" According to Brugsch she is "not only
the creatress of the fresh verdure of vegetation which covers the
earth, but is actually the green corn-field itself, which is
personified as a goddess." This is confirmed by her epithet _Sochit_
or _Sochet,_ meaning "a corn-field," a sense which the word still
retains in Coptic. The Greeks conceived of Isis as a corn-goddess,
for they identified her with Demeter. In a Greek epigram she is
described as "she who has given birth to the fruits of the earth,"
and "the mother of the ears of corn"; and in a hymn composed in her
honour she speaks of herself as "queen of the wheat-field," and is
described as "charged with the care of the fruitful furrow's
wheat-rich path." Accordingly, Greek or Roman artists often
represented her with ears of corn on her head or in her hand.
Such, we may suppose, was Isis in the olden time, a rustic
Corn-Mother adored with uncouth rites by Egyptian swains. But the
homely features of the clownish goddess could hardly be traced in
the refined, the saintly form which, spiritualised by ages of
religious evolution, she presented to her worshippers of after days
as the true wife, the tender mother, the beneficent queen of nature,
encircled with the nimbus of moral purity, of immemorial and
mysterious sanctity.
Pages:
1057
1058
1059
1060
1061
1062
1063
1064
1065
1066
1067
1068
1069
1070
1071
1072
1073
1074
1075
1076
1077
1078
1079
1080
1081