This site deals with the ancient, Egyptian deity Aset and this page is added here only to give a brief glimpse of the Roman Isis. There are lots of pages on the web for those who want to find out more about the Greco-Roman Isis.

ISIS or her more ancient Egyptian name ASET, appears like two different deities if you take a closer look. When the worship of ISIS rose in Greek and Roman days, the original funerary deity ASET, Protector and Maker of the King, had already been forgotten for hundreds of years. At this time only a small group of priests still knew how to read the hieroglyphs on the temple walls. The Greek and Roman way of superimposing their cultural values on Egyptian culture affected the interpretation of the original ASET, depriving her of her Egyptian origin and merging her with their own deities. The most outstanding difference between them is in my opinion the fierceness of Aset which we can find in the myths, and her role as a funerary deity. This is not so with Isis who is a much more benevolent and one-size-fits-all kind of a deity.

THE ROMAN ISIS is the deity called the Goddess of Ten Thousand Names, a Great Mother Goddess. It is not the purpose of this site to explore the Roman Isis, but some words might be in order to differentiate her from the Egyptian Aset. Isis is the preferred goddess by women, the protector at childbirth, for nurturing and caring of children and for everyone that is in need in any way of her. This is not at all to say that the ancient Egyptian female deities did not fill these functions. Het-Hert (Hathor) is the one that comes most easily to mind here. But already before the Roman period, Isis absorbed most of the properties and abilities of the main Egyptian goddesses (Het-Hert, Mut, Neith, Serket). This might have prepared the path for finding a likeness of Isis with deities like Hera and Aphrodite. Her popularity spread far beyond Egypt, all around the Mediterranean. She was even considered a Creator Goddess, as can be read in the 'Aretalogy of Isis'. Plutharch, who elaborated on the myth of Isis and Osiris, associated her with the moon, which must be considered a sign of Roman influence, since the older form, the Egyptian Aset was associated with the sun and even sometimes called the 'Eye of Re'. However, since ancient days it was Djehuty (Thoth) who was associated with the moon. So perhaps in this respect the imported, adapted deity Isis can be differed the most clearly form the original Kemetic Aset.

The cult of ISIS grew and became widely spread, probably because her traits as a mother goddess for everybody, and for her image as a widow and 'lone mother' evoked compassion and recognition. Temples were built to her far beyond Egypt, although the old temples of ASET long since had been destroyed, if indeed many of them were ever erected, which we don´t know for certain today.

Traces of the Roman ISIS has come down to us through Apuleius´ story "The Golden Ass" where one Lucius tells about his experiences of Isis.