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Isis had the bewitching charm, beauty and goodness of a Madonna who would above all listen to women and the unfortunate. She had undergone the ordeals of widowhood before restoring Osiris to life, after he had been the victim of Seth, the spirit of evil. Anubis, the jackal- or dog-headed god, had helped her to discover the traces of her dismembered husband. In commemoration, the Isiac liturgy repeated the sufferings of god and goddess. As for Serapis, he was a Graeco-Alexandrian reinterpretation of Osiris in his role of sovereign and protector of the dead. In Hellenistic and Roman worship, he had acquired the attributes of a healer-god, helpful to anyone who invoked him. When they were delocalised, these gods tended to become universal, or at least available to all and sundry, anywhere people had need of them. For this universality did not conflict with their quality of very personal gods, constantly close to their faithful followers,
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Robert Turcan (The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times)