Isis

The greatest goddess of ancient Egypt, Isis was the embodiment of the faithful wife and loving mother. As the divine ruler of Egypt, she introduced marriage, and taught the people to make bread, spin, weave, and cure disease. **
 * __ Isis: __**
 * [[image:http://www.the2012countdown.com/images/isis.gif]]
 * Isis became goddess of immense magical power by tricking the son god Re, who had become old and senile. Mixing some of his saliva with mud, she created with poisonous snake whose bite sent Re into agonies of pain. Isis offered to cure him on condition that he reveals his secret name, which contained the power of life and death when said out loud. He accepted her offer and recovered, and the power of Isis then surpassed that of all the other gods – including the great son god. **
 * The daughter of the twin deities Nut and Geb, Isis married her own brother Osiris, the first king on Earth. He was a good ruler who was loved by all, but he was murdered by his own jealous brother Seth who, after having hidden the corpse, seized power and usurped the throne. **
 * Isis was inconsolable. She searched the world until she found her dead husband. Hovering over him in the form of a sparrowhawk, she fanned back to life with her wings long enough to have sexual intercourse and conceive her son, Horus. She then embalmed the body; thereby establishing rites of embalming for the future, and restored her beloved Osiris to eternal life. **
 * Thereafter, Isis was the protector of the dead. But she devoted her life to her son, shielding him from dangers with her magic and, by her trickery, helping him to overcome the usurper Seth and avenge Osiris. **
 * She was usually portrayed in human form, suckling the infant Horus, or with a crown of cow horns and a solar disk because of her association with the cow goddess Hathor as ideal mother. She wears a girdle bound by a tyet, a magical knot with life – giving power, carries a rattle or sistrum, and is sometimes shown protecting the dead with her winged arms. In her magnificent temple at Philae, an island in the upper reaches of the Nile, north of Aswan, stood a statue of her that bore the inscription, “I am that which is, has been, and shall be. My evil no one has lifted. The fruit I bore was the sun. **