Greco-Egyptian Goddess Isis-Sothis-Demeter. Unknown Roman artist, 131-138 BCE.

January 20, 2020

Greco-Egyptian Goddess Isis-Sothis-Demeter. Unknown Roman artist, 131-138 BCE.

"There is dispute about the discovery of the fruit of the corn on the part of many peoples, who claim that they were the first among whom the Goddess was seen and to whom she made known both the nature and use of the corn. The Egyptians, for example, say that Demeter and Isis are the same, and that she was first to bring the seed to Egypt, since the river Nile waters the fields at the proper time and that land enjoys the most temperate seasons. Also the Athenians, though they assert that the discovery of this fruit took place in their country, are nevertheless witnesses to its having been brought to Attica from some other region; for the place which originally received this gift they call Eleusis, from the fact that the seed of the corn came from others and was conveyed to them. But the inhabitants of Sicily, dwelling as they do on an island which is sacred to Demeter and Corê, say that it is reasonable to believe that the gift of which we are speaking was made to them first, since the land they cultivate is the one the Goddess holds most dear; for it would be strange indeed, they maintain, for the Goddess to take for her own, so to speak, a land which is the most fertile known and yet to give it, the last of all, a share in her benefaction, as though it were nothing to her, especially since she has her dwelling there, all men agreeing that the Rape of Corê took place on this island. Moreover, this land is the best adapted for these fruits, even as the poet also says:

But all these things grow there for them unsown
And e'en untilled, both wheat and barley."

-Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History: Book 5.69

White marble bust of the syncretized Greco-Egyptian Goddess Isis-Sothis-Demeter. Unknown Roman artist, 131-138 BCE. Found in the gymnasium of Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli; now in the Vatican Museum.