Tricking the Sun God’s True Name
Isis wanted supreme power, and power lay hidden in a god's "true name." She fashioned a serpent from Ra's spittle and earth, and it bit the aged sun god. In his agony Ra recited all his names in search of a cure, and Isis said: only if you tell me your deepest, hidden true name can I heal you. At last Ra had to surrender the name — and from then on Isis wielded almost unlimited magic. To know a being's most secret name is to command it: this is the core idea of Egyptian magic, and Isis turned it on the sun god himself.
The Mother in the Marshes
After Osiris's death, Isis, carrying Horus, hid in the papyrus marshes of the Nile Delta, bearing and hiding and raising the child alone, evading Set's watch. Once the little Horus was stung by a venomous scorpion and hung near death, and Isis's pleading roused the gods, so that Thoth sent down a spell to save the child. This story of a "lone mother hiding her child from pursuit in the wilderness" is the most human chapter of Egyptian myth, and made Isis the protector of all mothers — her love not an abstract divinity but concrete nights kept watch, flights taken, illnesses cured.