all living things. She was the creatress of crops, she produced fruit,
vegetables, plants of all kinds and trees, she made cattle prolific,
she brought men and women together and gave them offspring, she was the
authoress of all love, virtue, goodness and happiness. She made the
light to shine, she was the spirit of the Dog-star which heralded the
Nile-flood, she was the source of the power in the beneficent light of
the moon; and finally she took the dead to her bosom and gave them
peace, and introduced them to a life of immortality and happiness
similar to that which she had bestowed upon Osiris.

The message of the cult of Isis as preached by her priests was one of
hope and happiness, and coming to the Greeks and Romans, as it did, at
a time when men were weary of their national cults, and when the
speculations of the philosophers carried no weight with the general
public, the people everywhere welcomed it with the greatest enthusiasm.
From Egypt it was carried to the Islands of Greece and to the mainland,
to Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Portugal, and then crossing the
western end of the Mediterranean it entered North Africa, and with
Carthage as a centre spread east and west along the coast. Wherever
the cult of Isis came men accepted it as something which supplied what
they thought to be lacking in their native cults; rich and poor, gentle
and simple, all welcomed it, and the philosopher as well as the
ignorant man rejoiced in the hope of a future life which it gave to
them. Its Egyptian origin caused it to be regarded with the
profoundest interest, and its priests were most careful to make the
temples of Isis quite different from those of the national gods, and to
decorate them with obelisks, sphinxes, shrines, altars, etc., which
were either imported from temples in Egypt, or were copied from
Egyptian originals. In the temples of Isis services were held at
daybreak and in the early afternoon daily, and everywhere these were