. of Isis was cut off, but replaced by magicas a cows head, which appears in Plut. Is. 19 as the l<ri5os awoKe<pa\, and also in hisstory of Hermes placing upon her a cows religion of Isis and Osiris increased inEgypt as the power of Thebes diminished, andthe worship of Ammon took a less prominentplace. Busiris was the centre of her came to be regarded as the great nature-goddess, the deity of motherhood and of allnatural production, and as the goddess of magic,to which belonged the myths of her hea
. of Isis was cut off, but replaced by magicas a cows head, which appears in Plut. Is. 19 as the l<ri5os awoKe<pa\, and also in hisstory of Hermes placing upon her a cows religion of Isis and Osiris increased inEgypt as the power of Thebes diminished, andthe worship of Ammon took a less prominentplace. Busiris was the centre of her came to be regarded as the great nature-goddess, the deity of motherhood and of allnatural production, and as the goddess of magic,to which belonged the myths of her healingOsiris from his wounds. She was also, in rela-tion to the mysteries of the death of Osiris, thegoddess of the underworld. It is to these vary-ing forms of her story that the bewilderingidentification of Isis with so many differentGreek deities is due. The worship of Isis, espe-cially after the age of Alexander, spread widelyover Western Asia and Southern Europe, inSyria (where it had a footing earlier), AsiaMinor, the islands of the Aegaean, particularly. Isis suckling Horus. (Wilkinson.) Cyprus and Rhodes, in Greece, particularly atAthens, Corinth, Cenchreae, and Hermione(Paus. i. 41, ii. 2, 32, 34), in Sicily and Italy,where it was especially notable at Puteoli,and, as the remains have proved, at Pompeii,Herculaneum, and Stabiae. At Rome it took astrong hold. At its first introduction after thesecond Punic war it was opposed on severaloccasions by the senate. In 50 AemiliusPaulus himself aided in the destruction of hershrines (Val. Max. i. 3, 4); but in 43 the tri-umvirs built the first temple for her publicworship, probably in the Campus Martius (DioCass, xlvii. 15 ; cf. Lucan, viii. 831). Under theempire the religion spread wherever the Romanarmies went, and abundant traces are found inGaul, Germany, and Britain. To the betternatures, by rules of abstinence and purifica-tion and by the glimpses which the mysteriesseemed to give of a future world, it appeared tolead
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