Veil of Isis the motif of the veiled Isis. One was a tradition that linked Isis with nature and the goddess Artemis. European art has a long tradition of personifying nature as a motherly figure. Starting in the 16th century, this motif was influenced by the iconography of the goddess Artemis of Ephesus (also known under the name of her Roman equivalent, Diana). The Ephesian Artemis was depicted with round protuberances on her chest that may originally have been jewelry but came to be interpreted as breasts. Isis was sometimes compared with Artemis, and the Roman writer Macrobius, in the fourth century CE,
Artemis was a survival of very old totemic and shamanistic rituals and formed part of a larger bear cult found further afield in other Indo-European cultures (e.g., Gaulish Artio). It is believed that a precursor of Artemis was worshipped in Minoan Crete as the goddess of mountains and hunting, Britomartis. While connection with Anatolian names has been suggested, the earliest attested forms of the name "Artemis" are the Mycenaean Greek , "a-te-mi-to" /Artemitos/ and , "a-ti-mi-te" /Artimitei/, written in Linear B at Pylos. R. S. P. Beekes suggested that the "e"/"i" interchange points to a Pre-Greek origin. Artemis was venerated in