Field Trip Friday: Roman Temple to the Egyptian God Isis
We’re done with Ancient History officially! You have no idea how excited I am to say that. For our last field trip, we stayed close to home, and went to Mainz to see the ruins of the Roman temple to the Egyptian God, Isis.
The cool thing about this temple is that it is kept under a shopping mall. It blows my mind. This is just the way things are here, Roman walls are everywhere. Castles are everywhere. It’s no big deal to have Roman Ruins with Egyptian markings on them in the basement of your mall under the ice cream shop.
As one German friend told me, “It’s common.” As in, no biggie.
Her house is probably older then my entire country, so many she isn’t as filled with awe as I am. But still, this is So. Stinkin’. Cool.
The temple is really nothing but the remains of walls, because the Mainz river used to overflow every year, which flooded the site so many times, it became eroded and destroyed. The thing that made this trip especially special was that the man working at the temple that day just happened to speak amazing English, and gave us a tour of the exhibit, and explained everything to us. Sometimes when we visit places like this, it’s hard to tell what you are looking at because I can’t read German (I so wish I could!) but we were amazingly lucky for this tour!
The temple was used as a place for people to come and write down “spells” or hexes against their enemies, kind of like a magic voo-doo doll on paper. There was a wall dedicated to these slips of paper and tablets that people would write on and leave in the temple. They also had a collection of oil lamps, and portions of the walls and ceiling tiles that had carvings and paintings.
My favorite part was the beautiful bowls that the priests would pour water and wine in for the temple attendants to drink. Even though this was a temple to a female god, only Men could participate in the ceremonies.
It was a simple, free, close to home trip, but I think this was one of my favorite Roman stops. Next week, we head to Venice for Field Trip Friday (oh, I know, you can totally hate me, it’s going to be AMAZING) and then we did into the Middle Ages, with trips to Renaissance Festivals, Monasteries, Cathedrals and Castles and all the amazing places around us that still remain from this fascinating time in history!
Venice is great-have a wonderful time.
We get a bit laid back about Roman ruins. I remember going to a dig where a Roman villa had been found under the football pitch where my cousin had played school football.