Editing Isis (section)

====Personal worship====
Roman ''[[lararia]]'', or household shrines, contained statuettes of the ''[[penates]]'', a varied group of protective deities chosen based on the preferences of the members of the household.{{sfn|Bodel|2008|pp=258, 261–262}} Isis and other Egyptian deities were found in ''lararia'' in Italy from the late first century BCE{{sfn|Alvar|2008|p=192}} to the beginning of the fourth century CE.{{sfn|Bodel|2008|p=261}}

The cult asked both ritual and moral purity of its devotees, periodically requiring ritual baths or days-long periods of sexual abstinence. Isiacs sometimes displayed their piety on irregular occasions, singing Isis's praises in the streets or, as a form of [[penance]], declaring their misdeeds in public.{{sfn|Bøgh|2015|pp=281–282}}

Some temples to Greek deities, including Serapis, practiced [[incubation (ritual)|incubation]], in which worshippers slept in a temple hoping that the god would appear to them in a dream and give them advice or heal their ailments. Some scholars believe that this practice took place in Isis's temples, but there is no firm evidence that it did.{{sfn|Renberg|2017|pp=392–393}} Isis was, however, thought to communicate through dreams in other circumstances, including to call worshippers to undergo initiation.{{sfn|Bøgh|2015|p=278}}