An excerpt from my dissertation "The Bee Cult in Greek Myth and Ancient History"

(Part 1) Women's Religious Experience: The Ancient Mediterranean Sistrum

Jun 23, 2024

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Berenice, Queen of Egypt and Libya, holding a sistrum in one hand, and an offering of her hair in another. This symbolises deep religiosity, the sistrum related to a sacred setting. She was married to Ptolemy III, and when he departed to Syria, Berenice dedicated a lock of her hair to the gods as an offering for his safe return. The lock disappeared and the court astronomer claimed to have found it in a constellation which was named Coma Berenices, meaning “The Lock of Berenice”. Oil on canvas, Anthony Frederick Augustus (1829-1904), Leighton House Museum, London.

Isis is the genius [the spirit] of the Nile, who by the movement of her sistrum, which she carries in her right hand, signifies the access and recess (or the rising and falling) of the Nile…

- Servius the Grammarian, Observations on the Aeneid, 1.8

From Anatolia to Crete to Egypt, there were priestesses whose primary creator divinity was a Mother Goddess. Throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, she was known by many names, epithets and symbols.

Marble Romanised statue of Isis holding a sistrum, found at Hadrian's Villa (Pantanello), Palazzo Nuovo, Capitoline Museums

I think one of the most compelling distinctions that exist between ancient women’s mysteries and the later imposition of the Abrahamic religions as that these women accessed the divine directly.

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