Nicomedia Temple of Isis

About

The same fire that gutted Nicomedia's Gerusia hall around 112 CE also destroyed the city's temple of Isis, evidence the Egyptian cult had a real foothold in Roman Bithynia. Pliny listed it among the fire's public losses and pushed for a firefighting guild to prevent a repeat. Trajan turned the guild down, and no source records the temple being rebuilt before his death. Its exact location within Nicomedia is unknown, so this marker is an approximate city-center placement.

What happened here

The building itself is a house for the god, and most people never go inside. Everything public happens on the steps and at the altar in front: an animal led up, examined, killed cleanly, its organs read, the meat divided and eaten. The priest covers his head and a flute player keeps up a noise so no ill-omened word is heard. Worshippers leave what they can afford — a terracotta figure, a coin, a model of the body part they want healed — and the accumulated clutter is periodically cleared and buried on site. On festival days the doors are opened and the cult statue is dressed, garlanded, and sometimes carried out through the streets. The temple also holds money, which is why towns keep their treasury in one.

In ancient writing

• Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 10.33

  Lists the temple of Isis among the public buildings destroyed in Nicomedia's fire.

Sources

• https://www.judaism-and-rome.org/pliny-younger-letters%C2%A0x33-34

Nearby

Temple of Roma and Augustus

281 m

Nicomedia Council Hall

139 m

Nicomedia Forum

462 m

Nicomedia Aqueduct

4.3 km

Nicomedia Canal Project

5.2 km

Nicaea Aqueduct

39 km