Imhotep

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Imhotep was the ‘Royal Scribe’ in the court of Amenhotep III. His tomb is in Thebes TT102.

 

Inanna

 

Inanna is the ancient Sumerian goddess considered the mother of all living beings. She represented love, sensuality, fertility, and procreation. But Inanna also has another side. As she fiercely protected her children (“everything that is alive”,) she was also the goddess of war. Later the Akkadians and Assyrians identified her as the goddess Ishtar. 

Inanna rose from a local Sumerian deity to the Queen of Heaven through the poems and hymns of the Akkadian high priestess and poet En-Hedu-Ana (2285-2250 BCE). The goddess became the most popular goddess in all of Mesopotamia because the people could quickly identify her with Ishtar. (See En-Hedu-Ana)

Inanna was the patron deity of Uruk, and her name was written with a sign representing a reed stalk tied into a loop at the top. This sign appears in the earliest written texts from the mid-fourth millennium BC.

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Inbu-Hedj - Memphis - Men-Nefer

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Inebu-hedj (White Walls, also Inbu-Hedj, White fortress) was one of 42 nomes (administrative division) in Ancient Egypt and one of the names of Memphis/Men–Nefer (See Memphis, See Men–Nefer).

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Ipy

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Ipy (Jpj), son of Amenhotep/Huy (the 'High Steward' and 'Royal scribe' in the court of Amenhotep III. and Akhenaten). Ipy was the healer of the royal family and the 'Chief of Physicians' in the Ptah temple.

"Ipy had a tomb prepared in Thebes, namely TT136. This tomb is said to have included four images of Akhenaten in an Osirian pose. However, Ipy was never residing in Thebes, making it unlikely that he was the owner of this tomb. Ipy may have also had a tomb prepared in Amarna. This tomb is now known as tomb 10." (Aidan Dodson)

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Ipui

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Priest of Hathor, we know about him from a stele he erected containing the ritual of the "Five gifts of Hathor".

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Iset

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Iset was the second of the four daughters of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III. and his Great Royal Wife Tiye (18th dynasty), and a sister of Akhenaten. Her other brother was crown prince Thutmose I. Her name is the original ancient Egyptian version of the name Isis. She became her father's wife in the title in the 34th year of Amenhotep's reign (around Amenhotep's second sed festival). After her father's death, she is not mentioned again.

We can find her image in the temple at Soleb with her parents and her sister Henuttaneb and on a carnelian plaque with Henuttaneb (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City). In addition, the archaeologists found a box and a pair of kohl tubes in Gurob, which probably belonged to her.

 

Isis

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Isis (Aset or Iset) was one of the most important goddesses of Egypt. Isis is the Greek word of the ancient Egyptian word for 'throne'.

Because of her grievous mourning for her husband, she became the deity for the mourners, the principal deity in rites connected with the dead. She healed Osiris in an impossible state with her magic, so she was the goddess the people prayed to for curing the sick and bringing the deceased back to life. Her devoted love for her son made her a role model for all women. All in all, Isis was a powerful goddess of protection, but her main feature was being a great magician, and the ancient Egyptians believed that her power surpassed that of all other deities. 

As the powerful mother goddess, Isis had strong links with Egyptian pharaohs. She was often depicted as a beautiful woman in a long dress wearing a headdress with the hieroglyphic sign of the throne or a solar disk with cow horns.

Heliopolis in Greek means 'The City of the Sun', where the population mainly consisted of the followers of the sun god, Ra. The priests of this city developed the myth of Isis. The legend says Isis was the daughter of Geb (the earth god) and Nut (the sky goddess). She was the sister of the deities Osiris, Seth, and Nephthys and married Osiris, the king of Egypt.

Isis was a good queen on her husband's side. She taught the women to weave, bake, and brew beer. In jealousy, Seth hatched a plot to kill his brother, Osiris, and trapped him in a decorated wooden coffin, which he plastered with lead and threw into the Nile. With his brother gone, Seth became the king of Egypt.

But Isis missed her husband, and she searched everywhere for him for many years. Finally, she found Osiris in Byblos. Osiris was still trapped in his coffin, and Isis brought his body back to Egypt. In his fury, when Seth discovered the coffin, he hacked his brother into pieces and scattered the body parts worldwide. Nephthys transformed into a bird and helped her sister, Isis, to discover and reunite all the fragments of her dead husband's body, except his penis. Isis used her magical powers, so she could make Osiris whole again. Nine months Isis gave birth to Horus.

She bandaged the body of Osiris, but despite all her efforts, he was neither alive nor dead. This way, Osiris became the first mummy, returned to the underworld, and became king of the dead.

Isis was the perfect traditional Egyptian wife and mother, the shelter she afforded her child gave her the character of a

Images of Isis nursing the baby Horus may have influenced the early Christian artists who depicted the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus.

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Ishtar

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Ishtar, in Akkadian (her Sumerian name was Inanna), was the goddess of war and sexual love in Mesopotamian religion. Ishtar is the Akkadian counterpart of the West Semitic goddess Astarte. (See Astarte and Inanna)