Isis
Isis names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Isis in , the wife of Osiris and mother of Horus
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in , the wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. Egyptian mythology She is, however, variously described, and invested with many different characters. By the Greeks she was generally identified with Demeter (Ceres). Among the higher and more philosophical theologians she was made the symbol of Pantheistic divinity; see especially the remarkable passage at the end of the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius. By the people she was worshiped as the goddess of fecundity, and in her honor an annual festival was instituted which lasted seven days. The cow was sacred to her. She was represented variously, though most usually as a woman with the horns of a cow, sometimes suckling Horus, and sometimes with the lotus on her head and the sistrum in her hand. Her priests were bound to observe perpetual chastity; but when her worship passed into foreign countries, her rites became merely a cloak for sacerdotal licentiousness, which at last reached such a pitch that they were prohibited at Rome. Vol. V-Cyc-N The worship of Isis, however, was repeatedly revived, and furnished a theme for the indignant pen of Juvenal.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
i'sis, the chief goddess of the Egyptians. She was the sister and wife of Osiris, their chief deity. He represented the sun. She represented the moon. The cow and the lotus were sacred to her. The figure of Isis, oftentimes adorned with the horns of a cow, appears frequently in Egyptian art, especially in the adornment of cave temples and elsewhere. See Osiris
Isis A celebrated deity of the Egyptians
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A celebrated deity of the Egyptians, daughter of Saturn and Rhea , according to Diodorus of Sicily. Some suppose her to be the same as Io, who was changed into a cow, and restored to her human form in Egypt, where she taught agriculture, and governed the people with mildness and equity, for which she received divine honors after her death.
Isis a genus of corals
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a genus of corals, the typical of the sub-family Isidinæ. The one sclerobasis consists of alternate calcareous and horny segments, the former giving rise to branches. I. hippuris is from Amboyna, I. polyantha from the American seas, and I. coralloides from those of India.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The core description Collier's gave in 1921 still holds: Isis as sister-wife of Osiris and mother of Horus, shown with cow's horns, sistrum in hand, suckling her son. Two framings have since been set aside. Aiton's 1910 pairing of a solar Osiris with a lunar Isis is a Greek and Roman overlay rather than an Egyptian idea, and 1000 Classical Characters' report that she was a mortal queen, daughter of Saturn and Rhea, who was rewarded with divine honours after death is Diodorus's euhemerising, not Egyptian belief; Isis appears as a goddess already in the Pyramid Texts of the later Old Kingdom. Historians now also read Juvenal's attacks on "sacerdotal licentiousness" and the Roman expulsions of her cult as satire and politics rather than evidence of what her priests did. The most visible change is physical: her great temple at Philae, where worship persisted latest, was dismantled and rebuilt on the neighbouring island of Agilkia between 1972 and 1980 to save it from the reservoir of the Aswan High Dam.
Written for this edition, 2026.