Schiller refers with his ballad to the motif of the
veiled Isis, a very popular theme in artistic as well as intellectual contexts at that time. Furthermore, in the context of contemporary
Freemasonry this motif has great significance and thus Schiller already takes it up in his essay
Die Sendung Moses (1790), which is strongly inspired by the Freemason
Karl Leonard Reinhold. Then he also takes up the motif in his writing
Vom Erhabenen (1793). This a philosophical work theorizing
the sublime and it is inspired by
Immanuel Kant, who used the veiled Isis of Sais as prime example for
the sublime. Schiller's ballad is based on
Plutarch's written record about a statue of Athena-Isis in the Egyptian city of Sais, in which Plutarch states the statue bore an inscription saying "I am all that has been and is and shall be; and no mortal has ever lifted my veil." A further basis is an anecdote of
Pausanias, which is about a young man going mad by illegally opening the holy chest of a mystery cult. Both fundamental story elements, the veiled Isis as well as the mental disease from the illegal view of the holy mysteries, are already treated in
Die Sendung Moses. ==References==