Veil of Isis

Illustrations of Isis with her veil being lifted were popular beginning in the late 17th century, often as allegorical representations of Enlightenment progress uncovering nature's mysteries.

The 1877 book Isis Unveiled influenced Western esotericism and Neopagan movements, promulgating the metaphor to modern magical and spiritual practices.

The second part—"no one has ever lifted my mantle"—implies that the goddess was virginal, a claim that was occasionally made of Isis in Greco-Roman times but conflicted with the long-standing belief that she and her husband Osiris conceived their son Horus.

Another possible explanation, suggested by the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, is that the latter part of the Egyptian inscription said "There is nobody except me", proclaiming that the all-encompassing goddess was unique, and was mistranslated into Greek as "there is nobody who opened [or: uncovered] my face.

It goes back to an aphorism by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus in the late sixth or early fifth century BCE, which is traditionally translated as "Nature loves to hide."

[8] The frontispiece to Gerhard Blasius's 1681 book Anatome Animalum, engraved by Jan Luyken, was the first depiction of a many-breasted Isis-Artemis figure with her veil being removed.

The unveiling of the Isis-figure thus expressed the hope, prevalent during the Age of Enlightenment, that philosophy and science would triumph over unreason to uncover nature's deepest truths.

[9] Another interpretation of Isis's veil emerged in the late 18th century, in keeping with the Romantic movement that was developing at the time, in which nature constitutes an awe-inspiring mystery rather than prosaic knowledge.

[14] Many Freemasons, members of a European fraternal organization that attained its modern form in the early 18th century, adopted Egyptian motifs and came to believe their rituals could be traced back to the mysteries of Isis.

He also said the statement "I am that I am", spoken by the Jewish God in the Book of Exodus, meant the same as the Saite inscription and indicated that Judaism was a descendant of the ancient Egyptian belief system.

[16] Under the influence of Reinhold's interpretation, other Freemasons came to see the veiled Isis as a symbol of an impenetrable enigma, representing truth and being as well as nature,[17] a deity that, as Assmann puts it, was regarded as "too all-encompassing to have a name.

[19] Friedrich Schiller, for instance, wrote an essay on Egyptian and Jewish religion that mostly copied Reinhold's work but put a new emphasis on the emotional buildup that surrounded the mysteries.

Similarly, a frontispiece by Henry Fuseli, made for Erasmus Darwin's poem The Temple of Nature in 1803, explicitly shows the unveiling of a statue of Isis as the climax of the initiation.