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About This Work
Isis is shown as a standing woman with long hair, wearing a star-patterned robe, a complex crown featuring wheat sheaves (marked with letters D), and a lunar disk (marked B). In her right hand, she holds a ceremonial sistrum (marked I), and in her left, she carries a small pail (marked P). The engraving is densely annotated with letters keyed to a textual explanation of her symbolic associations with the moon, agriculture, and universal divinity, presented in a formal layout typical of 17th-century hermetic illustrations.
This print is from Athanasius Kircher’s 'Oedipus Aegyptiacus' (1652), a monumental work that attempted to decode Egyptian hieroglyphics through the lens of Renaissance Hermeticism and syncretic mysticism. It exemplifies the 17th-century intellectual effort to reconcile ancient Egyptian 'prisca theologia' with classical mythology and natural philosophy.