Talk:"Isis" of the Suebi

Latest comment: 7 years ago by Walshie79 in topic Identity of "Isis"

Identity of "Isis"

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Scholarship around this "Isis" seems to divide into three camps, where "Isis" is:

  1. Freyja, due to ship symbolism by way of her brother and father, Freyr and Njörðr, and connection to Nerthus
  2. Nehalennia, due to ship iconography found on numerous votive altars depicting the goddess
  3. Zisa, due to apparent phonetic resemblance
  4. Isis, assuming Tacitus to be correct, despite Tacitus's admitted uncertainty and his employment of interpretatio romana

This is a note for future additions. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:57, 14 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Here is another possibility I'll offer:

The name of the Egyptian goddess in both Latin and Greek had "Isidi" in the dative case ("to Isis"). We know from the Merseburg charm that old German had a word "Idisi" for a group of female deities. A Latin or Greek speaker who came upon a group of Germans praying/sacrificing to "Idisi" (perhaps at the equivalent of the Norse Dísablót) could very easily have misheard them as saying "Isidi" and understood it as "to Isis". Walshie79 (talk) 14:13, 19 August 2017 (UTC)Reply