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Isis " The Big Magician ", the big mother goddess, queen of the gods, goddess of maternity and birth, in the Egyptian mythology. " Lady of the pyramids " in Giza.
Her Egyptian name was Ast, which means literally "throne". In Greek it is Isis. Osiris, brother and husband of Isis, was reigning in the ancient Egypt with peace, harmony and wisdom. The Nile was fertilizing the ground and the crops were abundant. His subjects were happy. One day, Osiris went out of trip to know other civilizations and left the kingdom under the control of his wife Isis. Seth, the envious brother, felt humiliated, since he believed that he should govern and not Isis. When the god Osiris returned, Seth wanted to do a big party of welcome and threw a challenge to the guests: that one that was entering the chest that Seth had brought, this one was giving it to him as test of loyalty and respect. Many tried but the chest was turning out to be too small or big. Osiris, onlooker, wanted to try and fitted him perfectly well. Seth knew the size of the brother and it was for this that he had had the chest left as a glove. Immediately the brother, together with 72 accomplices, they closed the metal box hermetically and threw her to the Nile. Isis, with love and confidence, began his passage after the body of his husband. After long and painful walks for Egypt, the goddess finds the chest with the rests of Osiris. But the drama continues when Seth, in his nastiness without end, stole the corpse and cut it in fourteen pieces that, again, it interspersed
for the whole kingdom. Isis does not give up and, with in company of her sister Neftis, Seth's wife, she covers every place of the kingdom. Finally they manage to find all the pieces with exception of the penis. Nevertheless Isis reconstructed Osiris helped by Anubis and Neftis, and impregnated with him there conceived Horus child (Harpócrates), who later would avenge his father fighting against Seth.
Iconography: Isis is represented as woman with the hieroglyphic Ast on his head. Other times she is seated, showing a haido with the solar disc, for being a daughter of Ra, the god Solar. We can see her also with wings of kite, symbolizing her maternity, opening her arms to bless her devout ones and children. Also with form of tree goddess, breast-feeding the Pharaoh.
The most important temple dedicated to her worship was in the island of File. In Dendera she was exhibited annually in a kiosk of the temple of Hathor, to the beams of the sun, to be regenerated. In Giza she was venerated as " Lady of the pyramids "
Her worship propagated for the whole Mediterranean, resisting the expansion of the Christianity and she was supported in the temple of File during the Roman Empire until she was prohibited in times of Justiniano I, in 535 ddC.
The Christianity adopted the worship to Isis assimilating Virgin Mary, whose maternal and protective images are inspired in his iconography. The Black Virgins are considered to be images of Isis, adapted to the catholic ritual later.
Nephtys - Nebet-Het
In Egyptian mythology, Nephthys (spelt Nebet-het, and Nebt-het, in transliteration from hieroglyphs) is one of the Ennead of Heliopolis, a daughter of Nut and Geb, and the wife of Set. She was originally Set's dualistic counterpart, representing the air, whereas Set originally represented the desert. In ancient Egypt, the oldest female in the house was given the honorary title of Nephthys, and she was popular even in the Greco-Roman period.
Consequently she was named Nebt-het, which means lady of the house, the house being a colloquial term for the sky, a use also present in the name of Hathor, meaning house of horus. In art, she was depicted as a hawk, representative of the air, or as a woman with a hawk's wings, usually outstretched as a symbol of protection. She was shown crowned by the hieroglyphic of her name, which was the sign for a house (het), with the sign for neb, which could also mean basket, on top of it.
Because Set represented the barren desert, Set was seen at first as infertile, and subsequently as homosexual, and so Nepthys was seen as childless. As she was also seen as a bird, she gradually became seen as a vulture, which the Egyptians believed never had children because they were thought to all be female (the Egyptians thought that vultures were spontaneously created from air). Although vultures were seen in a positive light, their feeding behaviour nevertheless led them to be associated also with decay and death, and so Nepthys too gradually became a goddess of death and decay.
This led her, in art, to be depicted as a mourning woman, and her hair was compared to the strips of cloth that shroud the bodies of the dead. She was known as a Friend of the Dead, and professional mourners became referred to as the Hawks of Nephthys. When the Ennead and Ogdoad were merged, Nephthys was seen as joining the night-time boat journey of Ra, the sun god, when he entered the underworld, and accompanying him until he met the day again.
In the Ennead, she is also the sibling of the other pair - Osiris and Isis, who represented death and life, respectively. Consequently, when the merger of Ogdoad and Ennead caused the Ogdoad's god of death, Anubis, to be displaced, and become a lesser god, it was said that Nepthys was Anubis' mother, and Osiris his father. This was described in myth by stating that a sexually frustrated Nepthys disguised herself as Isis to appeal to Set, but he did not notice her, but Osiris, Isis' husband, did, mistaking her for Isis, and resulting in the birth of Anubis. Later alternative versions hold that she just drugged Osiris with wine in order to seduce him.
Later, Nepthys, as the air, was identified as the source of rain, which occurred frequently only south of Egypt, and so was seen as the creator of the Nile river. Consequently she became identified as the goddess Anuket, who was considered to be the source of the Nile. As a funerary goddess, this led to her being considered a protector of Hapi, one of the Four sons of Horus, specifically the deification of the canopic jar containing the lungs, the organ that suffers most from drowning.
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