The loftiest and purest religious conceptions of the ancient Egyptians were embodied in the myth of Isis and Osiris, which in the third millennium B.C. had already become the basis of a firmly established cult. These conceptions approached the monotheistic idea of an omnipresent god, and with them was associated a belief in a blessed immortality. Isis was the goddess of heaven, and Osiris was the Sun-god, her brother and husband, who is slain at evening by his brother Set,—the Greek Typhon,—ruler of darkness. Their child Horus, also called Harpocrates, born after the father's death, is the fresh sun of the new day, the successor and avenger of his father, the conqueror of Set; he becomes a new Osiris, while the father, ever blessed, rules in the realm of the dead, the kingdom of the West. Man, the followers of Isis taught, is an incarnation of deity, whose destiny is also his. He is himself an Osiris, and will enter upon a better state of existence beyond the grave if a favorable judgment is passed upon him in the trial given to the dead.

The worship of Isis, associated with Mysteries from an early period, was reorganized by the first Ptolemy with the help of Manetho, an Egyptian priest, and Timotheus, a Greek skilled in the Eleusinian Mysteries. The purpose of the king was to unite his Egyptian and Greek subjects in one faith, and the effort was more successful than might have been anticipated. In its new Alexandrian form the worship of Isis and Osiris, or Serapis, as the latter divinity was now called, spread, not only over all Egypt, but also over the other countries in the East into which Greek culture had penetrated, and soon made its way to Italy and the West.

Various causes contributed to the rapid extension of the cult. It had the charm of something foreign and full of mystery. Its doctrine, supported by the prestige of immemorial antiquity, successfully opposed the mutually destructive opinions of the philosophers, while at the same time its conception of deity was by no means inconsistent with philosophic thought; and it brought to the initiated that expectation of a future life to which the Eleusinian Mysteries owed their attractive power. The ascetic side of the worship, too, with its fastings and abstinence from the pleasures of sense, that the soul might lose itself in the mystical contemplation of deity, had a fascination for natures that were religiously susceptible; and the celebration of the Mysteries, the representation of the myth of Isis in pantomime with a musical accompaniment, appealed powerfully to the imagination. The cult also possessed elements that brought it nearer to the needs of the multitude. The activities of the Egyptian divinities were not confined to the other world; their help might be sought in the concerns of this life. Thus the chief priest could say to Apuleius that Isis summoned her elect to consecrate themselves to her service only when the term of life allotted to them had really expired, and that she lengthened their tale of years, so that all of life remaining was a direct gift from the hands of the goddess. The priests of Isis were looked upon as experts in astrology, the interpretation of dreams, and the conjuring of spirits.

A college of the Servants of Isis, Pastophori, was founded in Rome in the time of Sulla, about 80 B.C. In vain the authorities tried to drive out the worship of the Egyptian gods. Three times their temple, in the midst of the city, was destroyed by order of the consuls, in 58, 50, and 48 B.C. But after Caesar's death, in 44 B.C., the triumvirs built a temple in honor of Isis and Osiris; and a few decades later, perhaps in the reign of Caligula, their festival was recognized in the public Calendar. In Campania the Alexandrian cult gained a foothold earlier than in Rome. An inscription of the year 105 B.C., found at Puteoli, proves that a temple of Serapis was then standing in that enterprising city, which had close commercial relations with Egypt and the East. Soon after this date the earlier temple of Isis at Pompeii must have been built.

Fig. 78.—Plan of the temple of Isis.
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The entrance to the court of the temple ([Fig. 78]) is from the north. Above the door is an inscription which informs us that after an earthquake (that of the year 63) Numerius Popidius Celsinus, at his own expense, rebuilt the temple of Isis from the foundation, and that in recognition of his generosity, though he was only six years of age, the members of the city council, the decurions, admitted him without cost to their rank: N[umerius] Popidius N[umerii] f[ilius] Celsinus aedem Isidis terrae motu conlapsam a fundamento p[ecunia] s[ua] restituit; hunc decuriones ob liberalitatem, cum esset annorum sexs, ordini suo gratis adlegerunt. The temple evidently belonged to the city; and the places for statues in the court, as the inscriptions show, were assigned by vote of the city council.

Other inscriptions give information in regard to the family of the child Celsinus. His father was Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, his mother Corelia Celsa; a brother bore the same name as the father. The real rebuilders were of course the parents; by associating their munificence with the name of their son, they opened the way for him to the city offices, for which the father, a freedman, was not eligible. Ampliatus perpetuated his own name by setting up a statue of Bacchus in a niche in the outside of the rear wall of the temple (at c on the plan), with the inscription: N. Popidius Ampliatus pater p. s., 'Numerius Popidius Ampliatus the father (set up this statue) at his own expense.' The names of the two sons appear with that of their mother in the mosaic floor of the large room (6) behind the colonnade at the rear.