Osiris

God of Death and Rebirth

God of Resurrection,
The Underworld and The Judge of Dead
First child of of Geb and Nut
Brother of Seth,
Nephthys, and Isis who was also his wife.
Father of Horus by Isis
Father of Anubis by Nephthys who seduced him

Prayers and spells were addressed to Osiris throughout Egyptian history, in hopes of securing his blessing and entering the afterlife which he ruled; but his popularity steadily increased through the Middle Kingdom. By Dynasty 18 he was probably the most widely worshipped god in Egypt. His popularity endured until the latest phases of Egyptian history; reliefs still exist of Roman emperors, conquerors of Egypt, dressed in the traditional garb of the Pharaohs, making offerings to him in the temples.

Osiris is regarded as the dead king that watches over the nether world and is rejuvenated in his son Horus. As the symbol of eternal life he was worshipped at Abydos and Philae. This ancient Egyptian god's annual death and resurrection personified the self-renewing vitality and fertility of nature. His domain is the Duat - the Egyptian Underworld. Originally he was a vegetation god closely linked to corn; later god of the dead, the supreme funerary deity.

Osiris, in his earliest form of a tamarisk tree trunk, was called Djed. His later mummy wrappings were symbolic of his having been encased inside a tree trunk. Over time the tree trunk was replaced by the imagery of a pillar which became known as the Djed Pillar, the Pillar of Stability. Osiris was enclosed in the trunk of a tamarisk tree, which was later cut down and used as a pillar in the palace of the King of Byblos, he metaphorically became as one with the Tree of Life. Osiris became the Axis Munde around which the heavens appear to revolve; he became the World Pillar, the link between the terrestrial and celestial worlds. He held the heavens in his outstretched arms, and he soaked up the word of God from the waters of the Netherworld. In Ancient Egypt the Netherworld was called the "Netterworld" meaning the "World of the Gods". The gods had their home among the stars.

Worship of Osiris

Up to the present no evidence has been deduced from the hierglyphic texts which enables us to say specfically when Osiris began to be worshipped, or in what town or city his cult was first established, but the general information which we possess on this subject indicates that this god was adored as the great god of the dead by the dynastic Egyptians from first to last, and that the earliest dynastic centers of his worship were situated at Abydos in the South at Tettu {Mendes} in the North ; in proof of these statements the following considerations are submitted. In a Rubric to one of the versions of the lxivth Chapter of the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead it is said that the Chapter was "found" during the reign of Semti, that is to say, the Chapter was revised, or edited. or rewritten, or received some kind of literary treatment, during the reign of the fifth king of the 1st Dynasty. If we look at the version of the Chapter to which this Rubric is appended we find this sentence :----"I am Yesterday, "and I am Today ; and I have the power to be born a second time. I the hidden Soul create the gods, and I give sepulchral meals to "the divine beings in Amenti and in heaven." Osiris is mentioned by name in connection with "his city,' and Tem, Kheppera, Shu, the Urti goddess, i.e., Isis and Nephthys, the goddess Aukert, the Chief of Re-stau, Hehi, the Bennu,a nd the 4,601,200 spirits, who are twelve cubits high, are refered to, and we see that the whole of the religious and mythological systems of the Egyptians as made known to us by texts of later periods were in the Ist Dynasty.

Osiris as Water God

Among a people like the Egyptians it would not be very long before the annual rise, and inundation, and fall of the Nile would be compared to the chief periods in the lives of men, and before the renewed rise of the Nile in the following year would be compared to man's immortality, which in Egypt was taken for granted from the earliest times; and that this exactly is what happened the hierglyphic texts suppply abundant proof. Unfortunately, however, we find nowhere in Egyptian works a connected narrative of the life, acts and deeds, and sufferings and death, and resurrection of Osiris, the man-god, but we possess a tolerably accurate account of them in Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride.

According to these Osiris was the son of Rhea, the Egyptian Nut, the wife of Helios, the Egyptian Ra, by Kronos, the Egyptian Seb. When Helios found his wife was with child by Seb he declared that she should not be delivered of her child of any month or on any year. By a stratagem, Hermes, the Egyptian Thoth, played at tables with Selene, and won from her the seventieth part of each day of the year, i.e., in all five days Osiris was born, and a voice was heard to proclaim that the lord of creation was born. In due course he became king of Egypt and taught men husbandry, and established a code of laws, and made men worship the gods.

When Egypt had become peaceful and prosperous he set out to instruct the other nations of the world, and Isis riled Egypt during his absence. On his return Typhon, the Egyptian Set, and his seventy-two comrades, made Osirsi to lie down in a chest, which was immediately closed by them, and cast into the Nile, which carried it down to its Tanaitic mouths. When Isis heard what had befallen her husband she cut off the lock of her hair as a sign of grief, and then set out to find his dead body. At length she traced it to Byblos, where it had been carried by the sea, and she found that the waves had gently laid it among the branches of a tamarisk tree, which had grown to a magnificent size, and had enclosed the chest within its trunk. The Babylos here referred to is not Byblos in Phoenicia, but the papyrus swamps of Egypt, which are carried in Egyptian Athu, a name meaning 'papyrus plants' - the Greeks rendered the Egyptian word for 'papyrus' the Greeks rendered the Egyptian word for 'papyrus' by BuBros, and some copyist of the Greek text misunderstood the signification of the word in this passage, and rendered it by the name of the city of Phoenicia.

The king of the country, admiring the tree, had it cut down and made a pillar for the roof of his house; it is this tree trunk which is referred to by the hierhlyphic sign tet, and which is continually used in the texts with reference to Osiris. It has been said to represent a mason's table, but the four cross-bars have nothing to do with such a thing, for they are intended to indicate the four branches of a roof-tree of a which were turned to the four cardinal points. When Isis heard that the tree had been cut down, she went to the palace of the king, and through the good offices of the royal maidens she was made nurse to the king's son. Instead of nursing the child in the ordinary way, Isis gave him her finger to suck, and each night she put him the fire to consume his mortal parts, changing herself all the while into a swallow an bemoaning her fate. On one occasion the queen saw her son in the flames, and cried out, and thus deprived him of immortality. Then Isis told the queen her story, and begged for the pillar which supported the roof. This she cut open, and took out the chest and her husband's body, and departed with them to Egypt; having arrived there she hid the chest and set in quest of her son Horus.

One night, however, Typhon was out hunting by the light of the moon, an he found the chest, and recognizing the body, tore it into fourteen pieces, which he scattered up and down throughout the land. When Isis heard of this she took a boat made of papyrus - a plant abhorred by crocodiles--- and sailing about she gathered together the fragments of Osiris's body, wheresoever she found one, and buried it and built a tomb over it. Meanwhile Horus had grown up, and being encouraged in the use of arms by Osiris, who returned from the other world, he went out to do battle with Typhon the murderer of his father. The fight lasted some days, and Typhon was made captive, and was given over to the custody of Isis who, however, set him free. Horus in his rage tore from her head the royal diadem, but Thoth gave her a helmet in the shape of a cow's head. In two other battles fought between Horus and Thphon Horus was the victor. The great battle between Horus and Thphon took place, we are told in the Ivth Sallier Papyrus, on the 26th day of the month Thoth ; they first fought in the form of two men, but afterwards changed themselves into two bears, and they passed three days and three nights in this form.

Victory of Horus

From the above summary it is clear that the Egyptians believed that Osiris was the sun of a god and lived a good life upon earth as a wise and just king, that he was slain by the malice of evil men, that hios body was mutilated, and that his wife Isis collected his limbs which had been scattered throughout Egypt by Set, or Thphon, and that Osiris by some means obtained a new life in the next world, where he reigned as god and king. The hieroglyphic texts contain abundant testimony that the statements of Plutarch are substantially correct, and from first to last Osiris was to the Egyptins the god-man who suffered, and died, and rose again, and reigned eternally in heaven. They believed that they would inherit eternal life, just as he had done, provided that what was done for him by the gods was done for them, and they made use of amulets, and magical texts of all kind, and performed ceremonies connected with sympathetic magic in order that they might compel Osiris and the gods who had brought about his resurrection {i.e., Thoth, "lord of divine words, the scibe of tyhe gods," and Isis, who made use of the words with which Thoth supplied her, and Horus and his companion gods whpo performed the symbolic ceremonies which were effectual in producing the reconstruction of the body of Osiris and its revivifcation} the act on their behalf even as they had acted for the god. The species of the amulets used were constant, and they appear to have sixteen in number, four figures of the children of Horus each with his characteristic head, four lapis-lazuli Tet pillars, two bulls, a figure of Horus a figure of Thoth, two carnelian Tet pillars, and two lapis-lazuli utchats.

Forms of Osiris

From the Pyramid Texts we learn that the dead kings were already identified with Osiris, and that Osiris was identified with the sun-god, but we have no means of knowing when he was merged in Seker, the god of the Memphite Underworld. The Heliopolitian priests declared that he was the son of Seb and Nut, but it is much to be regretted that they did not preserve for us the genealogy of the god according to the priests of the predynastic period. The festivals which were celebrated in the month of Khoiak were, no doubt, founded upon very ancient tradition, but the elaboration of detail given in the texts as Dendera, to which reference has already been made, does not suggest a primative antiquity, although it shows how deeply seated was the cult of Osiris in the hearts of the people. The numerous aspects under which the god was worshipped also show how that some of the original conceptions of the attributes of the god were forgotten in comparison to early days, both of the foreigners and Egyptians, and it is this fact which explains how he came to be identified with the sun and moon, and with the great creative and rejuvenescence, resurrection, and of life of every sort and kind which has the power of renewing itself.

We must now consider the various forms in which Osiris is represented on the monuments, and in papyri, etc. The common form of the god is that of a mummy, who wears a beard, and has the White Crown, and his head, and a menat, hanging from the back of his neck. In a scene reproduced by Lanzone he appears in a group with the Hawk-god Seker, the Beetle-god Kheprer, and the goddess Shent, and has two forms, i.e., Osiris, lord of Khut, and Khent Amenti, and. In another scene he appears in the form of the Tet pillar, and is called "Osiris Tet," and stands at the head of a bier, on which lies the god Seker in mummied form. On a stele at Turin Osiris appears in mummified form, seated, and holding in his hands the sceptre, and the flail or whip ; on his head is the White Crown with plumes, to which the name Atef is usually given. His titles are "Osiris Khenti-Amentet, Un-nefer, lord of Tatcheser, the great god, king of the living." Behind him are seated Ptah-Sekri, "the lord of the hidden chest," Anpu, "dweller in the city of embalment," Horus, son Isis, and Hathor.

As a form of Khnemu-Ra he has the head of a ram, the horns of which are surmounted by the solar disk and by four knives. A common symbol of the god is the box which contained the head and hair of Osiris and which was preserved at Abydos, where these relics were buried. Elsewhere we see the body of the god bent round backwards in such a way as to form the region of the Tuat or Underworld.

Sometimes the god is seated on a throne, which is supported on the back of a monster serpent that rests on the top of the mythological flight of steps, at Henen-Su ; he is accompanied by Maat, Horus, son of Isis, Thoth, Heka, who holds a serpent in each hand, and the snake-headed goddess Heptet. The exact part which last-named deity played in connection with Osiris is unknown, but it is certain that it was of considerable importance, and that the goddess assisted in bringing about his resurrection. Heptet has the body of a woman with the head of a bearded snake ; on her head is a pair of horns which is surmounted by a solar disk, Atef Crown, and uraei with disks and horns, In each hand she holds a knife.