The gate of the year

Metal and wooden statuette representing the goddess Isis sitting on her throne, while suckling her child Horus, dating to the Ptolemaic Period (300-30 B.C.), now in the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
Isis, daughter of the Earth god and of the Sky goddess, at the same time sister and wife of Osiris, was one of the most important Egyptian deities. Shown in the act of feeding the infant Horus, she represented an example of all the virtues of motherhood, and she was also protective for women in childbirth and their babies. In the New Kingdom and in Ptolemaic and Roman Periods the cult of Isis absorbed the characteristics of other female deities, among whom the goddess Hathor, the most ancient mother goddess, often represented in the shape of a cow. This association explains the presence of a pair of horns, framing a solar or lunar disk, that decorate the goddess’s head.

[Image: http://library.artstor.org/library/]




Human-Animal Transformation

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Metal and wooden statuette representing the goddess Isis sitting on her throne, while suckling her child Horus, dating to the Ptolemaic Period (300-30 B.C.), now in the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. Isis, daughter of the Earth god and of the Sky goddess, at the same time sister and wife of Osiris, was one of the most important Egyptian deities. Shown in the act of feeding the infant Horus, she represented an example of all the virtues of motherhood, and she was also protective for women in childbirth and their babies. In the New Kingdom and in Ptolemaic and Roman Periods the cult of Isis absorbed the characteristics of other female deities, among whom the goddess Hathor, the most ancient mother goddess, often represented in the shape of a cow. This association explains the presence of a pair of horns, framing a solar or lunar disk, that decorate the goddess’s head. [Image: http://library.artstor.org/library/]