This glorious babe is Isis, the queen of all the gods of Egypt. She was such a hotshot that she just

This glorious babe is Isis, the queen of all the gods of Egypt. She was such a hotshot that she just couldn’t be satisfied with the fealty of the people of the Nile, and instead made her way all around the Mediterranean, evangelizing and proselytizing, bringing her message of peace and salvation to Greeks and Romans and everyone else, and everyone lived happily ever after. Or, well, not exactly. This Isis, a particularly spectacular likeness in white and blue marble, is from the 2nd century CE and she was discovered in Naples, home of many seafarers and olive-farmers and wineries (now and then!). Isis wasn’t just poking around in Naples, though, and she was pretty well-acquainted with the whole Mediterranean starting around the 4th century BCE. But why would such a goddess lose interest in her homeland? Why would she bother leaving home? In the 4th century, Alexander the Great, conquering prince of Macedon, mixed everything up. He stormed around the ancient world and culture got caught up in the wake of his huge army of badasses. Alex was super into Egypt and even crowned himself Pharaoh, thus sparking a fad bigger than Pokemon or ombre. This fad was cultural mixing. Soon, Greeks and Egyptians were all living together in the cosmopolitan world of Egypt, doing cool things like being bilingual and combining their powers to invent new gods and write cool novels about Alexander the Great, the neatest guy ever. Isis made out pretty well in all this; not only was she already the queen of the gods, and (as you can tell) a babe, she was also very concerned with the well-being of sailors. In a world where people traveled by long and perilous sea-voyage, you can’t do much better than being the patron goddess of sailors. So Isis traveled the world and was honored in her travels by fabulous honorific statuary, which must have felt pretty great. -- source link
Tumblr Blog : worstclassicist.tumblr.com

More pics about