Melissa Dowling

2014 - 2015 Writing Fellow

The Cult of Isis and the Suffering Heroine: Heliodorus’ Aithiopika

Melissa Dowling’s manuscript explores the ways in which the Egyptian worship of Isis was absorbed and transformed in the Roman empire. She focuses on the worshipper’s experience in temples and shrines in Greece, Italy and Egypt, and on religious symbology. The works of Plutarch and Heliodorus in particular reveal the initiate’s understanding of the moral and philosophical framework of the cult.