Aset? Isis? What's in a Name?

Throughout my book, ISIS: Great of Magic, She of 10,000 Names, I opted to use the name ‘Isis’ for consistency and because it is the name she is most widely known by today. Those who are interested in this goddess might not easily find the book had it been named after her approximated Egyptian name, Aset. This choice, however, has caused me some unease, leading me to ask why we refer to her by a name that a foreign culture knew her by, rather than the name that the Egyptians used? However, looking deeper, the matter is a bit more complicated than that.

The translation of the name ‘Aset’ is ‘seat’ or, more specifically, ‘throne’:Her son Heru (Greek Horus) is often shown seated as an infant upon her lap, as a visual metaphor for the throne and Egypt's sovereign. The first sign in this orthography takes the form of this throne and is the sound ‘st’; the second sign - the loaf of bread - is a ‘t’ which grammatically indicates the feminine (and is included within the pronunciation of 'st'); the third and fourth signs are determinatives whose function is to explain that the word refers to a mother (the egg) and a woman, or goddess. The vowel at the start of her name is rather uncertain and likely changed over the course of centuries, as with any language. Some sources have transliterated it as ' ꜣ ' which is a glottal-stop; for simplicity sake we may pronounce it as a sharp 'ah'. Combining this with the former 'st' we then have 'ast' or 'ahst'. There is then the Egyptological convention on inserting 'e' between certain consonants to make them easier to pronounce - hence how we arrive as 'aset' or 'ah-set'. Some devotees opt for 'Auset' as well, which I suppose is no less accurate a guess.

I have had people over the years correct me for using 'Isis' asserting that 'Aset' is the correct (more Egyptian) way; but after looking into it further I'm less convinced. You see, evidence from Coptic - whose pronunciation we have a much better grasp of - suggests that the first vowel may actually have been an ‘ee’ sound rather than an ‘ah’; furthermore, the ‘t’ ending indicating the feminine appears to have been frequently omitted in pronunciation as time went by. We see letters and pronunciation change over the course of time - think about how modern English sounds completely different to how it sounded in the Middle Ages! So, we cannot confidently say Isis' name was pronounced a certain way without also indicating when. Returning to Coptic then, by the time the Greek's heard her name they would have pronounced the Coptic form in their own regionally specific Greek accents, pronouncing her name ‘ee-sis’ or ‘ee-se’. 'Isis', then, might not be so far from the Egyptian name, after all!1

And if you remain unconvinced, then just think of the two names, Aset and Isis in terms of translating her name into different languages and accents. Think about how English speakers use the toponym ‘Egypt’ rather the using the name used by modern Egyptians, who call their land, مصر ‘Misr’. Some may prefer to distinguish between the two names, using Aset when referring to her Egyptian, pre-Graeco-Roman context and Isis when talking about her Graeco-Roman and Mediterranean context. When I refer to her I like to keep in mind her whole history and so I often call her ‘Aset-Isis’ to avoid privileging one context above the other. But I also use the name ‘Ise(t)’, with the aforementioned discussion on pronunciation in mind.

So, why does any of this even matter?

Well, the modern Western view that we have of Aset-Isis today is one that we have predominantly inherited from Graeco-Roman sources in addition to the interpretations resulting from the colonisation of Egypt, it’s people, and it’s history. The cult of Isis was undoubtedly at its height of popularity between the Kushite Dynasty (747-656 BCE) and the Graeco-Roman period (332 BCE – 395 CE); it is therefore unsurprising that we are more familiar with her Graeco-Roman form, considering it was the most popular, geographically widespread, and most recent. However, this has resulted in a rather Eurocentric portrait of Aset-Isis which supports the antiquarian trend of claiming Egyptian heritage for (white) European narratives of history.2 On the flip side, in recent decades there has been a rise in Afrocentric interpretations of Egyptian history, some of which minimises Egypt’s long history of cultural exchange with cultures outside of the African continent, focusing on those within it and viewing Egyptians according to a specific phenotype. In their extremes, both sides divorce many modern Egyptians from their heritage and suggest that ancient Egypt was a monolithic ethnicity, which it certainly wasn’t, and isn’t. Ancient Egypt was phenotypically diverse with a rich history of cultural exchange and immigration. For ancient Egyptians, one's origin or appearance had no baring on their ability to identify with an Egyptian ethnicity, providing they assimilated into Egyptian culture.

In the modern day, we can map Isis' worship through time, culture, and geography, viewing the whole, as well as contextualised specifics. Reviving and adopting religious beliefs and practices other than our own requires one to be ethically sensitive and to do so responsibly. Languages, words, and names matter, and our use of them is of consequence. With this in mind, as well as the history of white-washing and colonising Egypt’s history,3 one should take care with how they engage with ancient Egyptian religion in contemporary Paganism. Rather than only use the name ‘Isis’, privileging her Mediterranean form, or only using ‘Aset’, denouncing or ignoring her later development (and most influential), I prefer to call her ‘Aset-Isis’, or ‘Iset’, honouring her Nilotic origins as well as the popularity of her ancient cult outside of Egypt. 

 

Photo by Olivia Church of Isis in carved relief from the Tempel of Kalabsha (2017)

1 Isidora Forrest's ISIS MAGIC made this information first accessible to me and is a book I 100% recommend!

2 Reid, Donald M. (1985) ‘Indigenous Egyptology: The Decolonization of a Profession?’ Journal of the American Oriental Society, 105 (2), 233-246 (p. 234).

3 Abd el-Gawad, Heba and Stevenson, Alice (2021) ‘Egypt’s dispersed heritage: Multi-directional storytelling through comic art’, Journal of Social Archaeology, 21 (1), 121-145.