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R. E. Witt
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Isis in the Ancient World Paperback – July 15, 1997

by R. E. Witt (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 28 ratings
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The first study to document the extent and complexity of the cult's influence on Graeco-Roman and early Christian culture, R. E. Witt's acclaimed Isis in the Ancient World is now available in paperback

Worship of the Egyptian goddess Isis dates as far back as 2500 B.C. and extended at least until the fifth century A.D. throughout the Roman world. The importance of her cult is attested to in Apuleius's Golden Ass, and evidence of its influence has been found in places as far apart as Afghanistan and Portugal, the Black Sea and northern England. The first study to document the extent and complexity of the cult's influence on Graeco-Roman and early Christian culture, R. E. Witt's acclaimed Isis in the Ancient World is now available in paperback.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    336 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Johns Hopkins University Press
  4. Publication date
    July 15, 1997
  5. Dimensions
    5.75 x 0.79 x 8.75 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9780801856426
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0801856426
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Distinguished for its learning and its use of fascinating and little-known iconographic material . . . The importance of this study, both for the history of religions and of Graeco-Roman society, lies in the evidence, assembled and interpreted, of a widespread desire to worship a goddess who embodied maternal compassion and omnipotent wisdom.
―History Today

This is in many ways a pioneering book by an author who knows how to use archaeological as well as literary evidence. It is an important contribution to an understanding of the religious attitudes of ordinary men and women who lived under the rule of the Caesars . . . [It is a ] well-written, well-planned, and finely illustrated work [that] contributes powerfully to our knowledge of significant aspects of the Graeco-Roman world.
―Times Literary Supplement

Particularly stimulating is the attempt to assess the impact of the Isis cult on Christianity. Here Dr. Witt is able to deploy his wide knowledge of the religion of the Byzantine era and its sequel in Greek Orthodoxy, and he is also able to correct the severe underestimation of the moral appeal of the Isis cult which has hitherto prevailed among historians of Christianity.
―J. Gywn Griffiths, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology

Book Description

The first study to document the extent and complexity of the cult's influence on Graeco-Roman and early Christian culture, R. E. Witt's acclaimed Isis in the Ancient World is now available in paperback

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0801856426
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Johns Hopkins University Press; Reprint edition (July 15, 1997)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780801856426
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0801856426
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 0.79 x 8.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 28 ratings

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R. E. Witt

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4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
28 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

D. Cameron Calkins
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb scholarly text
Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2012
Verified Purchase
This was my 2nd purchase from Amazon back in 1999. You couldn't find this book anywhere else at the time. I'm glad it's been reprinted.

This is a wonderful book, describing in great detail the spread of the cult of Isis throughout the ancient world, and the contributions to our modern society. It's a little dry, but there really is nothing else out there like this book. I have a vast library of books on Ancient Egypt and this is the one I value the most.
5 people found this helpful
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Eric Mueller
5.0 out of 5 stars Thorough account
Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2017
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Not light reading but a very thorough account of the worship of Isis in late antiquity. That is saying something, by the way, since Isis had Iseums (temples) as far away from Egypt as London and Spain, not to mention Rome and southeastern Europe. Very informative!
3 people found this helpful
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Violet Bunny
4.0 out of 5 stars Too Many Foreign Words!
Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2021
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I hate it when authors try to show off by peppering their books with tons of French, Greek, & Latin words that the average person has no hope of deciphering! This would've been a much better book if the author had included translations. Otherwise, I did enjoy reading about Isis' influence during ancient times in countries other than Egypt.
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4shop
5.0 out of 5 stars Isis in the Ancient World
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2015
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fine treatment of a big subject
2 people found this helpful
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Plotinus
5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps the most interesting book I have ever read
Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2004
This book is extremely interesting if you have any questions about where Western religious traditions come from. This book clearly dispels the myth that the religion of Isis was merely some kind of fringe 'mystery cult'. It was instead the world religion of the Mediterranean before Christianity. Isis is not given enough credit by modern historians of religion. It was highly organized with its priesthood and liturgies. Abstinence from wine, porc and sex was required of priests for the sake of cleanliness. Bathing and ritual washing were performed several times a day. Hymns were sung at specified times; holy water from the Nile was sprinkled about; a baptism was performed when being initiated as a believer; Isis gave birth to Horus, who is really the earthly incarnation of the All-Father Osiris, on the 23rd of December, etc... Its evolution into/influence upon Christianity can be traced. In fact the dog-headed God Anubis is still worshipped as a saint on a Greek Island to this day; and the festival of Isis being carried to the sea-shore to bless the start of the sailing season, called the "Carrus Navalis" has turned into the "Carnival" that we see today all over the Mediterranean (a false etymology was thought up for it to explain it as the 'carne levare' when the original meaning for the celebration was forgotten). This book clearly shows how Christianity was hardly a rude intruder from an overlooked little corner of the world, and how it instead grew feeding upon the millennia of experience of Isis, first as official religion of Egypt under the pharaohs, and then extending to the entire Medditerranean and European worlds through the Ptolemies and through the Empire of Rome. In relgious anthropology, Isis is the 'missing link' between Christianity and paganism, proving that it was a very mild transition from the one to the other. I can hardly express how fascinating this book is.
80 people found this helpful
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Terrance M. Gamble
5.0 out of 5 stars great all around
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2005
I love the book, It came quickly, it arrived in great shape, and it's a great read. Thanks a lot!
6 people found this helpful
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DAJ
3.0 out of 5 stars Readable but subtly out of date
Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2015
This book is a reissue of Isis in the Graeco-Roman World from 1971. It may still be the most readable book to describe how the cult of Isis spread across the Mediterranean. Its writing style is a bit flowery and prone to digressions, but at least it's not clogged with jargon.

Unfortunately, the book doesn't much discuss a lot of the puzzling questions about the Isis cult, like what exactly her followers meant when they said Isis was the same as other goddesses like Artemis or Aphrodite (though, to be fair, today's scholars are still trying to puzzle that one out). It also tends to treat the evidence uncritically and to take as given some outdated assumptions about the Isis cult. For instance, he thinks that the spread of Egyptian cults in Hellenistic times was deliberately driven by the Ptolemies, an idea that has now been abandoned. Writers in Roman times habitually accused cults they didn't like of sexual immorality. Conservative Romans flung these accusations at exotic cults (including Christianity), Christians flung them at pagans, and Christian sects flung them at each other. Witt takes the accusations toward the Isis cult too seriously, though when discussing the genuine sexual imagery in the Isis cult he treats it rather sympathetically. His treatments of many other subjects, such as Isis' aspect as a healer, are also prone to errors and overstatements.

In the last chapter, Witt indiscriminately lists just about every similarity and point of contact between Christianity and Isis worship. Many are, or may be, genuine points where one influenced the other, while others are irrelevant. And perhaps most fundamentally, Witt assumes that imported cults like that of Isis were each trying to become the dominant one in the Roman world, but that goal was probably alien to all of them except Christianity. Overall, this book feels subtly out of date, a product of a generation of scholars—Witt was born in 1910—who didn't grasp the Isis cult or Roman religion in general as well as today's experts do.

What's frustrating is that no comprehensive look at the Isis cult has fully replaced this one. There have been two big waves of scholarship on Isis since Witt's book came out (the first in the 1970s, with this book near the beginning of the wave, and the second in the past 15 years), but most of what they've produced is not friendly to the lay reader. One of the exceptions is  The Cult of Isis in the Roman Empire  by Malcolm Drew Donalson, which is more up-to-date than Witt, though it's more superficial than I'd prefer.  Les Cultes Isiaques Dans Le Monde Greco-romain  is written by Laurent Bricault, who probably knows Isis studies better than anybody alive, but it's only useful if you read French, and because I don't, I can't review it.

If you've gotten the basics about Isis from somebody like Donalson or Witt, the first place to go for detailed academic studies is the series of Isis conference volumes:  Nile into Tiber , Isis on the Nile , and  Power, Politics and the Cults of Isis . The first two conference volumes,  De Memphis à Rome  and  Isis en Occident , cover more basic territory than the later three, but they're mostly in French.  Isis and Sarapis in the Roman World  is also useful for countering some of the assumptions made by earlier scholars like Witt.
12 people found this helpful
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Angharad Gask
4.0 out of 5 stars An introduction into the Serapis cult
Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2017
This book is nearly 50 years old, but still in a lot of bibliographies on the Isis cult. It is written by somebody with a background in Egyptology, Classics and Ancient Philosophy and thus this is about the underlying philosophy, rather than the archaeological remains and the problems of the shifting evidence.
It seems to be also very much written from the perspective of a Western Christian and Freemason, which shows in some of the arguments, but which also leads some rather interesting links between the Isis-Cult and Early Christianity and especially Orthodox Marian Veneration.
Certainly worthwhile reading, not just for Isis, but possibly also as a model what may have happened between other aspects of paganism and Christianity in Late Antiquity.
2 people found this helpful
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