Panel with Painted Image of Isis

A.D. 100–200

Medium

Tempera on wood

Dimensions

40 × 19 cm

Status

In Museum Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-128446

Romano-Egyptian painted panel of the Egyptian goddess Isis in tempera (animal glue) on a fig wood panel. This pairs with the Serapis panel ([74.AP.21](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/7145/), with which it is currently displayed) having been cut from the same piece of wood and painted by the same hand. Together with that panel, it originally served as the right door (to Serapis’s left) of a small devotional shrine, the sides and back of which are now missing. The panel’s good surface condition indicates it must have been protected by its closed position facing inward. It has been Carbon 14 dated to the first century BC-AD, but its stylistic date of around 180-200 indicates a secondary use may be possible for the original wooden panel at the time it was fabricated into two doors. Isis was a principal and original goddess of Egypt, wife/sister of Osiris and mother of Horus. Having resurrected Osiris and given birth to their son Horus, Isis was seen as a royal goddess possessing supernatural powers over motherhood, the land, and fertility in general. By the Hellenistic period, the worship of Isis had spread across the Mediterranean and after the annexation of Egypt by Ro…