#isiaque

Io's black suitor

#1-#2

Black Zeus in Sophocles' Inachos, p24-26

The connection of Dionysos to Apis and Osiris implied by the epithet Epaphie in the Hymn therefore does not depend on the identification of some chthonic or underworldly aspect of Dionysos. Indeed, it is striking, when examining the ancient testimonies that connect the deities, to note the absence of connections made between Osiris as ruler of the dead and Dionysos, the first connection made by most modern scholars. The ancient thinkers who identified the gods did so primarily on the basis of the kinds of ritual experiences associated with the two figures, not on the basis of a classification like chthonic or Olympian. Diodorus identifies Epaphos as the Egyptian Dionysos, not as the ruler of the dead or the one who conquers death, but as the one responsible for the rites in Egypt. In Euripides’ Phoinissai, the Theban chorus invokes Epaphos as the child of Io, who is the προμάτωρ of all the Thebans. Epaphos is thus an ancestor of Dionysos, an Egyptian child of Zeus who must be invoked by a barbarian (Egyptian) cry, hailed with foreign prayers and rites. (Redefining Dionysos, p431)

MET, 26.7.1415

British Museum EA8484

The Origins of the Goddess Ariadne: III. Delos, Cyprus, and Argos

Un'iconografia dionisiaca nell'Iseum et Serapeum del Campo Marzio?

Altar für Isis, Serapis, Liber und Libera

Βάχχοις καὶ Βάχχαις ἀεὶ συνθιασώτης εἰμί I am always the partner-in-the-thiasos with the Bakchoi and the Bakchai (RICIS, 104/0206, 8)

The Bakchoi and Bakchai were in fact the child ministers of a rejuvenated religion centered on the sacred child Dionysos. Their emergence reflects the Hellenistic era's characteristic sentimental piety toward child gods, during which the traditional image of Dionysos was deliberately rejuvenated, especially in Alexandria and Ptolemaic Egypt. These youthful attendants, of both sexes, ritually served the young god in processions. They often engaging in play with sacred animals or appearing winged, that's why they were  often mistakenly identified as Eros figures.

source: J.-Ph. Lauer et Ch. Picard, Les statues ptolémaïques du Sarapieion de Memphis

When the successor is found it is led by 100 priests to Memphis. It has a pair of shrines, which they call its bed-chambers, that supply the nations with auguries: when it enters one this is a joyful sign, but in the other one it portends terrible events. It gives answers to private individuals by taking food out of the hand of those who consult it; it turned away from the hand of Germanicus Caesar, who was made away with not long after. Usually living in retirement, when it sallies forth into assemblies it proceeds with lictors to clear the way, and companies of boys escort it singing a song in its honour; it seems to understand, and to desire to be worshipped. These companies are suddenly seized with frenzy and chant prophecies of future events. (Pliny, Natural History, 8.71)

Apis, it seems, is in effect a good prophet: he to be sure never sets girls or elderly women on tripods, never fills them with some sanctified draught, but a man prays to this god, and children without, who are playing and dancing to the music of pipes, become inspired and proclaim in time with the music the actual response of the god, so that what they say is more true than what occurred by the Sagras. (Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals, 11.10)

But Isis wandered everywhere at her wits' end; no one whom she approached did she fail to address, and even when she met some little children she asked them about the chest. As it happened, they had seen it, and they told her the mouth of the river through which the friends of Typhon had launched the coffin into the sea. Wherefore the Egyptians think that little children possess the power of prophecy,⁠ and they try to divine the future from the portents which they find in children's words, especially when children are playing about in holy places and crying out whatever chances to come into their minds. (Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 14)

In a coin of Bizye in Thrace, extra figures are added: Harpokrates stands beside Isis while Demeter is accompanied by Hermes-Anubis. The addition of these figures suggests that, here at least, Demeter is identified with Isis' sister Nephthys, the mother of Anubis. Both Hermes and Anubis, it might be noted, are guides to the Underworld, and Demeter has a strong influence over the Underworld, having obtained her daughter's release from Hades. This command over the realm of death could have played an important part in establishing the special relationship between Demeter and Isis. Nephthys seems to have been a rather pallid figure in Egyptian mythology, primarily joining her sister in mourning Osiris. Replacing Nephthys with Demeter would create a more potent triad at the center of Egyptian-Alexandrian religion. While there is no literary source speaking of such a replacement or identification, the implications of the coin of Bizye seem clear; Demeter-Nephthys is a more plausible name in some of these group compositions than Demeter-Isis. (Demeter-Isis or the Egyptian Demeter, p84)