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Egyptian mother goddess. Daughter of Geb and Nut according to the Heliopolitan genealogy. Sister and wife of Osiris. Mother of Horus. She was depicted in human form, crowned either by a throne or by cow horns enclosing a sun disk. A vulture was also sometimes incorporated in her crown. She is sometimes depicted as a kite above the mummified body of Osiris. As the personification of the throne, she was an important source of the pharaoh's power. Her cult was popular throughout Egypt, but the most important sanctuaries were at Giza and at Behbeit El-Hagar in the Nile delta. Isis later had an importan cult in the Greco-Roman world, with sanctuaries at Delos and Pompeii. Her Latin epithet was Stella Maris, or "star of the sea".
It was Isis who retrieved and reassembled the body of Osiris after his murder and dismemberment by Seth. In this connection she took on the role of a goddess of the dead and of funeral rites. Isis impregnated herself from the corpse and subsequently gave birth to Horus. She gave birth in secrecy at Khemmis in the Nile delta and hid the child from Seth in the papyrus swamps. Horus later defeated Seth and became the first ruler of a united Egypt. Isis, as mother of Horus, was by extension regarded as the mother and protectress of the pharaohs. The relationship between Isis and Horus may also have influenced the Christian conception of the relationship between Mary and the infant Jesus Christ. The depiction of the seated holding or suckling the child Horus is certainly reminiscent of the iconography of Mary and Jesus.
For me, this picture exemplifies Artemis. She is Virgin Goddess. Strong, fierce, huntress, protectress, mistress of the wild, sister to the beasts, Untouched by Man.
Artemis swore an oath of the gods, Swore by the beard of her father: "I shall always be a virgin And live on summits of the great Sierras, Hunting in the forests: O grant me this!" Her father nodded in approval. Now gods And mortals call her by her thrilling name, The deer-slaying-hunter, And she is pure of marriage or erotic love.
Sappho ---
Artemis, the Maiden of the Silver Bow, has the power to send sudden death to mortals, as well as the power to heal. She was accompanied on her hunts by lop-eared hounds, had sixty ocean nymphs as maids of honor, and twenty Cretean nymphs to tend her hounds. She wore a saffron colored hunting tunic and her principal emblems are the date-palm, the stag and the bee.
On one occasion, Actaeon, a mortal, stood leaning against a large rock when he happened to see Artemis bathing in a stream. He stayed to watch. Artemis discovered him and changed him into a stag. Actaeon's own pack of hounds hunted him down and tore hi m to pieces. The story was something of a puzzle to the classical Greeks. Did Actaeon deserve such punishment? Would he have bragged of having seen a nude goddess? Modern mythologists see Actaeon as a sacred king of an ancient stag cult, torn to pieces, at the end of a fifty month reign, to insure the fertitility of the crops. The moon nymph (Artemis) properly bathed after the murder, not before. Whatever the explanation, the scene has been rendered immemorial by several painters. Three large cities looked to Artemis as their chief deity: Ephesus, Marseilles, and Syracuse. Syracuse, founded about 600 B.C. by Greeks from Iona, was noted for the cultivation of olives, which were dedicated to their goddes Artemis. It was said that Artemis was hunting in the land of Ellis and went to bathe in the river Alpheus, which flows near Olympia; there the river god attempted to violate her. She dived into the sea and did not surface until reaching Syracuse.
The oldest and most famous city dedicated to the worship of Artemis was Ephesus. Like most cities on the coast of Asia Minor it had been a Greek settlement in the beginning of the First Millennium B.C. Ephesus was at one time under the suzerainty of the kings of Lydia. The inhabitants were well treated by the rulers, who showed admiration for Greek culture. The Lydian king Croesus raised a magnificent temple to Artemis in the 6th century B.C. Its dimensions were unusually large and it was constructed entirely of marble. The structure was burned in 356 B.C. by a madman, and replaced by another structure which was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The ruins of the city and Artemis's temple have been excavated and are now a favorite tourist stop in Turkey. Much of the art work which decorated the buildings is on display in the State Museum in Viennea.
Rhiannon (her name is either "Maid of Annwn" or a variant of Rigatona, "Great Queen"), a version of the horse-goddess Epona and of sovereignity. She was mistress of the Singing Birds. She appeared to Pwyll, lord of Dyfed, as a beautiful woman in dazzling gold on a white horse. Pwyll sent his fastest horsmen after her, but could not catch her. On the third day, he spoke and she told him she wanted to marry instead of her espoused husband Gwawl. Pywll was to meet her in a year and a day.
He won her at the court of her father, Hefeydd the Old, by her aid. She bore Pwyll a son, who vanished. Her women killed a puppy and smeared its blood on her, to avoid blame at the child's loss. As punishment, Rhiannon spent seven years telling her story to all comers and bearing them, like a horse, to the court. The child, meanwhile, turned up at the court of Teyrnon, whose mares foaled on May eve and lost the foals mysteriously.
When Teirnon kept watch, he saved a foal from a mysterious beast and also discovered, outside the stable, a child, whom he and his wife adopted. Then child grew to young manhood in seven years, and was given the foal rescued on the night he was found.
Teirnon recognised the child as the son of Pwyll and returned him to his family, where he was named Pryderi ("worry") by his mother. Later, after Pwyll's death, Rhiannon married Manawydan, brother of Bran and Branwen and son of Llyr, a great magician.
One day, all of Dyfed turned into a wasteland, and only Rhiannon, Manawydan, Pryderi, and his wife Cigfa, were spared. Manawydan and Pryderi out hunting followed an enormous white boar into a caer, where Pryderi saw a golden bowl; when he touched it, he was enspelled. Rhiannon went after him and fell under the same spell the caer then vanished, taking them with it. She was rescued when Manawydan captured the wife of their enemy, Llwyd, who was taking revenge for the illtreatment of Gwawl.
