The soil of the country thus breathed upon, which responded to the rays of Osiris and the breath of Kneph by pouring forth a continual supply of food for men, was naturally enough personified into a deity who claimed a large share of devotion, and was worshipped under many titles. Isis, the sister-wife of Osiris, was the name given to her, and so much was said of Isis, and so many stories told of her, that it appears at times as if, under that single name, the attributes of all the other goddesses were gathered up. Isis, was a personification, not of the receptive earth only, but of the feminine principle in nature wherever perceived, whether in the tender west that received the sun, or in the brooding midnight sky that invited to repose, or in the cherishing soil that drew in the sun’s warmth, and the breath of the wind, only to give them forth again changed into flowers and fruit and corn. Isis of ‘the ten thousand names’ the Greeks called her; and if we consider her as the embodiment of all that can be said of the feminine principle, we shall not be surprised at her many names, or at the difficulty of comprehending her nature. She was, above all else, however, the wife of Osiris and the mother of Horus, which certainly points to her being, or at all events to her having been originally, a sky-goddess; but then again she is spoken of as dressed in robes of many hues, which points to the changing and parti-coloured earth. Some of her attributes [Sidenote: Nephthys.] seem to connect her with the dark moon, especially the fact that her most important offices are towards the dead in the under-world, whose government she is spoken of as sharing with her husband Osiris. In pictures of the funeral procession she is drawn as standing at the head of the mummied body during its passage over the river that bounds the under-world, and in that position she represents the beginning; her younger sister, Nephthys, the end, stands at the foot of the still sleeping soul; the two goddesses thus summing up, with divinity at each end, the little span of mortal life. In the judgment-hall, Isis stands behind the throne of Osiris, drooping great protecting wings over him and it. This quality of protecting, of cherishing and defending, appears to be the spiritual conception worshipped under the form of the many-named goddess. Isis is constantly spoken of as the protector of her brother Osiris, and is drawn on the tomb with long drooping wings. She is also frequently represented as nursing Horus, the son who avenged his father, and in that character she wears the cow’s head, the cow being sacred to Isis, as was the bull to Osiris.