I am all that has been, all that shall be, and none among mortals has hitherto taken off my veil.
Isis was believed to contain germs within herself for the reproduction of all living things. The most universal of her 10,000 names was, “Potent Mother Goddess.”[28] This Egyptian regard for Isis is an extremely curious and interesting reminiscence of the Matriarchal period. Her worship was universal throughout Egypt. Her temples were magnificent. Her priests, consecrated to purity, were required to bathe daily, to wear linen garments unmixed with animal fibre, to abstain from animal food, and also from those vegetables regarded as impure.[29] Two magnificent festivals were yearly celebrated in her honor, the whole people taking part. During one of these festivals her priests bore a golden ship in the procession. The ship, or ark,[30] is peculiarly significative of the feminine principle, and wherever found is a reminiscence of the Matriarchate. The most sacred mysteries of the Egyptian religion, whose secrets even Pythagoras could not penetrate, to which Herodotus alluded with awe, and that were unknown to any person except the highest order of priests, owed their institution to Isis, and were based upon moral responsibility and a belief in a future life. The immortality of the soul was the underlying principle of the Egyptian religion.
Isis seems to have been one of those extraordinary individuals, such as occasionally in the history of the world have created a literature, founded a religion, established a nationality. She was a person of superior mentality, with power to diffuse intelligence.
Moses, “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” borrowed much from Isis. The forms and ceremonies used in her worship were largely copied by him, yet lacked the great moral element—immortal life—so conspicuously taught as a part of Egyptian religion. The Sacred Songs of Isis were an important part of the literature of Egypt. Plato, who burned his own poems after reading Homer, declared them worthy of the divinity, believing them to be literally 10,000 years old.[31] All orders of the priesthood were open to women in Egypt; sacred colleges existed for them, within whose walls dwelt an order of priestesses known as “God’s Hand,” “God’s Star.” Its ranks were recruited from women of the principal families, whose only employment was the service of the gods. “Daughter of the Deity,” signified a priestess.
Women performed the most holy offices of religion, carrying the Sacred Sistrum and offering sacrifices of milk, both ceremonies of great dignity and importance, being regarded as the most sacred service of the divinity. Such sacrificial rites were confined to queens and princesses of the royal household. Ames-Nofri-Ari, a queen who received great honor from Egyptians, spoken of as the “goddess-wife of Amun,” the supreme god of Thebes, for whose worship the wonderful temple of Karnak was founded by a Pharaoh of the XII dynasty, is depicted on the monuments as the Chief High Priest—the Sem, whose specific duty was offering sacrifices and pouring out libations in that temple. By virtue of her high office she preceded her husband, the powerful and renowned Rameses II. The high offices of the church were as habitually held by women as by men; Princess Neferhotep, of the fifth dynasty, was both a priestess and a prophetess of the goddesses Hathor and Neith, the representatives of celestial space, in which things were both created and preserved.
A priestess and priest in time of the XIII Pharaoh represented on a slab of limestone, in possession of the Ashmolean Library of Oxford, England, is believed to be the oldest monument of its kind in the world, dating to 3,500, B.C.
Queen Hatasu, the light of the brilliant XVIII dynasty, is depicted upon the monuments as preceding in acts of worship the great Thotmes III, her brother, whom she had associated with herself upon the throne, but who did not acquire supreme power until after her death.[32] The reign of Hatasu was pre-eminent as the great architectural period of Egypt, the engraving upon monuments during her reign closely resembling the finest Greek intaglio. Egypt, so famous for her gardens and her art of forcing blossoms out of season, was indebted to this great queen for the first acclimatizing of plants. Upon one of her voyages she brought with her in baskets filled with earth several of those Balsam trees from Arabia, which were numbered among the precious gifts of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon. The red granite obelisks erected by Hatasu before the gates of Karnak, the most magnificent and loftiest ever erected in Egypt, were ninety-seven feet in height and surmounted by a pyramid of gold.
As early as the XI Pharaoh, II dynasty, the royal succession became fixed in the female line. A princess was endowed with privileges superior to a prince, her brother, her children reigning by royal prerogative even when her husband was a commoner; the children of a prince of the Pharaonic house making such marriage were declared illegitimate.
From the highest to the most humble priestly office, women officiated in Egypt. A class of sacred women were doorkeepers of temples, another order known as “Sacred Scribes” were paid great deference. The Pellices or Pellucidae of Amun were a remarkable body of priestesses whose burial place has but recently been discovered. They were especially devoted to the services of Amun-Ra, the Theban Jove. Egypt was indebted to priestesses for some of its most important literature. To Penthelia, a priestess of Phtha[33] the God of Fire, in Memphis, Bryant ascribes the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer[34] in his travels through that country, by aid of a suborned priest, having stolen these poems from the archives of the temples of Phtha where they had been deposited for safe keeping.
The priestly class of prophetesses was large in Egypt, their predictions not infrequently changing the course of that country’s history. To his daughter, the prophet-priestess Athryte, was the great Rameses II indebted for the prophecy which led him into his conquering and victorious career. Known as one of the four great conquerors of antiquity,[35] reigning sixty years, he greatly added to the wealth and renown of Egypt.
The class of priestesses called Sibyls were early known in Egypt, India, and other portions of the ancient world. They were regarded as the most holy order of the priesthood and held to be in direct communion with the gods, who through them revealed secrets to the lower order of priests; the word Sibyl originating from Syros, i. e. God. The learned Beale defines Sibyl as thought, therefore a woman in possession of God’s thought. The names of ten renowned Sibyls have come down to our day. The Sibyline Books for many years governed the destinies of Rome. Oracles were rendered from the lips of a priestess known as the Pythia; the famous Delphian Shrine for ages ruling the course of kings and nations.
Upon the monuments of Egypt, those indisputable historic records, queens alone are found wearing the triple crown, significant of ecclesiastical, judicial and civil power, thus confirming the statement of Diodorus that queens were shown greater respect and possessed more power than kings: the pope alone in modern times claiming the emblematic triple crown. A comparison between the men and women of the common people of this country, shows no less favorably for the latter. Women were traders, buying and selling in the markets while the men engaged in the more laborious work of weaving at home. Woman’s medical and hygienic knowledge is proven by the small number of infantile deaths.[36] At the marriage ceremony the husband promised obedience to the wife in all things, took her name, and his property passed into her control; according to Wilkinson great harmony existed in the marriage relation, the husband and wife sitting upon the same double chair in life and resting at death in the same tomb.
Montesquieu says:
It must be admitted although it shocks our present customs, that among the most polished peoples, wives have always had authority over their husbands. The Egyptians established it by