It’s really hard to write a new book on Isis. A formidable amount of scholarship already exists: monographs, sourcebooks, and collections on the goddess’ cult, the temples, monuments, and artwork that has been found throughout the Mediterranean, the various texts that deal with her worship.[1] Mazurek pulls off this daunting task with great success. Drawing from recent theoretical concepts of identity and ethnicity, she studies primarily the material evidence from Roman Greece and Asia Minor, probing the ways Isis worship can illuminate the concept of ethnic identification. The book argues that Isis proved to be a useful vehicle through which her devotees were able to navigate the many intersecting facets of their identity. Furthermore, Isis both functions as a symbol of the globalizing character of the Roman Empire and provides a medium for the expression of alterity and difference. Ultimately, Mazurek claims that Isis exemplifies the dynamic process through which Greek culture dominates while interacting with the tapestry of ethnic identities that make up the Roman Empire.
More specifically, the book argues that the practice of the cult of Isis in the various territories of the Roman empire offered devotees the opportunity to construct a new form of “Greekness” that encompassed Egyptian religious vocabulary. In chapter 1, Mazurek gives an overview of her argument and methodology. She asserts that her approach helps us understand “how local and regional communities adapted and remade globalizing phenomena” (4). Using Brubaker’s theory of self and group identification, along with theories on intersectionality and post-colonialism, she examines a variety of epigraphic, artistic, archaeological, and literary evidence spanning from the Hellenistic period to the 2nd century CE with particular focus on Isis sanctuaries and the processes of viewing available to the various visitors and worshippers of the goddess. Mazurek also tackles the problem of defining “Greekness;” she makes the case for the existence of a global form of Greekness linked to the concept of paideia, that is participation in a set of behaviors dictated by consumption of Greek ideas as expressed in literature, philosophy, etc., as well as religious and ethical behaviors.
Chapter 2 outlines Brubaker’s concept of “groupness” and examines how Isis devotees construct such a sense through repeated social action and practice. Mazurek connects the spread of Isis cult with imperialism and migration. As the Roman empire grew, identities were fractured, and cult practice offered a sense of connection with the larger Isiac community across the region while also intersecting with prevailing forms of Greekness (31). The chapter analyzes Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 11, Plutarch’s treatise On Isis and Osiris, the aretalogies, cult associations and priesthoods, as well as burial practices and iconography in sanctuaries. Throughout, Mazurek finds that practices, images, and ideas helped create a sense of belonging and thus constructed a group identity that contributed to the devotees’ self-understanding and sense of place (or self-location as she puts it). Mazurek also notes the possibility of different modes of intensity of identification with the Isis cult, depending on the individual’s status within the cult. Isis helped form a sense of “groupness”, but this sense was not uniform and co-existed with participation in other cults. Mazurek concludes that “Greekness and Isiac cult had a dynamic relationship that produced a new interpretation of Isis centered on Greekness and the domestication of Egypt for Greek consumption” (58).
In the next chapter, Mazurek examines epigraphic hymns and literary evidence, arguing that Isis devotees relied on depictions and versions of Isis myth that contextualized Egyptian religion within Greek antiquity. Mazurek deploys two important aspects of Isiac religion that are key to her argument. First, she uses the concept of “deterritorialization” to demonstrate how Isis and Sarapis are reconfigured for Greek use by being reimagined as traveler deities that inhabit places outside of Egypt. A concomitant concept emerges from the aretalogies, that of henotheism (deriving from the Greek henas theos), whereby Isis is thought of as an all-powerful divinity that subsumes all other deities. Henotheism is different from monotheism in the sense that there is not just one god but that Isis is the most important god (72). The goddess’ many epiphanic imaginings in texts are closely linked to her “deterritorialization” and association with Greece. Isis is thus a unifier, blurring ethnic, theological and cultural boundaries, becoming a goddess who belongs to all the peoples of the Mediterranean equally.
Chapter 4 tackles the concept of devotees’ self-understanding through visual means. Mazurek here analyzes statues of Isis and Sarapis, arguing that their images defined how devotees viewed themselves. Examining the various types of Isis statues, the goddess’ stance, her dress, as well as materials used, the author concludes that the infusion of Greek elements in images with Egyptian styles creates “a transcultural version of Isis that does not deny her connections with Egypt” (101). She argues further that the use of both local and imported materials showcased the expanse of the empire and the participation of local communities in it. At the same time, the Greek materials employed in the making of these statues constitute a choice that claims Greek culture as the most important culture in the Mediterranean. The display of Isis statues alongside those of other Greek gods enhance the henotheistic qualities of Isis on the one hand; on the other, her Egyptianness, embedded into a Greek cultural milieu, renders it the central vehicle through which all other cultures could be understood. Isiac universalism is thus linked with the idea of a “globalizing Greekness.”
Chapter 5 engages with modes of “self-fashioning” in images relating to Isiac cult in the cemeteries of Roman Athens. Mazurek justifies focusing on this evidence due to the greater frequency of this portraiture in Athens, although similar visual iconography also exists elsewhere. In analyzing Isiac grave reliefs for women, Mazurek argues that Isiac dress emphasizes belonging to a local group of Isis devotees while interaction with normative funerary imagery resulted in a simultaneous claim to normative forms of Athenian Greekness. Greek ethnicity is thus modified to include modes of alterity and Egyptian foreignness. According to Mazurek, this self-fashioning allows individuals to negotiate competing ethnic claims and construct novel forms of identity. The author comments that, by contrast, men’s funerary portraiture is rare, positing that it belongs to a larger pattern found in the provinces, whereby women’s visual representations highlight difference, while men’s depictions conform to Greek and Roman norms. Mazurek concludes that Athenian funerary reliefs with Isiac visual vocabulary adopted this provincial gendered pattern, whereby the female body constitutes a locus of expressing tensions between normative and alternative identity categories in the Roman empire (143).
The final chapter surveys imagined geographies of Egypt in Isiac sanctuaries in Greece. Mazurek presents evidence from the Isis sanctuary in Kenchreai, in Corinth, and the one in Herodes Atticus’ Marathon estate. The author categorizes allusions to Egypt as either referring to Egyptian architecture and art or pointing to the Nile river’s flora and fauna (Nilotica). For Mazurek, these features create a “geographic and cultural fantasy” (147). By bringing Egypt to the location of the viewer, these images offer the possibility of a shared territory that contributes to the creation of ethnic identity. This Egyptian otherness, however, is imbued with various forms of Greekness, evident in spatial and visual representations within the sanctuaries. Thus Egypt, expressed with Greek materials, is “domesticated,” linking the foreign with the familiar. Yet this co-existence ultimately privileges the Greek context and establishes Egypt’s inferior position in the cultural hierarchy of the empire. Thus, as Mazurek summarizes, “Isis devotees in Roman Greece fashioned their ideas of themselves in ways that emphasized their own importance on a global scale as a counter-point to their asymmetric experience of power and cultural influence” (28).
In the conclusion, the author notes that the book illuminates the complex relationship among the various identities people inhabit and their ability to express this intersectionality while simultaneously asserting more normative ideas of self and community. Isis offers a unique opportunity for such an expression, as she is a universal goddess, “a metaphor for globalization” (190), Egyptian, but also Greek and Roman. Mazurek argues that Isis’ universality is primarily a vehicle for the expression of ethnic identification, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, while championing Greekness as the dominant culture of the empire.
The book is handsomely produced. The images, layout, type of paper, and general presentation are of high quality. Mazurek writes beautifully and clearly, even though at times her exposition becomes a bit repetitive. She analyzes the evidence judiciously and her engagement with the vast bibliography of Isis is thorough, without bogging the reader down with unnecessary detail. Most importantly, this book provides a powerful case for the value of its methodology. Bringing to bear different types of architectural, artistic, religious, and literary evidence, the author paints a convincing picture of the ways people used Isis to negotiate the complexities of ethnic identification in the Greek territories of the Roman empire. Even concepts that are familiar to students of Isis, such as the universalizing aspects of the goddess, are set against an illuminating theoretical backdrop that helps us reach a more refined understanding. I found Mazurek’s discussion of henotheism particularly useful in furthering our appreciation of Isis’ place in the Greek and Roman pantheon. Likewise, her analysis of scenes with Nilotica and of the various modes of representation in the sanctuary of Herodes Atticus in Marathon sets in sharp relief the range of possible interpretations available to contemporary audiences.
Most of the existing scholarship aiming to reconstruct the Isiac experience treats the literary evidence perfunctorily. Mazurek’s study is refreshing in that regard because it treats these texts with great caution, recognizing the difficulties they present to this line of inquiry. And, as many valuable studies, this one, too, raises more questions than it can answer. For example, how might this analysis bear on evidence from the Roman peninsula? Is there a gendered difference in people’s engagement with the process of personal, social, and ethnic identifications through Isis? What is the role of this universalizing divinity in the larger context of Roman imperial political ideology? Thanks to Mazurek’s contribution, these and other important questions will be debated anew. Meanwhile, this book will be a must-read for anyone working on not only Isis but also the concept of ethnicity and identity in the ancient Mediterranean.
Works Cited
Alvar, E. J. 2008. Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras. Translated by R. L Gordon. Leiden: Brill.
Bricault, L. 2013. Les cultes isiaques dans le monde gréco-romain. Documents réunis, traduits et commentés. Paris : Les Belles Lettres.
———. 2020. Isis Pelagia: Images, Names and Cults of a Goddess of the Seas. Leiden: Brill.
Keulen, W. H., S. Tilg, L. Nicolini, L. Graverini, S. J. Harrison, S. Panayotakis, and D. van Mal-Maeder, eds. 2015. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses, Book XI: The Isis Book. Text, Introduction and Commentary. Leiden: Brill.
Manolaraki, E. 2013. Noscendi Nilum Cupido: Imagining Egypt from Lucan to Philostratus. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Renberg, G. H. 2017. Where Dreams May Come: Incubation Sanctuaries in the Greco-Roman World (2 vols.). Leiden: Brill.
Swetnam-Burland, M. 2015. Egypt in Italy: Visions of Egypt in Roman Imperial Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Versluys, M. J., K. B. Clausen, and G. C. Vitozzi, eds. 2018. The Iseum Campense: From the Roman Empire to the Modern Age. Temple-Monument-Lieu de memoire. Rome: Edizioni Quasar.
Notes
[1] A comprehensive bibliography can be found in Mazurek’s book. I only mention here major studies of the last fifteen years focusing on Isis and Egypt: on religion and cult, Alvar 2008, Bricault 2013, 2020, and Renberg 2017; on the Iseum Campense, Versluys et al. 2018; on artifacts and monuments, Swetnam-Burland 2015; on literature, Manolaraki 2013 and Keulen et al. 2015.