✨ TEMPLE OF ISIS, RHODES ✨
In Rhodes Town lie the widely unknown ruins of one of the most ancient Temples of Isis outside Egypt. The aim of this page is to give this place of magic and mystery more visibility, so that more people may get aware of its existence, and also in the hopes that some day it might be preserved and kept in good condition as such an ancient site deserves. About 4 m to the
south of the temple, almost aligned with its western flank, lies a subterranean construction of smaller size than the main cult building, but of equal significance. A narrow straight stairway of eleven preserved steps runs down from south to north and leads to an ellipsoidal well. In the well (which was probably used as a water crypt and part of the cult) Egyptian or Egyptian-style statues were found, including four Horus falcons, one of which crowned by the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. This wasn’t the only temple of Isis in Greece in Ptolemaic times, but it appears that here the cult to the Egyptian gods maintained several elements of Egyptian origin. For example, the presence of Horus statues in the form of a falcon is rarely encountered in the sanctuaries of the Egyptian gods outside the land of the Nile. Besides the Horus falcons, the most important pieces of the group are considered to be two male standing figures and the block statue of a naophoros, whereas a plinth with the preserved feet of another standing figure as well as a fragmentary double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt testify to the existence of more Egyptian-style sculptures than the ones which have come to light. The statues seem to generate from the Egyptian artistic tradition and correspond to the stylistic features of the Ptolemaic period. Since Isis, Sarapis and Horus are all depicted in the sculptures, it seems that the divine trinity was jointly worshipped in the sanctuary, although it is rather surprising that the Hellenized forms of Isis and Sarapis are not accompanied by Harpocrates, but by the Egyptian form of their child. By the beginning of the 3rd century BC the diffusion of the cult of Isis and Sarapis outside of Egypt had already begun and the cosmopolitan city of Rhodes was one of the earliest recipients of the Egyptian religion. Several elements of this foreign cult were familiar to the Rhodians since the Early Archaic period, when commercial and cultural exchanges between Rhodes and Egypt, vividly illustrated in the great number of Egyptian and Egyptianizing objects of this period found on the island, developed intensely. The existence of a public sanctuary of the Egyptian gods in Rhodes already in the early 3rd century BC places Rhodes amongst the earliest recipients of the Egyptian cult. Rhodes, where the blending of the Greek and Egyptian religion was successfully completed, certainly emerges as one of the main stations in the diffusion of the Isiac cult in Greece. The construction of the temple dates back to the early years of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, without excluding though an earlier dating during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter, which makes this temple one of the oldest Temples of Isis outside the land of the Nile. I owe all of this information, and the discovery of the Temple itself, to the precious paper by Charikleia Fantaoutsaki : Preliminary Report on the Excavation of the Sanctuary of Isis
in Ancient Rhodes: Identification, Topography and Finds - Bibliotheca Isiaca, II, 2011, p. 47-63, which is to my knowledge the only document available regarding the Sanctuary of Isis in Rhodes. https://www.academia.edu/9516649/Bibliotheca_Isiaca_II_Preliminary_Report_on_the_Excavation_of_the_Sanctuary_of_Isis_in_Ancient_Rhodes_Identification_Topography_and_Finds
