Basic Information / General Synopsis:
Osiris
The great deity of the Egyptians, has
been by some identified with the sun, or sunlight, or the vivifying powers
in nature. According to this view the sleep or death of Osiris means the
sleep of the spring-maiden Brynhild, or the imprisonment of Persephone in
the dark realm of Hades. His contest with Seb (by the Greeks called Typho)
would certainly seem to be another instance of the plausibility, at least,
of this view. At any rate, Osiris, being restored to life, became the
judge of the under-world. There he listens to Thoth’s tale of the
character of the disembodied souls, who are introduced to the judge by
Horus (the son of Osiris), after their good and bad deeds have been
weighed by Anubis in the scale of truth.
These trials in the under-world were attended by forty officers, called
Assessors of the Dead, who are thus described by Sir Gardener Wilkinson:
“These assessors were similar to the bench of judges who attended at the
ordinary tribunals of the Egyptians, and whose president, or arch-judge,
corresponded to Osiris. The assessors were represented in a human form
with different heads. The first had the head of a hawk, the second of a
man, the third of a hare, the fourth of a hippopotamus, the fifth of a
man, the sixth of a hawk, the seventh of a fox, the eighth of a man, the
ninth of a ram, the tenth of a snake, and the others according to their
peculiar character . . . . They are supposed to represent the forty-two
crimes from which a virtuous man was expected to be free when judged in a
future state; or rather the accusing spirits, each of who examined if the
deceased was guilty of the peculiar evil which it was his province to
avenge.”
The worship of Osiris was universal throughout Egypt, where he was
gratefully regarded as the great example of self-sacrifice, as the
mainfestor of good, as the opener of truth, and as being full of goodness
and truth. As Osiris was the personification of physical and moral good,
so his brother Seb (Typho) was the personification of all evil. Of the
analogy between these two on the one hand, and the old Persian deities of
good and evil, we have already spoken.
Another explanation of the Osirian myth has thus been given: Osiris was
the Nile god. The river, in its periodical inundations, was said to have
married the earth (Isis, Rhea), and in its retreat to have been killed by
the giant of Sterility (Seb, or Typhon), who was jealous, perhaps, of the
wondrous fruitfulness of the marriage between the soil and the great
river. (e)
Osiris, Asar
From the hieroglyphic texts of all
periods of the dynastic history of Egypt we learn that the god of the
dead, par excellence, was the god, whom the Egyptians called by a name
which was commonly known to us as "Osiris." The oldest and simplest form
of the name is written by means of two hieroglyphics, the first of which
represents a "throne" and the other an "eye," but the exact meaning
attached to the combination of the two pictures by those who first used
them to express the name of the god, and the signification of the name in
the minds of those who invented it cannot be said. In the late dynastic
period the first syllable of the name appears to have been pronounced Aus
or US, and by punning it was made to have the meaning of the word usr,
"strength of the Sun-god Ra. This meaning may very well have suited their
conception of the god Osiris, but it cannot be accepted as the correct
signification of the name. For similar reasons the suggestion that the
name AS-ar is connected with the Egyptian word for "prince," or "chief,"
ser, cannot be entertained. It is probable that the second hieroglyphic in
the name As-ar is to be understood as referring to the great Eye of
Heaven, i.e., Ra, but the connection of the first with it is not clear, as
we have no means of knowing what attributes were assigned to the god by
his earliest worshippers the difficulty is hardly likely to be cleared up.
The throne or seat, is the first sign in the name of As-t, who is the
female counterpart of Osiris, and it is very probable that originally the
same conception underlay both names. It is useless to argue that, because
the dynastic Egyptians at a late period of their history substituted the
disk of Ra, for the god hymns in which they identified him as the source
of light and as Ra, therefore As-ar, and because they addressed to the god
hymns in which the priests resorted to whenever they attempted to find
etymologies for the names of their gods.
In comparatively late time Osiris was called Un-nefer, in religious and
mythological texts, and the priests {like modern Egyptologists} tried to
explain the name. The writer of a hymn quoted by Dr. Brugsch derived the
word from un, "to open, to appear, to make manifest," and neferu, "good
things," and when he wrote, "thy beauty {or goodness} "maketh itself
manifest in thy person to rouse the gods to life in "thy name Un-nefer,"
it is clear that he was only making a play of words on the name "Un-nefer'
; and again when he wrote, "Thou comest as the strength {usr} of Ra in thy
name of Asar than to afford a trustworthy derivations of the name of
Osiris. We may note in passing that modern derivation and explanations of
the name Un-nefer are equally unsatisfactory. The truth of the matter
seems to be that the ancient Egyptians knew just as little about the
original meaning of the name As-ar as we do, and that had no better means
of obtaining information about it than we have.
Passing now to the consideration of the original characteristics and
attributes of Osiris we find that the oldest religious texts known to us
refer to him as the great god of the dead, and throughout them it is
tacitly assumed that the reader will understand that he once possessed
human form and lived upon earth, and that by means of some unusual power
or powers he was able to bestow upon himself after the death a new life
which he lived in a region over which he ruled as king, and into which he
was believed to be willing to admit all such as had lived a good and
correct life upon earth, and had been buried with the appropriate
ceremonies under the protection of certain amulets, and with proper
recital of certain "divine words" and words of power. The worship of
Osiris is, however, very much older than these views, which is clear,
could only belong to a people who had advanced to a comparatively high
state of civilization and mental development.
The oldest authorities for the religious views of the ancient Egyptians
are the "Pyramid Texts," which are known to us from copies made in the
IVth, Vth and VIth Dynasties, that is to say, in the remote time the
period of their highest development ; even at this remote time the priests
of Annu had composed a system of theology which was supported by the
authority of the king and his high officials, and there is no doubt that
it was based upon older systems of religious thought and belief. What
these may have been it is useless to speculate, and all that is certain
about the Heliopolitan system is that, while proclaiming the supremacy of
their local god Tem or Ra-Tem, its priests took care to include in it as
many of the ancient provincial gods as possible, and to adopt, wherever
they were able to do so, the ancient beliefs and traditions concerning
them. Among such gods Osiris held a very prominent place, in fact he was
in respect to the dead and the Underworld what Ra, or Ra-Tem was to the
living and to this world, and in some passages he is referred to simply as
"god," without the addition of any name. No other god of the Egyptians was
ever mentioned or alluded to in this matter, and no other god as any time
in Egypt ever occupied exactly the same exalted position in their minds,
or was thought to possess his peculiar attributes. (1)
The god of the dead, and the god of the
resurrection into eternal life; ruler, protector, and judge of the
deceased, and his prototype (where in English we use the euphemism "the
deceased" or "the late", Egyptians referred to "the Osiris"). His cult
originated in Abydos, where his actual tomb was said to be located.
Osiris was the first child of Nut and Geb, thus the brother of Set,
Nephthys, and Isis, who was also his wife. By Isis he fathered Horus, and
according to some stories, Nephthys assumed the form of Isis, seduced him
thus, and from their union was born Anubis.
Osiris ruled the world of men in the beginning, after Ra had abandoned the
world to rule the skies, but he was murdered by his brother Set. Through
the magic of Isis, he was made to live again. Being the first person to
die, he subsequently became lord of the dead. His death was avenged by his
son Horus, who defeated Set and cast him out into the desert to the West
of Egypt (the Sahara).
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.
(2)
Click here for information on the Osiris Cult
Click here for the Hymn
to Osiris
Osiris as
Water God
Funeral of
Osiris
|
