THE PRAISES OF ISIS

[Demetrius, son of Artemidorus, and Thraseas, the Magnesian from the Maeander,
crave the blessing of Isis.  The following was copied from the stele which is in Memphis,
where it stands before the temple of Hephaestus:]

I am Isis, the mistress of every land, and I was taught by Hermes,
and with Hermes I devised letters, both the sacred [hieroglyphs] and
the demotic, that all things might not be written with the same [letters].

 I gave and ordained laws for men, which no one is able to change.
I am eldest daughter of Kronos.
I am wife and sister of King Osiris.
I am she who findeth fruit for men.
I am mother of King Horus.
I am she that riseth in the Dog Star.
I am she that is called goddess by women.
For me was the city of Bubastis built.
I divided the earth from the heaven.
I showed the paths of the stars.
I ordered the course of the sun and the moon.
I devised business in the sea.
I made strong the right.
I brought together woman and man.
I appointed to women to bring their infants to birth in the tenth month.
I ordained that parents should be loved by children.
I laid punishment upon those disposed without natural affection toward their parents.
I made with my brother Osiris an end to the eating of men.
I revealed mysteries unto men.
I taught [men] to honor images of the gods.
I consecrated the precincts of the gods.
I broke down the governments of tyrants.
I made an end to murders.
I compelled women to be loved by men.
I made the right to be stronger than gold and silver.
I ordained that the true should be thought good.
I devised marriage contracts.
I assigned to Greeks and barbarians their languages.
I made the beautiful and the shameful to be distinguished by nature.
I ordained that nothing should be more feared than an oath.
I have delivered the plotter of evil against other men into the hands of the one he plotted against.
I established penalties for those who practice injustice.
I decreed mercy to suppliants.
I protect [or honor] righteous guards.
With me the right prevails.
I am the Queen of rivers and winds and sea.
No one is held in honor without my knowing it.
I am the Queen of war.
I am the Queen of the thunderbolt.
I stir up the sea and I calm it.
I am in the rays of the sun.
I inspect the courses of the sun.
Whatever I please, this too shall come to an end.
With me everything is reasonable.
I set free those in bonds.
I am the Queen of seamanship.
I make navigable unnavigable when it pleases me.
I created walls of cities.
I am called the Lawgiver [Thesmophoros, a classical epithet of Demeter].
I brought up islands out of the depths into the light.
I am Lord [note masculine form] of rainstorms.
I overcome Fate.
Fate harkens to me.
Hail, O Egypt, that nourished me!


 

[This is a second-century recension, found in Cyme in Asia Minor, obviously a copy of an Isis aretalogy, or series of claims on behalf  of the goddess, from Memphis and the most complete of the various parallel versions.]{pp. 131 - 133, HELLENISTIC RELIGIONS: The Age of Syncretism, edited by  Frederick C. Grant, Copyright 1953; translation by A. D.  Nock in _Gnomon XXI_, 1949, p. 221.}Nock in _Gnomon XXI_, 1949, p. 221.}