Isis
Oct 22, 2019 21:27:35 GMT
Post by Evola As He Is on Oct 22, 2019 21:27:35 GMT
What about race and climate, especially with regard to the current forced demographic and, we might add, climate change in Europe ? A first observation is that none of them have arisen spontaneously. A second observation is that white Negroes in Narvik, Tronheim, or Vichy, will soon no longer need to travel to the tropics to feel at home, not just in terms of climate, naturally. A third observation is that Great Mother open air festivals have been held again throughout Europe for the past 25/30 years under the cover of so-called ecology ; they have just been repackaged as « conferences », « summits », etc.
It is hardly by chance, nor even because the best restaurants and the most sophisticated gigolos are supposed to be found there, that thousands of bellies on legs and walking wombs have gathered at the festival that has been recently held in Paris in her honour.
The cult of Isis spread from Egypt into Greece during the Hellenistic period and into Italy, where “it retained (its) most important Egyptian... funtions”, (1) towards the middle of the IIId century BC.
Depicted as she often is with the horns of a cow, Isis seems to fit into the pantheon of the “new religion of the Bull and the Goddess” which “seems to have originated in the (black) Levant, and to which W. Muhammad (2) pays so much attention, and rightfully so, albeit without the qualifications required to examine it accurately.
“The conquest of Egypt by Alexander opened a new era for the cult. In trying to find a religious cult that would unite both Egyptian and Hellenic subjects, Ptolemy Soter (one of Alexander's generals. [Editor's Note]) crafted the Isis cult as it would be introduced into Greco-Roman society. Osiris was renamed Serapis and identified with a variety of Egyptian and Hellenic gods (Osiris, Apis, Dionysus, Hades). He became a god of healing and the underworld. Isis was identified with Hellenic deities such as Demeter or Aphrodite. Greek iconography was introduced to the cult which made it visually appealing to the Hellenes. In those days when the provincial city-states of the Hellenic world fell to Alexander's universal empire, the traditional gods of the city-state no longer sufficed. Gods like Isis and Serapis were not connected with any specific town and were truly universal in scope.” (3) It seems that it had always been more or less so. Indeed, “Isis was such an all-encompassing Goddess, that”, to be be more precise than the previously quoted study, “the Greeks were uncertain how to relate her to their own pantheon. The historian Herodotus identified her with Demeter, the Corn Goddess, but others thought that she was Aphrodite, Goddess of Love. In the Latin novel Metamorphoses (also known as The Golden Ass) by Apuleius, the unhappy hero, Lucius who had dabbled in magic as a young man and got into trouble, finally prayed to the Goddess Isis, whom he regarded as a universal deity: 'Queen of Heaven, whether thou art the kindly Ceres, the mother from whom sprang the fruits of the earth, who, joyous at the discovery of thy daughter, didst banish the savage nutriment of the ancient acorn, and pointing out sweeter food, who dost now till the soil of Eleusis; or whether thou art celestial Venus, who, in the first origin of things, didst associate the different sexes, through the creation of mutual love, and having propagated an eternal offspring in the human race, art now worshipped in the sea-girt shrine of Paphos; or whether thou art [Diana] the sister of Phoebus, who, by relieving the pangs of women in travail, by soothing remedies, hast brought into the world multitudes so innumerable, and art now venerated in the far-famed shrines of Ephesus; or whether thou art Proserpine, terrific with midnight howlings, whose three-fold visage checks the attack of the ghosts, closing the recesses of the earth, and who wandering over many a grove, art propitiated by various modes of worship with that feminine brightness of thine, illuminating the walls of every city,, and with thy vaporous beams nurturing the joyous seeds of plants, and for the revolutions of the sun ministering thy fitful gleams; by whatever name, by whatever ceremonies, and under whatever form it is lawful to invoke thee; do thou graciously succour me in this my extreme I am all that was, and all that is, and all that ever shall be, and no mortal man has ever raised my veil.'” (4) – while writing in the IId century AD, the Numidian Berber author would only recapture in this hymn the original universalist and undifferentiated substance of the Isiac cult.
In Greece, Isis was honoured especially by Egyptian emigrants, and became the protector of Alexandrian sailors. The opening of navigation in early March was placed under her patronage. (5) The festival was called 'ploiaphesia'. (6) It was presided over by navarchs, a college in which, unsurprinsingy in this context, women participated.
Alexandrian sailors took her cult all over the Mediterranean and therefore to Rome, where it spread rapidly among women, lower classes, and slaves, and where the 'ploiaphesia' became the 'navigium isidis', which, similarly, opened the shipping season, on the 5th of March, at the full moon. It is thought that the pre-Lent festival in medieval western Europe, in which, by the XIIth century, a model of a ship was carried on a carriage, derived directly from the 'navigium isidis'. (7) What is often not mentioned in modern studies on the Isis festival in the Graeco-Roman world is that it was not an ex nihilo creation: it was already celebrated in ancient Egypt, in Pharmurti (March). (8)
Ennius, the first Roman writer to mention the presence of priests of Isis in Rome, compares them more or less to crooks. To Virgil, two centuries later, they are no better. “Rev. C.VW King.... justly remarks (that) the worshipers of Mary preserved in the tonsure, in celibacy of the clergy, in the alb, and in their rites, the customs of the Egyptian priests of Isis...” (9) What he failed to notice, unlike Valerius Maximus in the Ist century AD, is their proneness to begging alms. The priests of Isis counted on the strangeness of their ceremonies and their practices to attract generous onlookers. Their hieratic performances were not part of the national worship.
In Rome, her temples were located near brothels and markeplaces, and they were known for being meeting places for prostitutes. (10) Isis was said to have been a prostitute in Tyre for ten years. It has been claimed that “eroticism and asceticism mingled” in her cult ; first, perhaps 'mixed' would be a more accurate term ; then, what mixed in it, given the nature of its followers, was rather orgiaticism and continence/mortification (for the true meaning of 'askesis', see the first chapter of 'The Doctrine of Awakening'). Her temples were private. If they were not destroyed, on the orders of the Senate, shortly after they were built, they were tolerated only on the outskirts of the urbs. “When a Roman Consul found that the demolition team assigned to him were all members or sympathizers of the cult and refused to destroy their chapel, he had to remove his toga of state and do the deed himself.” (11) Vigilant, alert magistrates had understood that mystery societies, under the cover of religion, aimed at altering the civil institution, offering the most seditious and the most corrupt individuals of the “Republic” the opportunity to get together to plot. They were severely repressed for another reason, which was well identified by the author of this article: a possible religious unification of the lower racial strata of Roman society. However, the cult of Isis proved to be resilient, and, since a race change was under way in Rome, it finally managed to draw, not only from the lower classes, but also from the “noblest and most distinguished” families, by then no longer of Roman blood for most of them. Some emperors even revived it. “We notice in recalling the list of emperors that favor Isis that those generally ranked as 'bad' by historians were those who were the most devoted to the new cult. Caligula, Domitian, Commodus, Caracal1a, each has left a dark record on the the pages of history. Can there be a connection between the two facts? The bad emperors seem to have been innovators as well as tyrants-men for whom the magic words, 'mos maiorum' had little or no meaning. They gained popularity by this disregard for tradition, for the Roman plebs, gathered from many lands, knew little and cared less for the tastes and ideals of the Samnite wars.” (12) Some of them, among whom Lucius Septimius Bassianus, commonly known as Caracalla, of the Numidian Severan dynasty, were foreigners. (13)
The worship of Isis was established in Gaul, in Germania, in Britain, in Asturias and in the Danubian regions in the early Empire period. It was not devoid of proselytism. (14) Yet, while it is impossible to ascertain how many converts it may have made in these areas, it should be borne in mind that, historically, a cult does not enter and spread through a given area without being supported by a related human substratum. In other words, in the case at hand, the worship of Isis could not have propagated throughout these lands without the presence of bands of Isiacs over there, whether converts from the lowest ranks of the Roman world or eastern slaves or merchants, by then made Roman citizens thanks to Caracalla, who had brought their own cults with them, first into Italy, then into other areas of Europe. There were blacks among them.
Three inscriptions have been found in Gaul that prove without a doubt that Isis was worshipped there; the first (ISIDI SACRUM SEX. POMPEIUS. SEX. L. SYRUS MILES. LEG. V. AUG. V. S. L. M. ), in Flandre, the second (LUNtE. ET. ISIDI AUG. SACR. C. OCTAVII. PEDONIS. LIB. TROPHIMIO. SEVERl AUG.V.S. ), in Nîmes, the third ISI MYRIONYM.E ET SERAPI EXSPECTA.... METIS AUG. D.... V. S. L. ), in Soissons. Although none has been found in Melun, a detour via this city, in the company of 'Dissertation sur les Parisii ou Parisiens, et sur le culte d'Isis chez les Gaulois', a meticulous review by Jean Nicolas Déal of all primary and secondary sources directly or indirectly related to the question, needs to be made. “The city of Melun, to which it does not take more than a day to travel from Paris, was known as Melodunum, as can be seen in Caesar. Since the time of Caesar, this city was entirely devoted to the cult of Isis, changing its name to that of Iseos or lsia (the two first verses of the poem composed for the coat of arms of Melun say: “Je suis Melun / qui eus à ma naissance le nom d'Isis / comme des vieux on sait.” In Sébastien Rouillard, 'Histoire de Melun', p. 27. [Editor's Note]), after that of the deity which was the object of its particular cult. That was still the case at the end of the IXth century, when Abbon, friar at St.-Germain-des-Prés, composed his poem on the sieges Paris withstood against the Normans. The name lsia was then so famous that not only that of Melodunum was completely forgotten, but everyone believed that the city of Paris was called Parisius instead of Lutetia, as it was once called, only because Paris was linked to Melun, or Isia, that is to say that the city of Paris was the rival (collega) of Melun, either because of the island where it was built, or because it was a major trading centre, or rather because of the reputation and the sanctity of its port, which was dedicated to Isis, as was Melun's.” (15) Déal adds that Rouillard, historian of the city of Melun, neither confirms nor denies the tradition whereby a temple dedicated to Isis once existed in Melun, more precisely in an island close to the city.
Was she worshipped in Paris ?
The bookseller and writer Gilles Corrozet (1510-1568) put forward three hypotheses on the origin of the names 'Paris' and 'Parisii'. The first was that the capital was named after the god Pâris, son of Romus XVII, King of Gauls. The second related the (supposedly) Gallic tribe of the Parisii to Parrasians, a people who had supposedly journeyed with Hercules from Asia Minor. The third, which related the Parisii to the Egyptian goddess Isis, was, according to him, by far the most convincing, since it was based on an objective evidence, namely a statue of the goddess found in the abbaye of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, formerly known as the church of Sainte-Croix et Saint-Vincent, which was built on the orders of Childebert (497 – 558) and where he asked to be buried.
One century or so later, Bouillard reported: “ St. Germanus, full of ardor and zeal for the development of the worship of the true God, requested Childebert to complete the project he had devised to build a church in honour of Sainte Croix and Saint Vincent, which later took the name of Saint-Germain-des-Près. The place that seemed the most suitable was that which was then called Locotitia, where common wisdom has it that there still were remains of an ancient temple of Isis, located amidst the meadows, near the river Seine, in order to substitute the worship of the God of heaven for that of the false gods of the earth.” (16) A century later, François-René de Chateaubriand echoed this account, without questionning it, quite clinically: “This temple of Isis is today the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés. The college of priests of Isis was at Issy.” (17) (his sources were the judge Nicolas de la Mare, 'Traité de la police', vol. 1, 1738 and Germain-François Poullain de Saint-Foix, 'Essais historiques sur Paris', 1762).
At this point, one may object that, if there is evidence that the worhip of Isis existed, not only in Gaul, but also in Paris, in ancient times, the evidence is scarce, especially when it comes to Paris. One would however be wise to recall that, if the cult of Isis, as reorganised by Ptolemy Soter, was meant to be universal in scope, it was introduced into Europe as a mystery cult, and was therefore, by definition, secretive.
Who – assuming that it was a foreign cult and, therefore, that it was brought there (to the Parisii) – brought it ?
Authors have been quoted in the previous paragraphs who recognised the existence of an Isiac worship in Paris as a hard fact, and who referred to it as naturally as they would have described Notre-Dame as being what it was then, that is, the main place of Christian worship in the French capital. To the author of the following lines, the early history of Paris is just as self-evident. “ It was, from the outset, one of those cities which, because of the geographical situation of the country, would naturally attract peoples engaged in trade and navigation. These... trading sailors (' commerçants navigateurs'), from Phoenicia, after having sailed back up first the Rhone, then the river Seine, settled in the 'Île de la Cité' (The territory of Paris was first limited by the borders of this island. [Editor's Note]), which seemed to them suitable for the development of their trade. They took on the name of 'Nautae Parisii', and obtained many privileges under Tiberius (14-37 AD)... Camulogenus was its first magistrate, when the Romans conquered it in 56 BC... Long before these river sailors setttled down in the Île de la Cité, Lutetia was inhabited by natives who dwelled on the slopes of the hill later called St. Geneviève, who lived on farming, hunting and fishing. Two corporations were thus formed, one called 'Water Goods' ('Marchandise d'Eau '), engaged in foreign trade, the other 'Land Goods' ('Marchandise de Terre'), in reference to the sale of local products. Both soon exchanged their products, their most influential members became known as Bourgeois and met separately at first to defend their mutual interests.” (18)
The symbol of the “Water Traders” was a vessel (19); it was also their seal; (20) it was recognised as the official seal of Paris by Louis IX at the beginning of the XIIIth century, (21) two decades after Philippe Auguste had made it the coat of arms of Paris, just before leaving for the Crusade. (22) It was abolished, as all other emblems of the Ancien Régime, by the Revolution, under which, in late August 1793, a statue of Isis by the artist, Free-mason and active Terrorist Jean-Louis David was erected at the site of the fallen Bastille during a festival, orchestrated by himself, in honour of Fraternity. From her breasts “ pure water was pumped into a container held out in turn by each of the eighty-six representatives of the primary assemblies around France — that is, one for each department. They were to drink from the same cup and be seen as equals and brothers before Eternity.” (23) Isis, who had been a source of inspiration for various pre-revolutionary artists, became their muse under Nabulione Buonaparte, as egyptomania spread. After his return from Egypt in 1799, “Napoleon was to develop a curious interest for the Egyptian goddess Isis,” (rather, couldn't this interest have developed prior to his Egyptian campaign ? Were some of his 300 Freemason generals completely foreign to the develoment of such interest?) (24) “and eventually set up a special commission headed by the scholar Louis Petit-Radel in order to verify whether or not the claims made by Gilles Corrozet and others that Isis was the true tutelary goddess of Paris was tenable. After sometime, Radel reported to Napoleon that the evidence he had examined supported the claim that the 'Boat of Isis' was the very same as the ‘Boat of Paris’. Impressed by Radel’s report, Napoleon issued written instructions on the 20 January 1811 to the effect that the Egyptian goddess and her star be included on the coat-of-arms of the French capital city.” (25) This is an excerpt of the Letters Patent : “ We have previously authorized and do also authorize now by these present signed document by our hand, that our good city of Paris will bear the coat-of-arms as shown and coloured on the attached drawing, at the front of the ancient ship, the prow loaded with a statue of Isis, seated, in silver on a sea of the same, and lead by a star also of silver.” (26) Moreover, “Isis is a witness to the inscription of the name of Napoleon on the tablet of history, as represented on the façade of the Cour Carrée. Isis in Egyptian regalia, with sistrum and cat, has pride of place next to Moses the lawgiver, thus relating Egypt to biblical history as well as to classical civilizations. » (27)
The tradition continued just as ostentatiously under the First Restauration. Louis XVIII, like his brother and successor, Charles X, was deeply interested in ancient Egyptian symbolism. It shows in their public works. As is known, Louis XVIII was the one who, in 1814, came up with the terrific idea of having an obelisk erected in Paris, in the context of a planned Masonification of the capital architecture and surface. (28) It was finally erected in the Place de la Concorde in 1836, under Charles X, who, in the mid-1820, had commissioned François-Edouard Picot, Jean-Louis David's most promising pupil, to decorate “à l'égyptienne” the ceiling of his personal museum at Le Louvre. Promises were kept; completed in 1827, it featured Isis seated on a throne flanked by two lions, as was the case with Jean-Louis David's statue of Isis. (29) Egyptology, born officially in 1822, was made a “national science", (30) large subsidies were provided to egyptologists. It had always been a lucrative business. (31)
Napoleon III's interest in ancient Oriental cults, albeit less conspicuous than his predecessors', was far from being marginal. In 1860, he sent Ernest Renan to Lebanon, “to make an archeological survey of Phoenicia. He arrived in Tyre, then he sailed to Byblos. Houses and gardens covered the entire site. He set about digging between the houses and unearthed a sculptured fragment of the goddess Hathor-Isis facing a pharaoh. She wears the sun disc between cow's horns.” (32) He apparently brought it back to Paris. Nowadays, (real or fake) statues of Isis are on display in various museums all around Paris, not to mention that Isis is encysted in the painting that millions of tourists from all corners of the world can watch in the French capital : La Joconde. (33)
Getting back to the account of Louis d'Haucour, it is time to wonder whether it is based on historical grounds, that is to say, whether Phoenicians are the founders of the city which would later be known as Paris, or, at least, whether some Phoenicians made their way up to this area, or even settled down there.
As explained by F. Cumont, (34) as early as the IIIrd century, “The Syrians ('Phoenician' was for a long time a generic designation, which included Syrians among other peoples. [Editor's note])... using the special talents of their race to advantage... succeeded in establishing themselves on all coasts of the Mediterranean, even in Spain. At Malaga, (35) an inscription mentions a corporation formed by them. The Italian ports where business was especially active, Pozzuoli, Ostia, later Naples, attracted them in great numbers. But they did not confine themselves to the seashore ; they penetrated far into the interior of the countries, wherever they hoped to find profitable trade. They followed the commercial highways and traveled up the big rivers. By way of the Danube they went as far as Pannonia, by way of the Rhone they reached Lyons. In Gaul they were especially numerous. In this new country that had just been opened to commerce fortunes could be made rapidly. A rescript discovered on the range of the Lebanon is addressed to sailors from Aries, who had charge of the transportation of grain, and in the department of Ain a bilingual epitaph has been found mentioning a merchant of the third century, Thaim or Julian, son of Saad, decurion of the city of Canatha in Syria, who owned two factories in the Rhone basin, where he handled goods from Aquitania. Thus the Syrians spread over the entire province as far as Treves, where they had a strong colony. Not even the barbarian invasions of the fifth centurv stopped their immigration. Saint Jerome describes them traversing the entire Roman world amidst the troubles of the invasion, prompted by the lust of gain to defy all dangers. In the barbarian society the part played by this civilized and city-bred element was even more considerable.” Since, while there is no consensus as to when exactly the Parisii settled down in the Île de la Cité, most historians agree that this settlement cannot have taken place later than in the Ist century BCE, traces of a phoenician presence in Northern Gaul prior to that period must be sought, and, in this respect, Diodorus Siculus (V, 22), is the only ancient source on this matter. « On the island of Ictis (along the coast of southern England. {Editor' Note]),he writes in this well-known passage, the (foreign) merchants purchase the tin of the natives and carry it from there across the Strait to Galatia or Gaul; and finally, making their way on foot through Gaul for some thirty days, they bring their wares on horseback to the mouth of the river Rhone." Some emphasise that Diodorus says "foreign merchants", and not "Phoenicians merchants", and, of course, they are right. D'Haucour's claim would be supported by indirect evidence, if it was the case, as claimed by 'Phénicomanes', that, as early as the end of the second millenium BC, Phoenicians travelled as far as the Loire Bassin, the Gulf of Morbihan in search of the tin-ore required for the production of bronze. (36)
Archeological data are scarce, but they exist. Laureau, in his 'Histoire de France avant Clovis', p. 108, lists a few artifacts, of which a carved face of Isis in a temple at Mavilly (Bourgogne) and two Phoenician looking sculptures, which suggest that 'Syrians' were active in Northern Gaul at that time, and which do not seem to have bothered too much historians or archeologists. How about the "Arab, Jewish, Punic (= Phoenician. [Editor's Note]) and Oriental coins found (in this area) that have enriched antique stores every single day" ? (37) It looks like they have not been used to enrich our knowledge of the early presence of Easterners in Gaul.
Who then were these "foreign merchants", if they were not Phoenicians ? Could they possibly have been Negroes ? Stephen Benko, in 'The Virgin Goddess', p. 214, writes: “In Paris, a center of the worship of Isis, a black statue of Isis was actually venerated as the Virgin until the sixteenth century”, (38) and acknowledges that the peoples in whom this cult arose could very well have been Negroes. The birthplace of the worship of Isis was Philae, and this island was part of the beginning of Lower Nubia, the name of the island being most probably “purely Nubian” (39). “Lower Nubia was inhabited by a mainly non-Egyptian population and the cults established in the region by its overlords — the kings of Kush before its Ptolemaic occupation and then during the Upper Egyptian revolt between he Ptolemaic dynasty and the Roman emperors before AD 298 — had strong Nubian accents or were partly of Nubian origins.” (40) Two of the main peoples in this region, the Noubades and the Blemmyes were dark-skinned; the later still worshipped Isis at Philae ca 500 CE. (41) Since it is practically certain that there was a Negroid presence in Upper Paleolithic Europe in the form of the Grimaldi man, (42) the question inevitaby arises as to the extent to which the worship of Isis in Gaul, and even in Paris, could be attributed to such substratum.
However this may be, it is most revealing that a certain French nobility has felt, and still feels, like tracing the origins of the Parisii (43) to Phoenician merchants. From The Napoleon DNA Project it is clear that this nobility was/is anything but white: “Scientists had done the DNA tests with hair samples from Napoleon that were compared with a sample from Charles Napoléon Bonaparte, a descendant of Napoleons brother Jérôme Bonaparte. Both of Bonaparte descendant's results matched and have been published in the Journal of Molecular Biology Research on 31.12.2011; 'DNA was extracted from two islands of follicular sheaths located at the basis of two of his beard hairs, conserved in the Vivant Denon reliquary. The Y-haplogroup of Napoléon I, determined by the study of 10 NRY-SNPs (non-recombinant Y-single nucleotide polymorphisms), is E1b1b1c1*. Charles Napoléon, the current collateral male descendant of Napoléon I, belongs to this same Y-haplogroup; his Y-STR profile was determined by using a set of 37 NRY-STRs (non-recombinant Y-microsatellites).” (44)
“E1b1 is likely to have originated in the highlands of East Africa's Ethiopia, as this is the place with the high frequency of ancestral subclades of this haplogroup. E1b1 is the ancestor of the majority of E subclade lineages existing today. It has diverged into two subclades: E1b1a and E1b1b approximately 24-27,000 years ago (Cruciani et al. 2004).” (45)
Isis has not struck into the heart of Paris : Isis is, whether historically or psychically, if not both, at the heart of Paris. Isis has been able to strike into the heart of Paris only because she is at the heart of Paris
P.-s. : Incidentally, Isis is mentionned at least twice in the The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert, at the entry for “Paris” and at that for “Isis”. This is an excerpt from the former : “What the authors who derive the word Parisii from Para (sic) Isis, people under the protection of Isis, spout are sheer fictions ; the goddess Isis was never worshipped in the province of the Parisians, and no ancient author mentions it.” ('Paris'. In Encyclopedie methodique, 1765, p. 560). This is an excerpt from the later : “It cannot reasonably be doubted that there was indeed a famous temple consecrated to the great goddess of the Egyptians either in Paris, or in its immediate vicinity, at Issy. The old charters of St. Genevieve & St. Germain abbeys mention it, and sate that Clovis & Childebert, their founders, have entrusted them with the remains (“dépouilles”) of Isis & of her temple ; & We would have a conclusive evidence of this, hadn't it been for thequite vehement zeal of the good Cardinal Brissonet, abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, who, in 1514, smashed to pieces the great idol of Isis that had been kept as a matter of interest in a corner of the said St. Germain church." ('Isis'. In ibid., 1765, p. 22 - Jean le Meur, who lived under Louis XI, could see this statue each time he went to that thurch, and wrote about it (see Déal, op. cit., p. 70-1), noting that other statues of Isis could be found in other churches at his time). Now, both entries are attributed to the same author, the Chevalier, philosopher, and Encyclopedist, Louis de Jaucourt (1704 - 1791).
(1) Lisbeth Bredholt Christensen, Olav Hammer, and David Warburton, The Handbook of Religions in Ancient Europe, 2014, p. 220ff.
(2) See evolaasheis.proboards.com/thread/40/black-arabia; the translation of the last parts of his 'Black Arabia' is available at elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/larabie-noire-et-lorigine-africaine-de-lislam-iii/.
(3) www.unrv.com/culture/isis.php.
(4) Carrie Kirkpatrick, Goddess Enchantment, Magic and Spells, Vol 2, 2011, p. 34ff.
(5) See Anonym, Phantoms of the deep, or: legends and superstitions of the sea and of sailors, 1903, p. 430; Françoise Dunand, Le culte d'Isis dans le bassin oriental de la Méditerranée, vol. 26, part 3, p. 223ff.
(6) The Cult of Isis Among Women in the Graeco-Roman World, 1975, p. 105.
(7) As is known, according to Tacitus, a rite of the Suevi consisted in carrying a ship in the honour of Isis (“Isidi sacrificat”). Interpetation romana? What is certain is that the custom of carrying about a ship existed in some parts of Germany throughout the Middle Ages. Sabine Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, Vol. 2, 200, p. 68.
(8) See Apuleius, The Isis-book, Metamorphoses, Book XI.
(9) John G. R. Forlong (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religions, Vol. 3, 2013, p. 439.
(10) See Juvenal, The Satires, VI.
(11) ttp://www.unrv.com/culture/isis.php.
(12) Clifton Edwin Van Sickle, Isis-worship in the Latin World (up to 235 A.D.), 1922, p. 48.
(13) It is interesting that Petrarch ended the record of Roman Empire with Titus, that is, with emperors who were blood descendants of the patriciate, in his early work 'Africa', only to extend the circle of Roman rulers, not only to the later emperors from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius, but even Theodosius, in his later works.
(14) Richard Valantasis, Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice, 2000, p. 370.
(15) Jean Nicolas Déal, Dissertation sur les Parisii ou Parisiens, et sur le culte d'Isis chez les Gaulois, 1826, p. 75-77.
(16) Ibid., p. 77.
(17) Françis-René de Châteaubriand, Les martyrs, suivis des remarques, vol. 1, 1851, p. 194.
(18) Louis d'Haucour, L'hôtel de ville de Paris à travers les siècles, 1900, p. 4
(19) Antoine Court de Gébelin, Monde primitif, 1775, p. 61, identifies this vessel with Isis' and derives the name 'Paris' from it, explaining, to make his case, that the change from 'b' to 'p' was and still was a common phonetical mutation in Northern France, and recalling that the ship of Isis, as well as all navicular shrines, was called 'Baris' ("which is very remarkable, for it was the very name of the mountain, according to Nicolas Damascenus, on which the ark of Noah rested." Herodotus, transl. by Rev. William Beloe, Vol. 1, 1836, p. 242.
(20) Most of, if not all, seals of Paris in their various iterations from 1210 to 1942 are displayed at www.armoiriesdeparis.fr/Pages/PHistoire.htm.
(21) Michel Félibien, Histoire de la ville de Paris, 1725, p. xxxiv.
(22) Jean Rey, Histoire du drapeau, des couleurs et des insignes de la monarchie francaise, 1837, p. 68.
(23) H. Weston, Witnessing the Revolution, in D. Johnson, Jacques-Louis David: New Perspectives. 2006, p. 126.
(24) José A. Ferrer Benimelli, Le Binôme franc-maçonnerie - Révolution à l'époque des lumières : entre histoire et mythification, in Franc-maçonnerie et politique au siècle des lumières: Europe-Amériques, 2006, p. 54.
(25) homepage.ntlworld.com/fusniak/talisman/articles/isisofparis.html.
(26) Ibid.
(27) Jean Michel Humbert and Clifford Price (éds.), Imhotep Today, 2012, p. 186.
(28) See Pierre Lamarque, Essai de topographie du Paris maçonnique, 1974; Dominique Setzepfandt, Paris maçonnique: à la découverte des axes symboliques de Paris, 1996.
(29) Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval, The Master Game: Unmasking the Secret Rulers of the World, 2011, p. 16.
(30) Eric Gady, Les égyptologues français au xixe siècle : quelques savants très influents, Revue d'histoire du XIXe siècle [Online], 32, 2006, published on the 30th of October 2008, accessed on the 18th of December 2015. URL : rh19.revues.org/1091.
(31) In France, mummy trafficking started in the XVIth century. "By the 16th century, Europeans were increasingly obsessed with mummies, not for their history, but to use as medicines. Since at least AD 1000, people had been 'eating mummy' burning mummies, grinding them up and turning them into a powder. (This was due to the belief that mummies were covered in bitumen, as breathingin its fumes was once thought to be good for your health. One popular belief of the 16th century was that the mummified flesh of witches and redheads provided the best medicine!) In the 12th century, returning Crusaders brought news of the healing powers of these groundup mummy parts. In their desperation to find a cure for their illness, people forgot that they were being cannibals! Mummy trafficking became widespread. One merchant, John Sanderson, bought 270 kg of mummified flesh to sell to the English market in the 1580s. Egyptian mummies were so in demand that a priest to Queen Catherine de Medici of France made a special expedition to Egypt in 1549. Joining forces with a group of doctors from Italy, he broke into several tombs around Saqqara to hunt for mummies. Catherine's father-in-law, King Francis I of France, carried ground-up mummy (mixed with crushed rhubarb) in a pouch, in case he was wounded while hunting... The word 'mummy' appears in many medical texts of the time, including those of Francis Bacon, and it is one of the ingredients in the witches' brew in Shakespeare's Macbeth. King Charles II collected the dust that fell off mummies . He used it on his skin, believing the power of the ancient pharaohs would rub off. In 1694, the French pharmacist Pierre Pomet gave advice on buying good-quality mummy powder: 'look for one that is black without bones or dust, with a nice smell of something burnt rather than ar or resin.'" (see Jim Pipe, Egyptian Mummies, A Very Peculiar History, 2014) Medicine was not the only thing that ground mummies were used for: "Until relatively recently, Egyptian mummies, believe it or not, were used to produce a type of paint, which was called Mummy Brown, Mommia, or Momie. The main ingredient of this paint was, as you may have already guessed, ground up Egyptian mummies. This powder was mixed with white pitch and myrrh to produce a rich brown pigment. It was first made in the 16th century, and became a popular colour amongst the Pre-Raphaelite painters of the mid-19th century. For instance, it has been recorded that the British portraitist, Sir William Beechey, kept stocks of Mummy Brown. The French artist Martin Drölling also reputedly used Mummy Brown made with the remains of French kings disinterred from the royal abbey of St-Denis in Paris. It has been suggested that his L’interieur d’une cuisine is an example of extensive use of the pigment." (Philip McCouat, The life and death of mummy brown, www.artinsociety.com/the-life-and-death-of-mummy-brown.html.
(32) Nina Jidejian, Lebanon, a Journey Through Time, 2011, p. 32.
(33) See Thierry Gallier, Isis, la Joconde révélée, 2004.
(34) Franz Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, 1911, p. 108.
(35) See Georges Bernard, Depping, Histoire générale de l'Espagne, vol. 1: L'Espagne sous les Phéniciens, les Carthaginois et les Romains, jusqu'à la fin de la république romaine, 1814.
(36) According to Roger David Penhallurick, Tin in Antiquity: Its Mining and Trade Throughout the Ancient World With Particular Reference to Cornwall, 1986, the Phoenician tin trade with Cornwall is a myth. On the other hand, "their successors, the Carthaginians, in the fourth century b.c, appear to have transferred the tin market from Gades to the mouth of the Loire, and to have carried the ore overland and by river to Marseilles." T. Taylor, Saint Michael's Mount, 2010, p. 17
(37) Pierre Laureau, Histoire de France avant Clovis, Vol. 2, 1789, p. 108.
(38) Stephen Benko, The Virgin Goddess, 1993. Oddly, references are not found in the online edition of this indepth study, available at docslide.us/documents/the-virgin-goddess-studies-in-the-pagan-and-christian-roots-of-mariology.html) Now, Benko, whom we have had the opportunity to quote on more than one occasion, is not precisely a dilettante.
(39) Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall, A Report on the Antiquities of Lower Nubia, 2015, p. 39.
(40) László Török, The Image of the Ordered World in Ancient Nubian Art, 2002, p. 279.
(41) Richard A. Lobban Jr, Historical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Nubia., 2003, p. xiv.
(42) See, for a discussion of the pedigree of the Grimaldi man, Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth Or Reality, 1974, Chap. XI.
(43) In Egyptian, the temples of Isis were called 'Pr', meaning 'the floor-plan of a walled building with an open doorway'; combined with the name of a god, 'the house of...' Under this assumption, Parisii resulted, according to the egyptologist Maspero, from the juxtaposition of 'Pr' and 'Isis'. "The very name of Parisii could very well mean 'Temple of Isis', because there was a city with this name on the Nile and and the hieroglyph 'per' is found on the enclosure of a temple in the department of Oise". Pierre Hubac, Carthage, 1952, p. 170. In fact, Hubac refers to ruins which are thought to be those of a temple that was consacrated to Isis in this hamlet, which was named after it (Mons Isis). Charles Oudiette, Dictionnaire topographique des environs de Paris, 1817, p. 508; Notice archéologique sur le département de l'Oise, 1839, p. 60. 'Parisis', the name of the area that lies between the River Oise and River Seine and the Pays de France, still attracts the attention of etymologists.
(44) www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jmbr/article/view/10609/9658.
(45) everything.explained.today/Haplogroup_E1b1_%28Y-DNA%29.
It is hardly by chance, nor even because the best restaurants and the most sophisticated gigolos are supposed to be found there, that thousands of bellies on legs and walking wombs have gathered at the festival that has been recently held in Paris in her honour.
The cult of Isis spread from Egypt into Greece during the Hellenistic period and into Italy, where “it retained (its) most important Egyptian... funtions”, (1) towards the middle of the IIId century BC.
Depicted as she often is with the horns of a cow, Isis seems to fit into the pantheon of the “new religion of the Bull and the Goddess” which “seems to have originated in the (black) Levant, and to which W. Muhammad (2) pays so much attention, and rightfully so, albeit without the qualifications required to examine it accurately.
“The conquest of Egypt by Alexander opened a new era for the cult. In trying to find a religious cult that would unite both Egyptian and Hellenic subjects, Ptolemy Soter (one of Alexander's generals. [Editor's Note]) crafted the Isis cult as it would be introduced into Greco-Roman society. Osiris was renamed Serapis and identified with a variety of Egyptian and Hellenic gods (Osiris, Apis, Dionysus, Hades). He became a god of healing and the underworld. Isis was identified with Hellenic deities such as Demeter or Aphrodite. Greek iconography was introduced to the cult which made it visually appealing to the Hellenes. In those days when the provincial city-states of the Hellenic world fell to Alexander's universal empire, the traditional gods of the city-state no longer sufficed. Gods like Isis and Serapis were not connected with any specific town and were truly universal in scope.” (3) It seems that it had always been more or less so. Indeed, “Isis was such an all-encompassing Goddess, that”, to be be more precise than the previously quoted study, “the Greeks were uncertain how to relate her to their own pantheon. The historian Herodotus identified her with Demeter, the Corn Goddess, but others thought that she was Aphrodite, Goddess of Love. In the Latin novel Metamorphoses (also known as The Golden Ass) by Apuleius, the unhappy hero, Lucius who had dabbled in magic as a young man and got into trouble, finally prayed to the Goddess Isis, whom he regarded as a universal deity: 'Queen of Heaven, whether thou art the kindly Ceres, the mother from whom sprang the fruits of the earth, who, joyous at the discovery of thy daughter, didst banish the savage nutriment of the ancient acorn, and pointing out sweeter food, who dost now till the soil of Eleusis; or whether thou art celestial Venus, who, in the first origin of things, didst associate the different sexes, through the creation of mutual love, and having propagated an eternal offspring in the human race, art now worshipped in the sea-girt shrine of Paphos; or whether thou art [Diana] the sister of Phoebus, who, by relieving the pangs of women in travail, by soothing remedies, hast brought into the world multitudes so innumerable, and art now venerated in the far-famed shrines of Ephesus; or whether thou art Proserpine, terrific with midnight howlings, whose three-fold visage checks the attack of the ghosts, closing the recesses of the earth, and who wandering over many a grove, art propitiated by various modes of worship with that feminine brightness of thine, illuminating the walls of every city,, and with thy vaporous beams nurturing the joyous seeds of plants, and for the revolutions of the sun ministering thy fitful gleams; by whatever name, by whatever ceremonies, and under whatever form it is lawful to invoke thee; do thou graciously succour me in this my extreme I am all that was, and all that is, and all that ever shall be, and no mortal man has ever raised my veil.'” (4) – while writing in the IId century AD, the Numidian Berber author would only recapture in this hymn the original universalist and undifferentiated substance of the Isiac cult.
In Greece, Isis was honoured especially by Egyptian emigrants, and became the protector of Alexandrian sailors. The opening of navigation in early March was placed under her patronage. (5) The festival was called 'ploiaphesia'. (6) It was presided over by navarchs, a college in which, unsurprinsingy in this context, women participated.
Alexandrian sailors took her cult all over the Mediterranean and therefore to Rome, where it spread rapidly among women, lower classes, and slaves, and where the 'ploiaphesia' became the 'navigium isidis', which, similarly, opened the shipping season, on the 5th of March, at the full moon. It is thought that the pre-Lent festival in medieval western Europe, in which, by the XIIth century, a model of a ship was carried on a carriage, derived directly from the 'navigium isidis'. (7) What is often not mentioned in modern studies on the Isis festival in the Graeco-Roman world is that it was not an ex nihilo creation: it was already celebrated in ancient Egypt, in Pharmurti (March). (8)
Ennius, the first Roman writer to mention the presence of priests of Isis in Rome, compares them more or less to crooks. To Virgil, two centuries later, they are no better. “Rev. C.VW King.... justly remarks (that) the worshipers of Mary preserved in the tonsure, in celibacy of the clergy, in the alb, and in their rites, the customs of the Egyptian priests of Isis...” (9) What he failed to notice, unlike Valerius Maximus in the Ist century AD, is their proneness to begging alms. The priests of Isis counted on the strangeness of their ceremonies and their practices to attract generous onlookers. Their hieratic performances were not part of the national worship.
In Rome, her temples were located near brothels and markeplaces, and they were known for being meeting places for prostitutes. (10) Isis was said to have been a prostitute in Tyre for ten years. It has been claimed that “eroticism and asceticism mingled” in her cult ; first, perhaps 'mixed' would be a more accurate term ; then, what mixed in it, given the nature of its followers, was rather orgiaticism and continence/mortification (for the true meaning of 'askesis', see the first chapter of 'The Doctrine of Awakening'). Her temples were private. If they were not destroyed, on the orders of the Senate, shortly after they were built, they were tolerated only on the outskirts of the urbs. “When a Roman Consul found that the demolition team assigned to him were all members or sympathizers of the cult and refused to destroy their chapel, he had to remove his toga of state and do the deed himself.” (11) Vigilant, alert magistrates had understood that mystery societies, under the cover of religion, aimed at altering the civil institution, offering the most seditious and the most corrupt individuals of the “Republic” the opportunity to get together to plot. They were severely repressed for another reason, which was well identified by the author of this article: a possible religious unification of the lower racial strata of Roman society. However, the cult of Isis proved to be resilient, and, since a race change was under way in Rome, it finally managed to draw, not only from the lower classes, but also from the “noblest and most distinguished” families, by then no longer of Roman blood for most of them. Some emperors even revived it. “We notice in recalling the list of emperors that favor Isis that those generally ranked as 'bad' by historians were those who were the most devoted to the new cult. Caligula, Domitian, Commodus, Caracal1a, each has left a dark record on the the pages of history. Can there be a connection between the two facts? The bad emperors seem to have been innovators as well as tyrants-men for whom the magic words, 'mos maiorum' had little or no meaning. They gained popularity by this disregard for tradition, for the Roman plebs, gathered from many lands, knew little and cared less for the tastes and ideals of the Samnite wars.” (12) Some of them, among whom Lucius Septimius Bassianus, commonly known as Caracalla, of the Numidian Severan dynasty, were foreigners. (13)
The worship of Isis was established in Gaul, in Germania, in Britain, in Asturias and in the Danubian regions in the early Empire period. It was not devoid of proselytism. (14) Yet, while it is impossible to ascertain how many converts it may have made in these areas, it should be borne in mind that, historically, a cult does not enter and spread through a given area without being supported by a related human substratum. In other words, in the case at hand, the worship of Isis could not have propagated throughout these lands without the presence of bands of Isiacs over there, whether converts from the lowest ranks of the Roman world or eastern slaves or merchants, by then made Roman citizens thanks to Caracalla, who had brought their own cults with them, first into Italy, then into other areas of Europe. There were blacks among them.
Three inscriptions have been found in Gaul that prove without a doubt that Isis was worshipped there; the first (ISIDI SACRUM SEX. POMPEIUS. SEX. L. SYRUS MILES. LEG. V. AUG. V. S. L. M. ), in Flandre, the second (LUNtE. ET. ISIDI AUG. SACR. C. OCTAVII. PEDONIS. LIB. TROPHIMIO. SEVERl AUG.V.S. ), in Nîmes, the third ISI MYRIONYM.E ET SERAPI EXSPECTA.... METIS AUG. D.... V. S. L. ), in Soissons. Although none has been found in Melun, a detour via this city, in the company of 'Dissertation sur les Parisii ou Parisiens, et sur le culte d'Isis chez les Gaulois', a meticulous review by Jean Nicolas Déal of all primary and secondary sources directly or indirectly related to the question, needs to be made. “The city of Melun, to which it does not take more than a day to travel from Paris, was known as Melodunum, as can be seen in Caesar. Since the time of Caesar, this city was entirely devoted to the cult of Isis, changing its name to that of Iseos or lsia (the two first verses of the poem composed for the coat of arms of Melun say: “Je suis Melun / qui eus à ma naissance le nom d'Isis / comme des vieux on sait.” In Sébastien Rouillard, 'Histoire de Melun', p. 27. [Editor's Note]), after that of the deity which was the object of its particular cult. That was still the case at the end of the IXth century, when Abbon, friar at St.-Germain-des-Prés, composed his poem on the sieges Paris withstood against the Normans. The name lsia was then so famous that not only that of Melodunum was completely forgotten, but everyone believed that the city of Paris was called Parisius instead of Lutetia, as it was once called, only because Paris was linked to Melun, or Isia, that is to say that the city of Paris was the rival (collega) of Melun, either because of the island where it was built, or because it was a major trading centre, or rather because of the reputation and the sanctity of its port, which was dedicated to Isis, as was Melun's.” (15) Déal adds that Rouillard, historian of the city of Melun, neither confirms nor denies the tradition whereby a temple dedicated to Isis once existed in Melun, more precisely in an island close to the city.
Was she worshipped in Paris ?
The bookseller and writer Gilles Corrozet (1510-1568) put forward three hypotheses on the origin of the names 'Paris' and 'Parisii'. The first was that the capital was named after the god Pâris, son of Romus XVII, King of Gauls. The second related the (supposedly) Gallic tribe of the Parisii to Parrasians, a people who had supposedly journeyed with Hercules from Asia Minor. The third, which related the Parisii to the Egyptian goddess Isis, was, according to him, by far the most convincing, since it was based on an objective evidence, namely a statue of the goddess found in the abbaye of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, formerly known as the church of Sainte-Croix et Saint-Vincent, which was built on the orders of Childebert (497 – 558) and where he asked to be buried.
One century or so later, Bouillard reported: “ St. Germanus, full of ardor and zeal for the development of the worship of the true God, requested Childebert to complete the project he had devised to build a church in honour of Sainte Croix and Saint Vincent, which later took the name of Saint-Germain-des-Près. The place that seemed the most suitable was that which was then called Locotitia, where common wisdom has it that there still were remains of an ancient temple of Isis, located amidst the meadows, near the river Seine, in order to substitute the worship of the God of heaven for that of the false gods of the earth.” (16) A century later, François-René de Chateaubriand echoed this account, without questionning it, quite clinically: “This temple of Isis is today the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés. The college of priests of Isis was at Issy.” (17) (his sources were the judge Nicolas de la Mare, 'Traité de la police', vol. 1, 1738 and Germain-François Poullain de Saint-Foix, 'Essais historiques sur Paris', 1762).
At this point, one may object that, if there is evidence that the worhip of Isis existed, not only in Gaul, but also in Paris, in ancient times, the evidence is scarce, especially when it comes to Paris. One would however be wise to recall that, if the cult of Isis, as reorganised by Ptolemy Soter, was meant to be universal in scope, it was introduced into Europe as a mystery cult, and was therefore, by definition, secretive.
Who – assuming that it was a foreign cult and, therefore, that it was brought there (to the Parisii) – brought it ?
Authors have been quoted in the previous paragraphs who recognised the existence of an Isiac worship in Paris as a hard fact, and who referred to it as naturally as they would have described Notre-Dame as being what it was then, that is, the main place of Christian worship in the French capital. To the author of the following lines, the early history of Paris is just as self-evident. “ It was, from the outset, one of those cities which, because of the geographical situation of the country, would naturally attract peoples engaged in trade and navigation. These... trading sailors (' commerçants navigateurs'), from Phoenicia, after having sailed back up first the Rhone, then the river Seine, settled in the 'Île de la Cité' (The territory of Paris was first limited by the borders of this island. [Editor's Note]), which seemed to them suitable for the development of their trade. They took on the name of 'Nautae Parisii', and obtained many privileges under Tiberius (14-37 AD)... Camulogenus was its first magistrate, when the Romans conquered it in 56 BC... Long before these river sailors setttled down in the Île de la Cité, Lutetia was inhabited by natives who dwelled on the slopes of the hill later called St. Geneviève, who lived on farming, hunting and fishing. Two corporations were thus formed, one called 'Water Goods' ('Marchandise d'Eau '), engaged in foreign trade, the other 'Land Goods' ('Marchandise de Terre'), in reference to the sale of local products. Both soon exchanged their products, their most influential members became known as Bourgeois and met separately at first to defend their mutual interests.” (18)
The symbol of the “Water Traders” was a vessel (19); it was also their seal; (20) it was recognised as the official seal of Paris by Louis IX at the beginning of the XIIIth century, (21) two decades after Philippe Auguste had made it the coat of arms of Paris, just before leaving for the Crusade. (22) It was abolished, as all other emblems of the Ancien Régime, by the Revolution, under which, in late August 1793, a statue of Isis by the artist, Free-mason and active Terrorist Jean-Louis David was erected at the site of the fallen Bastille during a festival, orchestrated by himself, in honour of Fraternity. From her breasts “ pure water was pumped into a container held out in turn by each of the eighty-six representatives of the primary assemblies around France — that is, one for each department. They were to drink from the same cup and be seen as equals and brothers before Eternity.” (23) Isis, who had been a source of inspiration for various pre-revolutionary artists, became their muse under Nabulione Buonaparte, as egyptomania spread. After his return from Egypt in 1799, “Napoleon was to develop a curious interest for the Egyptian goddess Isis,” (rather, couldn't this interest have developed prior to his Egyptian campaign ? Were some of his 300 Freemason generals completely foreign to the develoment of such interest?) (24) “and eventually set up a special commission headed by the scholar Louis Petit-Radel in order to verify whether or not the claims made by Gilles Corrozet and others that Isis was the true tutelary goddess of Paris was tenable. After sometime, Radel reported to Napoleon that the evidence he had examined supported the claim that the 'Boat of Isis' was the very same as the ‘Boat of Paris’. Impressed by Radel’s report, Napoleon issued written instructions on the 20 January 1811 to the effect that the Egyptian goddess and her star be included on the coat-of-arms of the French capital city.” (25) This is an excerpt of the Letters Patent : “ We have previously authorized and do also authorize now by these present signed document by our hand, that our good city of Paris will bear the coat-of-arms as shown and coloured on the attached drawing, at the front of the ancient ship, the prow loaded with a statue of Isis, seated, in silver on a sea of the same, and lead by a star also of silver.” (26) Moreover, “Isis is a witness to the inscription of the name of Napoleon on the tablet of history, as represented on the façade of the Cour Carrée. Isis in Egyptian regalia, with sistrum and cat, has pride of place next to Moses the lawgiver, thus relating Egypt to biblical history as well as to classical civilizations. » (27)
The tradition continued just as ostentatiously under the First Restauration. Louis XVIII, like his brother and successor, Charles X, was deeply interested in ancient Egyptian symbolism. It shows in their public works. As is known, Louis XVIII was the one who, in 1814, came up with the terrific idea of having an obelisk erected in Paris, in the context of a planned Masonification of the capital architecture and surface. (28) It was finally erected in the Place de la Concorde in 1836, under Charles X, who, in the mid-1820, had commissioned François-Edouard Picot, Jean-Louis David's most promising pupil, to decorate “à l'égyptienne” the ceiling of his personal museum at Le Louvre. Promises were kept; completed in 1827, it featured Isis seated on a throne flanked by two lions, as was the case with Jean-Louis David's statue of Isis. (29) Egyptology, born officially in 1822, was made a “national science", (30) large subsidies were provided to egyptologists. It had always been a lucrative business. (31)
Napoleon III's interest in ancient Oriental cults, albeit less conspicuous than his predecessors', was far from being marginal. In 1860, he sent Ernest Renan to Lebanon, “to make an archeological survey of Phoenicia. He arrived in Tyre, then he sailed to Byblos. Houses and gardens covered the entire site. He set about digging between the houses and unearthed a sculptured fragment of the goddess Hathor-Isis facing a pharaoh. She wears the sun disc between cow's horns.” (32) He apparently brought it back to Paris. Nowadays, (real or fake) statues of Isis are on display in various museums all around Paris, not to mention that Isis is encysted in the painting that millions of tourists from all corners of the world can watch in the French capital : La Joconde. (33)
Getting back to the account of Louis d'Haucour, it is time to wonder whether it is based on historical grounds, that is to say, whether Phoenicians are the founders of the city which would later be known as Paris, or, at least, whether some Phoenicians made their way up to this area, or even settled down there.
As explained by F. Cumont, (34) as early as the IIIrd century, “The Syrians ('Phoenician' was for a long time a generic designation, which included Syrians among other peoples. [Editor's note])... using the special talents of their race to advantage... succeeded in establishing themselves on all coasts of the Mediterranean, even in Spain. At Malaga, (35) an inscription mentions a corporation formed by them. The Italian ports where business was especially active, Pozzuoli, Ostia, later Naples, attracted them in great numbers. But they did not confine themselves to the seashore ; they penetrated far into the interior of the countries, wherever they hoped to find profitable trade. They followed the commercial highways and traveled up the big rivers. By way of the Danube they went as far as Pannonia, by way of the Rhone they reached Lyons. In Gaul they were especially numerous. In this new country that had just been opened to commerce fortunes could be made rapidly. A rescript discovered on the range of the Lebanon is addressed to sailors from Aries, who had charge of the transportation of grain, and in the department of Ain a bilingual epitaph has been found mentioning a merchant of the third century, Thaim or Julian, son of Saad, decurion of the city of Canatha in Syria, who owned two factories in the Rhone basin, where he handled goods from Aquitania. Thus the Syrians spread over the entire province as far as Treves, where they had a strong colony. Not even the barbarian invasions of the fifth centurv stopped their immigration. Saint Jerome describes them traversing the entire Roman world amidst the troubles of the invasion, prompted by the lust of gain to defy all dangers. In the barbarian society the part played by this civilized and city-bred element was even more considerable.” Since, while there is no consensus as to when exactly the Parisii settled down in the Île de la Cité, most historians agree that this settlement cannot have taken place later than in the Ist century BCE, traces of a phoenician presence in Northern Gaul prior to that period must be sought, and, in this respect, Diodorus Siculus (V, 22), is the only ancient source on this matter. « On the island of Ictis (along the coast of southern England. {Editor' Note]),he writes in this well-known passage, the (foreign) merchants purchase the tin of the natives and carry it from there across the Strait to Galatia or Gaul; and finally, making their way on foot through Gaul for some thirty days, they bring their wares on horseback to the mouth of the river Rhone." Some emphasise that Diodorus says "foreign merchants", and not "Phoenicians merchants", and, of course, they are right. D'Haucour's claim would be supported by indirect evidence, if it was the case, as claimed by 'Phénicomanes', that, as early as the end of the second millenium BC, Phoenicians travelled as far as the Loire Bassin, the Gulf of Morbihan in search of the tin-ore required for the production of bronze. (36)
Archeological data are scarce, but they exist. Laureau, in his 'Histoire de France avant Clovis', p. 108, lists a few artifacts, of which a carved face of Isis in a temple at Mavilly (Bourgogne) and two Phoenician looking sculptures, which suggest that 'Syrians' were active in Northern Gaul at that time, and which do not seem to have bothered too much historians or archeologists. How about the "Arab, Jewish, Punic (= Phoenician. [Editor's Note]) and Oriental coins found (in this area) that have enriched antique stores every single day" ? (37) It looks like they have not been used to enrich our knowledge of the early presence of Easterners in Gaul.
Who then were these "foreign merchants", if they were not Phoenicians ? Could they possibly have been Negroes ? Stephen Benko, in 'The Virgin Goddess', p. 214, writes: “In Paris, a center of the worship of Isis, a black statue of Isis was actually venerated as the Virgin until the sixteenth century”, (38) and acknowledges that the peoples in whom this cult arose could very well have been Negroes. The birthplace of the worship of Isis was Philae, and this island was part of the beginning of Lower Nubia, the name of the island being most probably “purely Nubian” (39). “Lower Nubia was inhabited by a mainly non-Egyptian population and the cults established in the region by its overlords — the kings of Kush before its Ptolemaic occupation and then during the Upper Egyptian revolt between he Ptolemaic dynasty and the Roman emperors before AD 298 — had strong Nubian accents or were partly of Nubian origins.” (40) Two of the main peoples in this region, the Noubades and the Blemmyes were dark-skinned; the later still worshipped Isis at Philae ca 500 CE. (41) Since it is practically certain that there was a Negroid presence in Upper Paleolithic Europe in the form of the Grimaldi man, (42) the question inevitaby arises as to the extent to which the worship of Isis in Gaul, and even in Paris, could be attributed to such substratum.
However this may be, it is most revealing that a certain French nobility has felt, and still feels, like tracing the origins of the Parisii (43) to Phoenician merchants. From The Napoleon DNA Project it is clear that this nobility was/is anything but white: “Scientists had done the DNA tests with hair samples from Napoleon that were compared with a sample from Charles Napoléon Bonaparte, a descendant of Napoleons brother Jérôme Bonaparte. Both of Bonaparte descendant's results matched and have been published in the Journal of Molecular Biology Research on 31.12.2011; 'DNA was extracted from two islands of follicular sheaths located at the basis of two of his beard hairs, conserved in the Vivant Denon reliquary. The Y-haplogroup of Napoléon I, determined by the study of 10 NRY-SNPs (non-recombinant Y-single nucleotide polymorphisms), is E1b1b1c1*. Charles Napoléon, the current collateral male descendant of Napoléon I, belongs to this same Y-haplogroup; his Y-STR profile was determined by using a set of 37 NRY-STRs (non-recombinant Y-microsatellites).” (44)
“E1b1 is likely to have originated in the highlands of East Africa's Ethiopia, as this is the place with the high frequency of ancestral subclades of this haplogroup. E1b1 is the ancestor of the majority of E subclade lineages existing today. It has diverged into two subclades: E1b1a and E1b1b approximately 24-27,000 years ago (Cruciani et al. 2004).” (45)
Isis has not struck into the heart of Paris : Isis is, whether historically or psychically, if not both, at the heart of Paris. Isis has been able to strike into the heart of Paris only because she is at the heart of Paris
P.-s. : Incidentally, Isis is mentionned at least twice in the The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert, at the entry for “Paris” and at that for “Isis”. This is an excerpt from the former : “What the authors who derive the word Parisii from Para (sic) Isis, people under the protection of Isis, spout are sheer fictions ; the goddess Isis was never worshipped in the province of the Parisians, and no ancient author mentions it.” ('Paris'. In Encyclopedie methodique, 1765, p. 560). This is an excerpt from the later : “It cannot reasonably be doubted that there was indeed a famous temple consecrated to the great goddess of the Egyptians either in Paris, or in its immediate vicinity, at Issy. The old charters of St. Genevieve & St. Germain abbeys mention it, and sate that Clovis & Childebert, their founders, have entrusted them with the remains (“dépouilles”) of Isis & of her temple ; & We would have a conclusive evidence of this, hadn't it been for thequite vehement zeal of the good Cardinal Brissonet, abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, who, in 1514, smashed to pieces the great idol of Isis that had been kept as a matter of interest in a corner of the said St. Germain church." ('Isis'. In ibid., 1765, p. 22 - Jean le Meur, who lived under Louis XI, could see this statue each time he went to that thurch, and wrote about it (see Déal, op. cit., p. 70-1), noting that other statues of Isis could be found in other churches at his time). Now, both entries are attributed to the same author, the Chevalier, philosopher, and Encyclopedist, Louis de Jaucourt (1704 - 1791).
(1) Lisbeth Bredholt Christensen, Olav Hammer, and David Warburton, The Handbook of Religions in Ancient Europe, 2014, p. 220ff.
(2) See evolaasheis.proboards.com/thread/40/black-arabia; the translation of the last parts of his 'Black Arabia' is available at elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/larabie-noire-et-lorigine-africaine-de-lislam-iii/.
(3) www.unrv.com/culture/isis.php.
(4) Carrie Kirkpatrick, Goddess Enchantment, Magic and Spells, Vol 2, 2011, p. 34ff.
(5) See Anonym, Phantoms of the deep, or: legends and superstitions of the sea and of sailors, 1903, p. 430; Françoise Dunand, Le culte d'Isis dans le bassin oriental de la Méditerranée, vol. 26, part 3, p. 223ff.
(6) The Cult of Isis Among Women in the Graeco-Roman World, 1975, p. 105.
(7) As is known, according to Tacitus, a rite of the Suevi consisted in carrying a ship in the honour of Isis (“Isidi sacrificat”). Interpetation romana? What is certain is that the custom of carrying about a ship existed in some parts of Germany throughout the Middle Ages. Sabine Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, Vol. 2, 200, p. 68.
(8) See Apuleius, The Isis-book, Metamorphoses, Book XI.
(9) John G. R. Forlong (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religions, Vol. 3, 2013, p. 439.
(10) See Juvenal, The Satires, VI.
(11) ttp://www.unrv.com/culture/isis.php.
(12) Clifton Edwin Van Sickle, Isis-worship in the Latin World (up to 235 A.D.), 1922, p. 48.
(13) It is interesting that Petrarch ended the record of Roman Empire with Titus, that is, with emperors who were blood descendants of the patriciate, in his early work 'Africa', only to extend the circle of Roman rulers, not only to the later emperors from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius, but even Theodosius, in his later works.
(14) Richard Valantasis, Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice, 2000, p. 370.
(15) Jean Nicolas Déal, Dissertation sur les Parisii ou Parisiens, et sur le culte d'Isis chez les Gaulois, 1826, p. 75-77.
(16) Ibid., p. 77.
(17) Françis-René de Châteaubriand, Les martyrs, suivis des remarques, vol. 1, 1851, p. 194.
(18) Louis d'Haucour, L'hôtel de ville de Paris à travers les siècles, 1900, p. 4
(19) Antoine Court de Gébelin, Monde primitif, 1775, p. 61, identifies this vessel with Isis' and derives the name 'Paris' from it, explaining, to make his case, that the change from 'b' to 'p' was and still was a common phonetical mutation in Northern France, and recalling that the ship of Isis, as well as all navicular shrines, was called 'Baris' ("which is very remarkable, for it was the very name of the mountain, according to Nicolas Damascenus, on which the ark of Noah rested." Herodotus, transl. by Rev. William Beloe, Vol. 1, 1836, p. 242.
(20) Most of, if not all, seals of Paris in their various iterations from 1210 to 1942 are displayed at www.armoiriesdeparis.fr/Pages/PHistoire.htm.
(21) Michel Félibien, Histoire de la ville de Paris, 1725, p. xxxiv.
(22) Jean Rey, Histoire du drapeau, des couleurs et des insignes de la monarchie francaise, 1837, p. 68.
(23) H. Weston, Witnessing the Revolution, in D. Johnson, Jacques-Louis David: New Perspectives. 2006, p. 126.
(24) José A. Ferrer Benimelli, Le Binôme franc-maçonnerie - Révolution à l'époque des lumières : entre histoire et mythification, in Franc-maçonnerie et politique au siècle des lumières: Europe-Amériques, 2006, p. 54.
(25) homepage.ntlworld.com/fusniak/talisman/articles/isisofparis.html.
(26) Ibid.
(27) Jean Michel Humbert and Clifford Price (éds.), Imhotep Today, 2012, p. 186.
(28) See Pierre Lamarque, Essai de topographie du Paris maçonnique, 1974; Dominique Setzepfandt, Paris maçonnique: à la découverte des axes symboliques de Paris, 1996.
(29) Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval, The Master Game: Unmasking the Secret Rulers of the World, 2011, p. 16.
(30) Eric Gady, Les égyptologues français au xixe siècle : quelques savants très influents, Revue d'histoire du XIXe siècle [Online], 32, 2006, published on the 30th of October 2008, accessed on the 18th of December 2015. URL : rh19.revues.org/1091.
(31) In France, mummy trafficking started in the XVIth century. "By the 16th century, Europeans were increasingly obsessed with mummies, not for their history, but to use as medicines. Since at least AD 1000, people had been 'eating mummy' burning mummies, grinding them up and turning them into a powder. (This was due to the belief that mummies were covered in bitumen, as breathingin its fumes was once thought to be good for your health. One popular belief of the 16th century was that the mummified flesh of witches and redheads provided the best medicine!) In the 12th century, returning Crusaders brought news of the healing powers of these groundup mummy parts. In their desperation to find a cure for their illness, people forgot that they were being cannibals! Mummy trafficking became widespread. One merchant, John Sanderson, bought 270 kg of mummified flesh to sell to the English market in the 1580s. Egyptian mummies were so in demand that a priest to Queen Catherine de Medici of France made a special expedition to Egypt in 1549. Joining forces with a group of doctors from Italy, he broke into several tombs around Saqqara to hunt for mummies. Catherine's father-in-law, King Francis I of France, carried ground-up mummy (mixed with crushed rhubarb) in a pouch, in case he was wounded while hunting... The word 'mummy' appears in many medical texts of the time, including those of Francis Bacon, and it is one of the ingredients in the witches' brew in Shakespeare's Macbeth. King Charles II collected the dust that fell off mummies . He used it on his skin, believing the power of the ancient pharaohs would rub off. In 1694, the French pharmacist Pierre Pomet gave advice on buying good-quality mummy powder: 'look for one that is black without bones or dust, with a nice smell of something burnt rather than ar or resin.'" (see Jim Pipe, Egyptian Mummies, A Very Peculiar History, 2014) Medicine was not the only thing that ground mummies were used for: "Until relatively recently, Egyptian mummies, believe it or not, were used to produce a type of paint, which was called Mummy Brown, Mommia, or Momie. The main ingredient of this paint was, as you may have already guessed, ground up Egyptian mummies. This powder was mixed with white pitch and myrrh to produce a rich brown pigment. It was first made in the 16th century, and became a popular colour amongst the Pre-Raphaelite painters of the mid-19th century. For instance, it has been recorded that the British portraitist, Sir William Beechey, kept stocks of Mummy Brown. The French artist Martin Drölling also reputedly used Mummy Brown made with the remains of French kings disinterred from the royal abbey of St-Denis in Paris. It has been suggested that his L’interieur d’une cuisine is an example of extensive use of the pigment." (Philip McCouat, The life and death of mummy brown, www.artinsociety.com/the-life-and-death-of-mummy-brown.html.
(32) Nina Jidejian, Lebanon, a Journey Through Time, 2011, p. 32.
(33) See Thierry Gallier, Isis, la Joconde révélée, 2004.
(34) Franz Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, 1911, p. 108.
(35) See Georges Bernard, Depping, Histoire générale de l'Espagne, vol. 1: L'Espagne sous les Phéniciens, les Carthaginois et les Romains, jusqu'à la fin de la république romaine, 1814.
(36) According to Roger David Penhallurick, Tin in Antiquity: Its Mining and Trade Throughout the Ancient World With Particular Reference to Cornwall, 1986, the Phoenician tin trade with Cornwall is a myth. On the other hand, "their successors, the Carthaginians, in the fourth century b.c, appear to have transferred the tin market from Gades to the mouth of the Loire, and to have carried the ore overland and by river to Marseilles." T. Taylor, Saint Michael's Mount, 2010, p. 17
(37) Pierre Laureau, Histoire de France avant Clovis, Vol. 2, 1789, p. 108.
(38) Stephen Benko, The Virgin Goddess, 1993. Oddly, references are not found in the online edition of this indepth study, available at docslide.us/documents/the-virgin-goddess-studies-in-the-pagan-and-christian-roots-of-mariology.html) Now, Benko, whom we have had the opportunity to quote on more than one occasion, is not precisely a dilettante.
(39) Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall, A Report on the Antiquities of Lower Nubia, 2015, p. 39.
(40) László Török, The Image of the Ordered World in Ancient Nubian Art, 2002, p. 279.
(41) Richard A. Lobban Jr, Historical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Nubia., 2003, p. xiv.
(42) See, for a discussion of the pedigree of the Grimaldi man, Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth Or Reality, 1974, Chap. XI.
(43) In Egyptian, the temples of Isis were called 'Pr', meaning 'the floor-plan of a walled building with an open doorway'; combined with the name of a god, 'the house of...' Under this assumption, Parisii resulted, according to the egyptologist Maspero, from the juxtaposition of 'Pr' and 'Isis'. "The very name of Parisii could very well mean 'Temple of Isis', because there was a city with this name on the Nile and and the hieroglyph 'per' is found on the enclosure of a temple in the department of Oise". Pierre Hubac, Carthage, 1952, p. 170. In fact, Hubac refers to ruins which are thought to be those of a temple that was consacrated to Isis in this hamlet, which was named after it (Mons Isis). Charles Oudiette, Dictionnaire topographique des environs de Paris, 1817, p. 508; Notice archéologique sur le département de l'Oise, 1839, p. 60. 'Parisis', the name of the area that lies between the River Oise and River Seine and the Pays de France, still attracts the attention of etymologists.
(44) www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jmbr/article/view/10609/9658.
(45) everything.explained.today/Haplogroup_E1b1_%28Y-DNA%29.