47 – Isis

Statue of Isis. Roman, 1-79 CE; found in the Temple of Isis, Pompeii, Italy. Dedicated by a wealthy freedman named Lucius Caecilius Phoebus, this statue of the goddess Isis stood in the portico of her temple in Pompeii. The style of the sculpture is unusually eclectic. Isis wears a diaphanous dress belted below her breasts and carries her traditional attributes – an ankh (the hieroglyphic symbol for life) and a sistrum (Egyptian rattle, now missing). Her hairstyle and broad facial features, however, are borrowed from Archaic Greek models of about 500 BCE, perhaps an allusion to the antiquity of Egyptian religion.

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