AllatRa by Anastasia Novykh 2 www.allatra.org

AllatRa by Anastasia Novykh
Here is another example connected with the ancient Egyptian Goddess Isis, whose cult
of veneration in ancient times was widespread both in the East and in the West, for
example, in Asia Minor, Syria, Greece, Italy, Gaul and other countries.
Anastasia: Yes, even during the times of Hellenism, the cult of Isis was very popular far
beyond the borders of Egypt. For the public, she was presented as a goddess of the
feminine principle, fertility (creation), and the goddess of navigation. But the first thing
catches the eye in a typical image of her is her head-dress, an attribute in the form of the
crescent with its horns pointing up and a circle over it (“AllatRa”).
Figure 88. Attribute of the head-dress of the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis.
Rigden: In sacred interpretation, her name meant the transition stage, that which
connected with a different sphere. By the way, in the Hellenistic interpretation of the
sacred symbols of, for instance, the cross-dome temple was mostly borrowed, as I have
already said, from the religious concepts of the East. For example, I have already
mentioned in the conversation about the Greek word “apse” which means a cylindrical
room under the central large dome or tower in the cross-dome temple, and about the
locking stone (the “key”) that “locks” the arch. The symbolical meaning of the apse was
borrowed by the Greeks from the sacral meaning of the name of the goddess of Ancient
Egypt – Isis and one of her attributes – the Egyptian ankh cross, which meant “eternal
life”, the “key to life”, a symbol of immortality. The apse (from ancient Greek “αψίς”
meaning “arc, loop, arch, protrusion”, “that which brings together, connects”) – that’s
how the Greeks called any circular shape: disk, orb, cylinder and the firmament.
Anastasia: Yes, the priests of various ancient countries in many occasions had to put up
with such massive veneration of the “foreign goddess” by “their herds”. It was hard for
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