The temple of Isis at Pompeii (2025)

Laurent Bricault, Richard Veymiers, Quinze ans après. Les études isiaques (1997-2012)

A thorough survey of 15 years of studies on the Isiac Cults in the Graeco-Roman world, published in L. Bricault & M. J. Versluys (éd.), Egyptian gods in the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean: Image and Reality between Local and Global, Mythos Suppl. 3, Palermo 2012, p. 1-24

Quinze ans après. Les études isiaques (1997-2012) : un premier bilan

Since the great Milanese exhibition dedicated to Isis in 1997, the isiac studies knew a real craze on behalf of one, and even now two researchers' new generations. In this paper, we try to summarize these fifteen years of researches and to draw the main axes which could be the ones for studies to come.

Laurent BRICAULT, A Bibliography (1990-2023)

Bases de données en ligne B1 avec C. Prêtre, Recueil des Inscriptions concernant les Cultes Isiaques (RICIS), en ligne à http://ricis.huma-num.fr/index.html B2 avec J.-L. Podvin, R. Veymiers et N. Amoroso, @NUBIS-Annales NUmériques de Bibliographie ISiaque, en ligne à https://una-editions.fr/consortium/anubis/. Ouvrages collectifs (direction et édition) C1 De Memphis à Rome. 40 ans d'études isiaques, Actes du Ier colloque international sur les études isiaques,

2018. “Material evidence and the Isiac cults: Art and Experience in the Sanctuary”

“Material evidence and the Isiac cults: Art and Experience in the Sanctuary” in The Greco-Roman Cults of Isis: Agents, Images and Practices. Proceedings of the VIth Conference of Isis Studies (Erfurt, May 6 – 8 – Liège, September 23 – 24, 2013) edited by V. Gasparini and R. Veymiers. Leiden: RGRW series, 584 -608.

Isis in Corinth: The Numismatic Evidence. City, Image and Religion

Les monnaies à types isiaques de Corinthe, dont le catalogue illustré est dressé dans cet article, attestent le succès rencontré par les cultes d’Isis et de Sarapis aux portes du Péloponnèse aux IIe et IIIe siècles apr. J.-C. La description de Pausanias mentionnant quatre lieux sacrés, la plupart des isiaca de Corinthe datent de cette même époque. Les divinités isiaques y étaient vénérées sous leurs formes les plus fréquentes et les plus ordinaires à l’époque impériale (type 1 : Isis debout tenant sistre et situle ; type 4 : Sarapis trônant la droite au-dessus de Cerbère), mais pouvaient aussi revêtir un aspect beaucoup plus spécifique (type 2 : Isis à la voile ; type 3 : port de Cenchrées avec en son centre la statue d’Isis à la voile). Comme l’indique cette iconographie particulière, la plus fréquemment utilisée sur les revers monétaires à type isiaque frappés entre les règnes d’Antonin et de Caracalla, c’est incontestablement la Dame des flots qui règne ici, à la charnière entre la Grèce continentale et le Péloponnèse, sur le bord des deux golfes assurant le commerce avec l’Orient et l’Occident.

Roman Children and the “Horus lock” between Cult and Image. In: Gasparini, V. / Veymiers, R. (eds.), "Individuals and Materials in the Greco-Roman Cults of Isis. Agents, Images, and Practices". Proceedings of the VIth Int. Conf. of Isis Studies. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 187, p. 509-538.

Proceedings of the VIth Int. Conf. of Isis Studies (Erfurt, May 6–8, 2013 – Liège, September 23–24, 2013). Volume I, 2018

There is ample evidence of Roman children being consecrated to deities whom the parents turned to and asked for protection of their offspring during the early stages of their lives, when they were in constant danger of becoming victims of an untimely death or being approached by malevolent demons. The evidence can be derived first and foremost from written sources. When it comes to figural representations, though, the picture gets somewhat blurred: although there is the undisputed iconographic tradition of the “Horus lock” handed down from Ancient Egypt to Roman art which produced quite a number of depictions of children with this very feature, the so far generally assumed connection with the cult of Isis has to be reconsidered. Whereas until now nearly every portrait of a child with a peculiar lock of hair – located at the right, the left or the back of the head, longer or shorter, bound, forming a kind of tail, in combination with short-cropped hair, with or without a fillet, etc. – has been taken as depiction of a child close to the mystery cult of Isis, methodologically it is much more sound to look carefully at every individual depiction to assess the kind and degree of this connection, or even if such a connection can safely be established at all.

Laurent Bricault (éd.), Isis en Occident, Leiden 2004

In this volume, 16 contributions by specialists of political and religious history of Antiquity give a precious general overview of the diffusion of Egyptian cults in the West. The first part gives a very precise survey of the diffusion of Egyptian cults in the western Roman world, while the second part of the book is devoted to special fields usually considered as subsidiary (numismatics, lychnology, gemmology), but in fact essential for a better understanding of the success of the Isiac cults in the Graeco-Roman world between 330 BC and 400 AD.

L. Bricault, M. J. Versluys (éd.), Isis on the Nile. Egyptian Gods in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt

The diffusion of the cults of Isis is recently again intensively studied. Research on this fascinating phenomenon has traditionally been characterised by its focus on L'Égypte hors d'Égypte, while developments in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt itself were often seen as belonging to a different domain. This volume tries to overcome that unhealthy dichotomy by studying the cults of Isis in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt itself in relation to developments in the Mediterranean at large. The book not only presents an overview of the most important deities, often based on new or unpublished material, but also pays ample attention to the cultural processes behind Isis on Nile, like relations between style and identity, religious choice, social- and cultural memory and Egypt’s view of its own past.

L. Bricault, M.J. Versluys, Isis and Empires, in: L. Bricault, M.J. Versluys (eds.), Power, politics and the cults of Isis (Brill: Leiden - Boston 2014) 3-35.

Laurent Bricault, Recueil des Inscriptions concernant les Cultes Isiaques - RICIS Supplément IV (2020)

published in L. Bricault, R. Veymiers éd., Bibliotheca Isiaca IV, Bordeaux 2020, p. 357-375