古埃及 Faience 巨大的伊西斯女神像正在哺育哈波克拉特斯。高7厘米。非常好

Goddess Isis suckling Harpocrates

Ancient Egypt, Late period 664 - 323 BC

Faience.

7 cm height.

Provenance: Ex. old private collection, France, 1980. Acquired in the London art market.

Condition: Good, rejoined from two parts, right arm missing. See photos.

A figure of the goddess Isis seated on a throne and suckling her son, Horus. The original base was most probably a wooden one but has been lost. Over her tripartite wig the goddess is wearing her characteristic crown with a sun disk between two cow horns.

The goddess Isis, according to myth, is the daughter of Geb and Nut, and sister of Osiris, to whom she was also considered to be wed. As a deity she was referred to as: “Great mother goddess”, “Great Sorceress”, “Queen of the Gods”, “Fecundating Force of Nature” and “Goddess of Maternity and Birth”.

Osiris reigned in Ancient Egypt in peace, harmony and with wisdom. The Nile fertilized the earth and the crops were abundant. One day, Osiris set off to discover other civilizations and left his kingdom under the control of his wife, Isis. Set, his jealous brother, felt humiliated as he thought that he should rule rather than Isis. When Osiris returned he was murdered by his brother. The goddess Isis, with the aid of other divinities like Nephthys and Anubis, sought out and found the cut-up pieces of her husband and put them together through special rites. After physical union with the god she conceived a child. The posthumous son of Osiris was to be the Horus-child, Harpocrates, who later, would wreak revenge on Set for his father´s murder.

As one of the main deities, Isis was worshipped in all periods in the history of Egypt, and it was in the final epoch that the largest temple was built to her on the island of Philae. The Greco-Roman world adopted her characteristics and associated them with Aphrodite and Venus. Another of her principal characteristics, that of being “Mother of God”, would also be relevant in the cults influencing Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity.

Harpocrates, the Horus-child, is a native of Heliopolis as the son of Isis and Osiris. He was worshipped in many sanctuaries, like those of Edfu, Thebes, Coptos, Mendes, etc., in which he was venerated in other forms adopted from Horus. Harpocrates is the living symbol of the rising sun at the beginning of spring. He was born after the death of his father, Osiris. He is represented then as a defenseless child whom his mother, the goddess Isis, had to hide in the swamps of the Nile Delta, to protect him from the evil Set, his father’s brother. But in the same way that the weak newly-risen sun becomes a powerful sun as it rises higher, the god-child became the powerful Horus, the avenger of his father’s death, fighting against Set. His mother, Isis, in this way changed him into the great Horus who reigned over men and gods.


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