“Eu sou Ísis”: representação de onipotência e ordem nas aretalogias dedicadas a Ísis (Séc II a.C. – III. D.C.)

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the construction of Isis’s divine identity and authority based on the corpus of Aretalogies of Isis in the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean. The general objective is to investigate how the aretalogical discourse articulates the goddess’s attributes, epithets, and functions to establish a sovereignty of cosmic and cultural reach that surpasses Egyptian alterity, legitimizing the ordering of society (civilizing power) through the ordering of the universe (cosmic power). Addressing a historiographical gap that frequently privileges the search for the textual origins of these hymns, this research proposes a dual, innovative approach: the analysis of Isis’s "voice" in the first person as a device of agency and symbolic efficacy aimed at the Greco-Roman public, and the investigation of how the materiality of these inscriptions dialogued with the archaeological and monumental contexts of the sanctuaries. To this end, a documentary corpus consisting of eight sources is mobilized: seven epigraphic Aretalogies (Maroneia, Andros, Telmessos, Kyme, Thessalonica, Cassandreia, and Ios) and the version preserved in Diodorus Siculus’s Historical Library. Structurally, the work is organized into four chapters: the first reconstructs the historical background of the goddess from Pharaonic Egypt to the dynamics of cultural negotiation promoted by the Ptolemaic Lagids; the second chapter we map the context of the diffusion of the Isiac cult throughout the Ancient Mediterranean West, especially in the coastal region of the Aegean Sea. In the third chapter, the methodological and typological framework of the corpus is established, presenting the transcription, translation, and material context of the inscriptions; the fourth proceeds with the thematic exegesis of the sources, examining the forms of invocation, cosmic potency, and the practical execution of the deity’s deeds (erga). The interpretative results demonstrate that the representation constructed in the aretalogies differs significantly from the maternal and nurturing image popularized by domestic devotion or the literature of Apuleius. What emerges from the inscriptions is a "Tyrannical Isis" (tyrannos), marked by austerity and the exercise of an absolute power that subjugates Destiny itself. It concludes that the monumental discourse of the Aretalogies operated in both an informative and instrumental manner, imposing awe through an omnipotent authority, whose markers of subjectivity closely align with a stabilizing sovereignty of the Cosmos.