The statue and inscription at Sais The first mention of the veil of Isis appears in On Isis and Osiris, a philosophical interpretation of ancient Egyptian religion by Plutarch, a Greek writer in the late first and early second centuries CE. He wrote of a seated statue of a goddess in the Egyptian city of Sais that bore the inscription "I am all that has been and is and shall be; and no mortal has ever lifted my garment." Griffiths 1970, p. 131 Plutarch called the garment a peplos; the word is translated in English as "mantle" or "veil". Assmann 1997, pp. 118–119 Plutarch identified the goddess as "Athena, whom [the Egyptians] consider to be Isis." Sais was the cult center of the goddess Neith, whom the Greeks compared to their goddess Athena and was thus the goddess that Plutarch spoke of. In Plutarch's time Isis was the preeminent goddess in Egyptian religion and was frequently syncretized with Neith, which is why Plutarch equated the two. Griffiths 1970, p. 283 More than 300 years after Plutarch, the Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus wrote of the same statue in Book I of his Commentaries on Plato's "Timaeus". In this version, the garment is a chiton, "no mortal" is replaced by "no one", and a third statement is added: "The fruit of my womb was the sun". Proclus said the statue was in the adyton of a temple at Sais, but the inner areas of Egyptian temples were not accessible to anyone but priests, and it is unlikely that a statue of a deity would have been permanently veiled; priests saw the cult image of the god every day when performing temple rites. However, a statue in a temple's courtyards or halls could have borne an inscription similar to the one Plutarch and Proclus related. The first part of the inscription—"I am all that has been and is and shall be"—means the goddess encompasses everything. This claim was commonly made of creator gods such as Ra or Amun in Egyptian religion; if the same was said about Isis, it reflected her increased status in Greco-Roman times, in which she was often said to be the creator of the world. 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. Griffiths 1970, pp. 284–285 Proclus's version suggests that the goddess conceived and gave birth to the sun without the participation of a male deity, which would reflect Egyptian myths about Neith as the mother of the sun god Ra. 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."
The statue and inscription at Sais The first mention of the veil of Isis appears in On Isis and Osiris, a philosophical interpretation of ancient Egyptian religion by Plutarch, a Greek writer in the late first and early second centuries CE. He wrote of a seated statue of a goddess in the Egyptian city of Sais that bore the inscription "I am all that has been and is and shall be; and no mortal has ever lifted my garment." Plutarch called the garment a peplos; the word is translated in English as "mantle" or "veil". Plutarch identified the goddess as "Athena, whom [the Egyptians] consider to be Isis." Sais was the cult center of the goddess Neith, whom the Greeks compared to their goddess Athena and was thus the goddess that Plutarch spoke of. In Plutarch's time Isis was the preeminent goddess in Egyptian religion and was frequently syncretized with Neith, which is why Plutarch equated the two. More than 300 years after Plutarch, the Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus wrote of the same statue in Book I of his Commentaries on Plato's "Timaeus". In this version, the garment is a chiton, "no mortal" is replaced by "no one", and a third statement is added: "The fruit of my womb was the sun". Proclus said the statue was in the adyton of a temple at Sais, but the inner areas of Egyptian temples were not accessible to anyone but priests, and it is unlikely that a statue of a deity would have been permanently veiled; priests saw the cult image of the god every day when performing temple rites. However, a statue in a temple's courtyards or halls could have borne an inscription similar to the one Plutarch and Proclus related. The first part of the inscription—"I am all that has been and is and shall be"—means the goddess encompasses everything. This claim was commonly made of creator gods such as Ra or Amun in Egyptian religion; if the same was said about Isis, it reflected her increased status in Greco-Roman times, in which she was often said to be the creator of the world. 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. Proclus's version suggests that the goddess conceived and gave birth to the sun without the participation of a male deity, which would reflect Egyptian myths about Neith as the mother of the sun god Ra. 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."
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Griffiths 1970, p. 131
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Assmann 1997, pp. 118–119
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Griffiths 1970, p. 283
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Griffiths 1970, pp. 284–285