi festival. During our Festival of the Return of the Wandering Goddess, we’ll be doing something similar and scattering dried flower petals in the path of the Returning Goddess to consecrate the Way of Her Return. If we happen to get some on each other in the process, oh well.

Hathor as Cow Goddess

While Isis, in Her birth temple, is said to be the First One Born Among the Goddesses, nevertheless, Hathor as a Cow Goddess is there at the same time and licks the baby Goddess Isis on the day of Her birth—just as mother cows lick their calves at birth. (Of course, Nuet can also be a Cow Goddess; She is, in fact, the Cow Goddess referred to in the famous text known as The Heavenly Cow.)

At Isis’ birth Hathor sings, Khnum makes the “Divine body” of the Goddess, that is, Her sacred temple image. The ka and the hemsut (feminine fate spirits associated with the ka) rejoice as They receive Isis’ Mysterious Image, that is, Her temple statue. Nekhbet as the Uraeus vows to sit upon Her brow to protect Her. Other Goddesses also vow protection for Isis as Thoth promises that He will write Her stories.

One of the parts of the temple is called the Sanctuary of the Vase, which the king made for Isis “to protect Her body in his sanctuary in joy, to preserve Her Divine Images there.” Isis is said to enter “Her chapel in the Land of Atum, Her heart is glad to enter there.” The Sanctuary of the Vase then is the storage area for Isis’ sacred images and the Goddess is pleased with the images and so She happily enters into the image and Her sanctuary. The king has made the sanctuary for She Who is Full of Life and the images “are excellently chiseled by the work of the sculptors, enhanced with gold to perfection.”

The main sacred image in my Isis shrine is a replica of this one

Here’s another thing I found interesting. One temple text says that the bas (manifestations/powers/a mode of Divine Being) of all the Deities follow the ba of Isis and They “melt” over Their effigies on the walls in joy.

I am very much intrigued by the idea of Isis’ ba—an aspect of Her Divine energy that indwells Her sacred image—melting over the image. Sometimes the Divine ba is said to swoop down from the heavens like a bird to alight on the sacred image. But melting over and into it—infusing the image with Her ba—really catches me.

I shall definitely use that visualization the next time I invoke Her to the sacred image that dwells in my home shrine for Her. And that is something else to note. We don’t just invoke Our Divine Ones to Their sacred images and call it done. Each time we invoke Her, She comes anew. Each time we ask Isis to come to us, come to us, She once again “melts” over Her sacred image.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten in my books for now. I’ll share more of what I learn as I go along.

Isis & Her Manifestations

More from the Temple of Isis at Dendera.

In this one small, mostly destroyed temple, there are many Deities speaking.

They are everywhere, on every wall. Many are well known, like Tefnut and Hathor and Thoth; some more obscure. The king—always said to be beloved of Isis and Ptah—is ubiquitous as well as he makes many different offerings of many different kinds. And, as this is the temple of the birth of Isis, She Who is First Born Among the Goddesses, there is much rejoicing in this small temple.

For example, the Goddess Merit, the Enchantress Who is here called “Lady of the Throat,” uses Her beautiful throat and voice to arouse joy and bring intoxication; She also leads the dances for Isis. Isis Herself is Mistress of Intoxication Who Arouses joy, Whose Heart is Satisfied with Revelry. Nuet declares that She “makes every person rejoice to see You [Isis].” Hor-Ihy, a combination of Isis’ son Horus with Hathor’s son Ihy, plays the sistrum “for the Mistress of the Sistrum-Temple, Isis the Great, Mother of the God.” The Gods dance for Her. The Goddesses are joyful for Her. The women play the tambourine for Isis the Luminous One. Hathor, Mistress of the Sweet Breath, sings for Her.

A lot of what we find in this temple, as we did in Hathor’s, are the various names of the Goddess Isis in other parts of Egypt. Interestingly, an inscription on this temple is also one source for our understanding of the Goddess Bast (or Bastet) as “the soul of Isis.” It comes from one of those inscriptions where Isis is being described as a Goddess of various names in other Egyptian locales. And one of those names is

“Nbt B3st (Lady Bast or the Lady of Bubastis) is the Heliopolitan. B3 n 3st [ba or “soul” of Isis] it is said of Her name. B3t is Her name in the mouths of human beings from ancient times of the Deities until now.”

We can be pretty sure that the Egyptians were engaging in some word play here—word play that is intended to reveal mysteries. If you look at the transliteration (writing the hieroglyphs in “latin” or “roman” letters; with the addition of some special characters) of Bast’s name and Isis’ name, you will see that the letters for Isis are within the name of Bast: B3st and 3st. The “3” here does not really represent a three, but is one of those special characters; it is sometimes called aleph, from Hebrew, because it is a consonant that is also “sort of” a vowel, as aleph is in Hebrew. For simplicity’s sake, we are usually told to pronounce it like an English long “a,” (ah). But it isn’t really an a. It’s a glottal stop. Here’s how that works in Isis’ Egyptian name.

Two forms of Isis from Dendera: anthropomorphic and in Her Ba form

So, what the Egyptians were telling us is that Bast and Isis are linked because from within the name Bast, Isis is revealed. This is expressed by writing that B3 n 3st [Ba/soul of Isis] it is said of Her name.” But “ba” in Egypt isn’t really what we usually mean by “soul” though that is a conventional translation. The concept of the ba is much, much more complicated—and I’ll post on that sometime, but not today.

But in short, ba is one way that a Deity can express Themselves. Ba is an active manifestation of a Deity. So a better way to think about it would be that Bast can be a manifestation of Isis. Or that Isis can express Herself as Bast. This is very much in line with the very fluid way Egyptian Deities can flow into or become each other or express Themselves as each other.

In the final line of this section of the inscription, it says B3t, or Baet, is Her—in this case, Isis’—name “from ancient times of the Deities until now.” This is not a reference to the Cow Goddess Bat or Ba-et. Instead, it is an expression of Isis’ immense power. The ba-power of a Deity made manifest is often written in the plural, bau, though often treated as a singular. The plurality not only intensifies the power, but also recognizes that the Deity is not limited to a single manifestation of power. For example, wind is the bau of Shu. The stars are the bau of Nuet. And both have other bau as well.

Thus to be the Goddess Baet, Whose very Name—from ancient times until now—IS this ba-power, is to be powerful indeed. We learn about Isis’ bau in other inscriptions at Dendera as well. She is said to be the One “Whose bau is great.” In fact, “Her bau is greater than all the Gods.” As a Baet Goddess, She shares this great might with only few other Goddesses, such as Hathor, Neith, and Nephthys. As a Baet Goddess, She shows Her power on earth, where humankind bows to it, and in the heavens, where She is B3t em pt, the Mighty One in the Sky.

On another wall of Her temple, at least a dozen Deities “open the New Year” for the Daughter of Nuet, Isis the Goddess. We even have the founding date for the current temple: July 16, 54 BCE. That was the day of the heliacal rising of the Star of Isis, Sirius, and—the temple records—that for a brief time that morning, both moon and sun were seen in the sky. So both Re and Osiris were there to greet Isis at the foundation of Her Horizon or Akhet Temple. It is so called, no doubt, due to its orientation to the east and the rising of Her Star, as well as the regenerative power of the liminal space of the Akhet.

We also learn that,

“On this beautiful day, the Day of the Child in His Nest, [there is] a great festival throughout the country, Isis is given birth at Dendera by Thoueris [meaning the Great One, in this case, Her mother Nuet] in the temple of the Venerable [Isis].”

And that Isis was born as

“a woman with black (kemet) hair and red (desheret) skin, full of life, Whose love is sweet.”

This must also be word play, for Isis is born with the colors of the Black Land and Red Land shown forth in Her Divine form and so She rules over both; She rules over all things.

Indeed, even from before Her birth, Isis was destined to rule.

“Destiny distinguishes Her on the birthstones. Her heart is rich in all virtue. The south is given to Her until [that is, “as far as”] the [place of the] rising of the Disk, the north until the limits of Darkness. She is mistress of the sanctuaries of Egypt with Her son and Her brother Osiris.”

Isis is Queen of Upper and Lower Egypt and She rules the Two Lands “from the bricks of birth.” She is the ruler of cities and sanctuaries; indeed She is the Venerable One Without Equal, the Regent Who Governs the Universe.

Just as Isis’ own birth is celebrated in this temple, so Her birth-giving to Horus is also celebrated. Isis is called “the Primordial, the First to Give Birth Among the Goddesses, the One with the Beautiful Face, Whose Milk is Sweet.”

I’ve just scratched the surface here. There’s definitely more. Next time, we’ll look into some of the birth-associated texts and images to see what we can learn there.