Antiquities

Goddess Isis, loving wife, and mother

Although Christianity may have been the first religion to put love at its center and create not just a loving God but a God who urged his worshippers to love each other, Isiacism was in some ways its forerunner as a religion of comfort and kindness.

Isis was, according to Isis historian R. E. Witt, unique amongst pagan deities in her affection and compassion. ‘Moved by your prayer I come to you,’ she says to Lucius in The Golden Ass.

Isis was a loving wife and mother. Statues showing her son Horus suckling at her breast directly influenced later images of Jesus and Mary.

by Mano Chil

Vigen Avetisyan

Recent Posts

Abandoned by an Ally: The French Armenian Legion in Cilicia and the Road to the Smyrna Catastrophe

How a promise made to genocide survivors was traded away for peace with Ankara —…

2 days ago

The Vilgort Cup: A Silver Masterpiece of Cilician Armenia (c. 1150–1159 A.D.)

A Fragment That Traveled Across Continents The gilt-silver medallion shown above — two richly dressed…

5 days ago

Hannibal and Artaxias the Great: The Carthaginian General Who Helped Build the “Armenian Carthage”

Few episodes in ancient Armenian history capture the imagination quite like the tradition that Hannibal…

1 week ago

The Priestess of the Kingdom of Van: A 9th-Century BC Bronze Figurine in the British Museum

Five angles of one small bronze figure — and what emerges is not an abstract…

3 weeks ago

The Winged Sun and the Armenian Tiara: Royal Symbolism of the Orontid (Yervanduni) Kingdom of Commagene, 163 BC – 72 AD

Introduction Among the successor states that emerged from the fragmentation of the Achaemenid-derived Orontid (Armenian:…

3 weeks ago

A Bronze Age Vessel from Gardman: Solar Symbolism, the Sun-Cross, and the Sacred Landscape of Ancient Armenia

Article based on the explanations and interpretive observations of Angela Terian, with additional archaeological and…

3 weeks ago