Ignoring the equation of Osiris and Dionysos for the moment, there is some interesting evidence linking Dionysos and Isis.
For instance, in Naples, Italy there is a Temple to Isis, which was reconstructed by Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, who also set up a statue of Dionysos there, and had frescoes of Bacchic revelry depicted alongside the more traditional Egyptian motifs. In the late period, when syncreticism and the multiplicity of faiths in the Roman Empire had reached a high point, we find a Mithraic Pater who was also an Initiate of Isis and an Archibukolos of Dionysos and at Rome a bilingual hexameter text praises a woman who was priestess of Dionysos and attendant of Isis. (ICUR no. 1150). More to the point, these two deities had been linked by ancients in numerous ways. For instance, Ariston in his The Foreign Settlements of the Athenians, tells us that Dionysos is said to be the son of Zeus and Isis and "to be called not Osiris but Arsaphes, the name denoting manliness." Anticleides said that Isis was the daughter of Prometheus and cohabited with Dionysos. And in the Orphic Hymn XLI, Dionysos-Iacchos is said to be "exulting in the fertile plains with thy dark mother Isis, where she reigns, with nurses pure attended, near the flood of sacred Egypt, thy divine abode." And of course, lest we forget, the two were brought together through the tumultuous affairs of Cleopatra VII and Antony - for as Cicero wrote: "Oh yes, he is no longer a worshipper of Dionysos, he is Dionysos! And in the East Dionysos is god, not merely of intoxication, but counterpart to their Aphrodite, the wellspring of life itself, in short, Antony is become Bacchus to Cleopatra's Isis!"
Copyright 2005 Sannion
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