Osiris

Typical depiction of Osiris

Osiris in hieroglyphs

Osiris (whose name is a Greek transliteration of the Egyptian Asar, Aser, Ausar, Wesir, or Ausare) is the Egyptian god of life, death, and fertility. His extreme antiquity is attested to by his inclusion in pyramid texts dated to 2400 B.C.E., when his cult was already well established. In addition to the god's primary mythic and religious affiliation with the land of the dead, Osiris was also seen as the underworld agency that granted all life, including sprouting vegetation and the fertile flooding of the Nile River. The modern understanding of these myths is derived from representations, rites and paeans recorded in the pyramid texts, and, much later, in the mythic narrative of Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride ("About Isis and Osiris").

The cult of Osiris was characterized by various parallels between the worldly authority of the pharaohs and the celestial authority of the god: just as the human monarch ruled the fertile lands of the Nile delta, so too did Osiris reign over the land of the dead. As such, he became a protector and patron of the departed, promising them resurrection and eternal life. Though such patronage had originally been the exclusive province of the ruling class, by the New Kingdom period (1570–1070 C.E.) all men were believed to be associated with Osiris at death, providing that they had participated in the appropriate cultic observances. These worship practices, which were prevalent throughout ancient Egypt, became popularized throughout the Greco-Roman world and only ceased with the forceable suppression of "paganism" in the Christian era.

Osiris in an Egyptian Context

As an Egyptian deity, Osiris belonged to a complex religious, mythological and cosmological belief system developed in the Nile river basin from earliest prehistory to 525 B.C.E. Indeed, it was during this relatively late period in Egyptian cultural development, a time when they first felt their beliefs threatened by foreigners, that many of their myths, legends and religious beliefs were first recorded. The cults within this framework, whose beliefs comprise the myths we have before us, were generally fairly localized phenomena, with different deities having the place of honor in different communities. Despite this apparently unlimited diversity, however, the gods (unlike those in many other pantheons) were relatively ill-defined. As Frankfort notes, “the Egyptian gods are imperfect as individuals. If we compare two of them … we find, not two personages, but two sets of functions and emblems. … The hymns and prayers addressed to these gods differ only in the epithets and attributes used. There is no hint that the hymns were addressed to individuals differing in character.” One reason for this was the undeniable fact that the Egyptian gods were seen as utterly immanental—they represented (and were continuous with) particular, discrete elements of the natural world. Thus, those who did develop characters and mythologies were generally quite portable, as they could retain their discrete forms without interfering with the various cults already in practice elsewhere. Also, this flexibility was what permitted the development of multipartite cults (i.e. the cult of Amun-Re, which unified the domains of Amun and Re), as the spheres of influence of these various deities were often complimentary.

The worldview engendered by ancient Egyptian religion was uniquely appropriate to (and defined by) the geographical and calendrical realities of its believer’s lives. Unlike the beliefs of the Hebrews, Mesopotamians and others within their cultural sphere, the Egyptians viewed both history and cosmology as being well ordered, cyclical and dependable. As a result, all changes were interpreted as either inconsequential deviations from the cosmic plan or cyclical transformations required by it. The major result of this perspective, in terms of the religious imagination, was to reduce the relevance of the present, as the entirety of history (when conceived of cyclically) was ultimately defined during the creation of the cosmos. The only other aporia in such an understanding is death, which seems to present a radical break with continuity. To maintain the integrity of this worldview, an intricate system of practices and beliefs (including the extensive mythic geographies of the afterlife, texts providing moral guidance (for this life and the next) and rituals designed to facilitate the transportation into the afterlife) was developed, whose primary purpose was to emphasize the unending continuation of existence. Given these two cultural foci, it is understandable that the tales recorded within this mythological corpus tend to be either creation accounts or depictions of the world of the dead and of the gods place within it.

As Osiris was associated with both agricultural productivity and the human afterlife, he became one of the most popular deities of the Egyptian pantheon in terms of iconography, mythic accounts and cultic devotion. Such veneration is not at all surprising, given that his two areas of patronage were the cornerstones of Egyptian secular and religious life.

Mythology

Characterization

Within the classical Egyptian pantheon, Osiris was the oldest son of the Earth god, Geb, and the sky goddess, Nut, as well as the brother and husband of Isis, the goddess of fertility. In terms of progeny, the god is credited with siring with Anubis and Horus, though the later was conceived after the god's untimely death. The myths concerning each of these acts of procreation will be elucidated below.

Ptah-Seker, a composite deity uniting the creative elements of Ptah and the chthonic elements of Seker, gradually became identified with Osiris (the prototypical rebirth god). As such, the three deities came to be reified as Ptah-Seker-Osiris, an important god in both the temple worship tradition and the Egyptian funerary cult.

He is usually portrayed as a green-skinned pharaoh wearing the Atef crown. Typically, he is also represented holding the crook and flail, symbols of divine rulership that originated in iconographic depictions of the deity but that came to be signify religio-political authority in a more general context. Also, his feet and lower body are depicted enshrouded in gauze, as though already partly mummified—an entirely fitting image, given the god's relationship to death and rebirth.

Father of Anubis

When the Ennead and Ogdoad pantheons (and their attendant mythologies) became merged, most notably with the identification of Ra and Atum (Atum-Ra), Anubis (the god of the underworld in the Ogdoad system) came to be replaced by Osiris, whose cult had become more prominent throughout the country. In order to explain this, Anubis was subordinated to the more notorious god, the range of his realms of patronage was decreased, and he came to be identified as Osiris' son. Abydos, which had been a strong centre of the cult of Anubis, became a centre of the cult of Osiris.

However, as Isis (Osiris' wife) represented life in the Ennead, it likely seemed inappropriate to mythographers for her to be the mother of Anubis, a god so intimately tied to death. Thus, it was usually said that Nephthys, the other female child of Geb and Nut, was his mother. To explain the apparent infidelity of Osiris, it was said that a sexually frustrated Nephthys had disguised herself as Isis to get more attention from her husband, Set. While this ruse did not beguile its intended target, it did earn her the attentions of Osiris, who mistook the goddess for his wife. This copulation resulted in the birth of the jackal-headed god of death.

Father of Horus

Later, when elements of the cult of Hathor (a deity from the Ogdoadic pantheon) were assimilated into that of Isis, Horus, who had previously been seen as Hathor's son, became associated with the Enneadic goddess. Attempts to explain how Osiris, the husband of Isis and a god of the dead, could have fathered a deity so definitively alive as Horus, led to the development of the Legend of Osiris and Isis, which became the single greatest tale in Egyptian mythology (described below).

In brief, this myth described Osiris's death at the hands of his brother Set, who jealously desired his elder sibling's throne. Discovering her lover's body, Isis briefly brought him back to life through the use of a magical incantation. This spell gave her time to become pregnant by the god before his final demise. Isis later gave birth to Horus. As such, since Horus was born after Osiris' resurrection, the second generation deity became thought of as representing new beginnings. This combination, Osiris-Horus, was therefore interpreted as a life-death-rebirth deity, and was thus associated with the new harvest each year.

The Isis / Osiris Cycle

As intimated above, the tale of Osiris's death and resurrection provided one of the most culturally and symbolically resonant myths in the Egyptian corpus. Further, this tale was a central element of the mystery cult built around the otherworldly ruler, whose prominence throughout the dynastic period allowed it to survive the incursions of Hellenistic society through the creation of Serapis (a self-consciously syncretic deity). While the specifics of the cult will be elucidated below, it is first necessary to outline the myth itself.

The myth is first evidenced, albeit in a fragmentary fashion, in the Pyramid Texts—a collection of pyramid inscriptions whose primary purpose was to relate the myths of the gods with the cult of the pharaohs (who had commissioned the construction of these monumental necropoli). In them, the core events of the tale are already present, including the murder of Osiris by Set (his jealous sibling); the heart-broken response of his wife, Isis; the vengeance exacted by Horus, his son; and, the god's resurrection and return to prominence in the afterlife.

Plutarch recounts one version of the myth surrounding the cult in which Set (Osiris's evil brother) fooled Osiris into getting into a coffin, which he then shut, had sealed with lead and threw into the Nile. Osiris's wife, Isis, searched for his remains until she finally found him embedded in a tree trunk, which was holding up the roof of a palace in Byblos on the Phoenician coast. She managed to remove the coffin and open it, but Osiris was already dead. She used a spell she had learned from her father and brought him back to life so he could impregnate her. After they finished, he died again, so she hid his body in the desert. Months later, she gave birth to Horus. While she was off raising him, Set had been out hunting one night and he came across the body of Osiris. Enraged, he tore the body into fourteen pieces and scattered them throughout the land. Isis gathered up all the parts of the body, less the phallus which was eaten by a fish thereafter considered tabu by the Egyptians, and bandaged them together for a proper burial. The gods were impressed by the devotion of Isis and thus restored Osiris to life in the form of a different kind of existence as the god of the underworld. Because of his death and resurrection, Osiris is associated with the flooding and retreating of the Nile and thus with the crops along the Nile valley.

Diodorus Siculus gives another version of the myth in which Osiris is described as an ancient king who taught the Egyptians the arts of civilization, including agriculture. Osiris is murdered by his evil brother Seth, whom Diodorus associates with the evil Typhon of Greek mythology. Typhon divides the body into twenty six pieces which he distributes amongst his fellow conspirators in order to implicate them in the murder. Isis and Horus avenge the death of Osiris and slay Typhon. Isis recovers all the parts of Osiris body, less the phallus, and secretly buries them. She made replicas of them and distributed them to several locations which then became centres of Osiris worship.

Ram god

Banebdjed (b3-nb-ḏd) in hieroglyphs

Since Osiris was a chthonic, underworld deity, the god's soul, or rather his Ba, was occasionally worshipped in its own right, almost as if it were a distinct god, especially so in the Delta city of Mendes. This aspect of Osiris was referred to as Banebdjed (also spelt Banebded or Banebdjedet, which is technically feminine) which literally means The ba of the lord of the djed, which roughly means The soul of the lord of the pillar of stability. The djed, a type of pillar, was usually understood as the backbone of Osiris, and, at the same time, as the Nile, the backbone of Egypt. The Nile, supplying water, and Osiris (strongly connected to the vegetation) who died only to be resurrected represented continuity and therefore stability. As Banebdjed, Osiris was given epithets such as Lord of the Sky and Life of the (sun god) Ra, since Ra, when he had become identified with Atum, was considered Osiris' ancestor, from whom his regal authority was inherited.

Ba does not, however, quite mean soul in the western sense, and also has to do with power, reputation, force of character, especially in the case of a god. Since the ba was associated with power, and also happened to be a word for ram in Egyptian, Banebdjed was depicted as a ram, or as Ram-headed. A living, sacred ram, was even kept at Mendes and worshipped as the incarnation of the god, and upon death, the rams were mummified and buried in a ram-specific necropolis.

As regards the association of Osiris with the ram, the god's traditional crook and flail are of course the instruments of the shepherd, which has suggested to some scholars also an Osiris' origin in herding tribes of the upper Nile. The crook and flail were originally symbols of the minor agricultural deity Anedijti, and passed to Osiris later. From Osiris they eventually passed to Egyptian kings in general as symbols of divine authority. [5]

In Mendes, they had considered Hatmehit, a local fish-goddess, as the most important god/goddess, and so when the cult of Osiris became more significant, Banebdjed was identified in Mendes as deriving his authority from being married to Hatmehit. Later, when Horus became identified as the child of Osiris (in this form Horus is known as Harpocrates in Greek and Har-pa-khered in Egyptian), Banebdjed was consequently said to be Horus' father, as Banebdjed is an aspect of Osiris.

In occult writings, Banebdjed is often called the goat of Mendes, and identified with Baphomet; the fact that Banebdjed was a ram (sheep), not a goat, is apparently overlooked.

The Cult of Osiris

A priest of Osiris. He is shaven, and hold preciously a canope vase of Osiris with the hems of his robe. Ptolemaic Egypt. 1st century CE.

The passion and resurrection

Plutarch and others have noted that the sacrifices to Osiris were “gloomy, solemn, and mournful…” (Isis and Osiris, 69) and that the great mystery festival, celebrated in two phases, began at Abydos on the 17th of Athyr (Nov. 13th) commemorating the death of the god, which is also the same day that grain was planted in the ground. “The death of the grain and the death of the god were one and the same: the cereal was identified with the god who came from heaven; he was the bread by which man lives. The resurrection of the God symbolized the rebirth of the grain.” (Larson 17) The annual festival involved the construction of “Osiris Beds” formed in shape of Osiris, filled with soil and sown with seed. The germinating seed symbolized Osiris rising from the dead. An almost pristine example was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter.

The first phase of the festival was a public drama depicting the murder and dismemberment of Osiris, the search for his body by Isis, his triumphal return as the resurrected god, and the battle in which Horus defeated Set. This was all presented by skilled actors as a literary history, and was the main method of recruiting cult membership. According to Julius Firmicus Maternus of the fourth century, this play was re-enacted each year by worshippers who “beat their breasts and gashed their shoulders…. When they pretend that the mutilated remains of the god have been found and rejoined…they turn from mourning to rejoicing.” (De Errore Profanorum).

The I-Kher-Nefert stele

Much of the extant information about the Passion of Osiris can be found on a stele at Abydos erected in the 12th Dynasty by I-Kher-Nefert (also Ikhernefert), possibly a priest of Osiris or other official during the reign of Senwosret III (Pharaoh Sesostris, about 1875 B.C.E.).

The Passion Plays were held in the last month of the inundation (the annual Nile flood), coinciding with Spring, and held at Abydos/Abedjou which was the traditional place where the body of Osiris/Wesir drifted ashore after having been drowned in the Nile. The part of the myth recounting the chopping up of the body into 14 pieces by Set is not recorded until later by Plutarch. Some elements of the ceremony were held in the temple, while others involved public participation in a form of theatre. The Stela of I-Kher-Nefert recounts the programme of events of the public elements over the five days of the Festival:

• The First Day, The Procession of Wepwawet: A mock battle is enacted during which the enemies of Osiris are defeated. A procession is led by the god Wepwawet ("opener of the way").
• The Second Day, The Great Procession of Osiris: The body of Osiris is taken from his temple to his tomb.
• The Third Day, Osiris is Mourned and the Enemies of the Land are Destroyed.
• The Fourth Day, Night Vigil: Prayers and recitations are made and funeral rites performed.
• The Fifth Day, Osiris is Reborn: Osiris is reborn at dawn and crowned with the crown of Ma'at. A statue of Osiris is brought to the temple.

Wheat and clay rituals

Contrasting with the public "theatrical" ceremonies sourced from the I-Kher-Nefert stele, more esoteric ceremonies were performed inside the temples by priests witnessed only by initiates. Plutarch mentions that two days after the beginning of the festival “the priests bring forth sacred chest containing a small golden coffer, into which they pour some potable water…and a great shout arises from the company for joy that Osiris is found (or resurrected). Then they knead some fertile soil with the water…and fashion therefrom a crescent-shaped figure, which they cloth and adorn, this indicating that they regard these gods as the substance of Earth and Water.” (Isis and Osiris, 39). Yet even he was obscure, for he also wrote, “I pass over the cutting of the wood” opting to not describe it since he considered it most sacred (Ibid. 21).

In the Osirian temple at Denderah, an inscription (translated by Budge, Chapter XV, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection) describes in detail the making of wheat paste models of each dismembered piece of Osiris to be sent out to the town where each piece was discovered by Isis. At the temple of Mendes, figures of Osiris are made from wheat and paste placed in a trough on the day of the murder, then water added for several days, when finally the mixture was kneaded into a mold of Osiris and taken to the temple and buried (the sacred grain for these cakes only grown in the temple fields). Molds are made from wood of a red tree in the forms of the sixteen dismembered parts of Osiris, cakes of divine bread made from each mold, placed in a silver chest and set near the head of the god, the inward parts of Osiris as described in the Book of the Dead (XVII). On the first day of the Festival of Ploughing, where the goddess Isis appears in her shrine where she is stripped naked, Paste made from the grain is placed in her bed and moistened with water, representing the fecund earth. All of these sacred rituals were climaxed by the eating of sacramental god, the eucharist by which the celebrants were transformed, in their persuasion, into replicas of their god-man (Larson 20).

The Osirian Sacrament

Although there were ethical and ceremonial considerations none of these could compare to the power of the divine eucharist, since it was literally believed to be the body (bread) and blood (ale) of the god. Since the ancient Nilotics believed that humans were whatever they eat, this sacrament was, by extension, able to make them celestial and immortal. The doctrine of the eucharist ultimately has its roots in prehistoric cannibalism, whose practitioners believed that the virtues and powers of the eaten would thus be absorbed by the eater. This phenomenon has been described throughout the world.

One of the oldest of the Pyramid Texts is the Unas from the 6th Dynasty (circa 2500 B.C.E.). It shows that the original ideology of Egypt commingled with Osirian concepts. Although ultimately given a high place in heaven by order of Osiris, Unas is at first an enemy of the gods and his ancestors, who he hunts, lassoes, kills, cooks, and eats so that their powers may become his own. This was written at a time when the eating of parents and gods was a laudable ceremony, and this emphasizes how hard it must have been to stamp out the older order of cannibalism. “He eats men, he feeds on the gods…he cooks them in his fiery cauldrons. He eats their words of power, he swallows their spirits…. He eats the wisdom of every god, his period of life is eternity…. Their soul is in his body, their spirits are within him.” A parallel passage is found in the Pyramid Text of Pepi II, who is said to have “seizeth those who are a follower of Set…he breaketh their heads, he cutteth off their haunches, he teareth out their intestines, he diggeth out their hearts, he drinketh copiously of their blood!” (line 531, ff). Although crude, this was a core concept, the conviction that one could receive immortality by eating the flesh and blood of a god who had died became a dominating obsession in the ancient world. Although the cult of Osiris forbade cannibalism, it did not outlaw dismemberment and eating of enemies, and practiced the ritual rending and eating of the sacred bull, symbolizing Osiris.

Although this sacramental concept only originated once in history, it spread throughout the Mediterranean area and became the dynamic force in every mystery cult. It was only by this sacerdotal means that the corruptible deceased could be clothed in incorruption and this idea appears again and again in infinite variety. The scribe Nebseni implores: “And there in the celestial mansions of heaven which my divine father Tem hath established, let my hands lay hold upon the wheat and the barley which shall be given unto me therein in abundant measure” (Ibid. LXXII). Nu corroborates that this is the eucharist by saying: “I am established, and the divine Sekhet-hetep is before me, I have eaten therein, I have become a spirit therein, I have abundance therein.” (Ibid. LXXVII) Again Nu states: “I am the divine soul of Ra…which is god…I am the divine food which is not corrupted” (Ibid. LXXXV). The ancientness of the concept is again reaffirmed in the Pyramid Text of Teta (2600 B.C.E.) where the Osiris Teta “receivest thy bread which decayeth not, and thy beer which perisheth not” In the Text of Pepi I we read: “All the gods give thee their flesh and their blood…. Thou shalt not die.” In the Text of Pepi II the aspirant prays for “thy bread of eternity, and thy beer of everlastingness” (Line 390).

Osiris-Dionysus

By the Hellenic era, Greek awareness of Osiris had grown, and attempts had been made to merge Greek philosophy, such as Platonism, and the cult of Osiris (especially the myth of his resurrection), resulting in a new mystery religion. Gradually, this became more popular, and was exported to other parts of the Greek sphere of influence. However, these mystery religions valued the change in wisdom, personality, and knowledge of fundamental truth, rather than the exact details of the acknowledged myths on which their teachings were superimposed. Thus in each region that it was exported to, the myth was changed to be about a similar local god, resulting in a series of gods, who had originally been quite distinct, but who were now syncretisms with Osiris. These gods became known as Osiris-Dionysus.

Serapis

Eventually, in Egypt, the Hellenic pharaohs decided to produce a deity that would be acceptable to both the local Egyptian population, and the influx of Hellenic visitors, to bring the two groups together, rather than allow a source of rebellion to grow. Thus Osiris was identified explicitly with Apis, really an aspect of Ptah, who had already been identified as Osiris by this point, and a syncretism of the two was created, known as Serapis, and depicted as a standard Greek god.

Destruction

Osiris-worship continued up until the 6th century AD on the island of Philae in Upper Nile. The Theodosian decree (in about 380 C.E.) to destroy all pagan temples and force worshippers to accept Christianity was ignored there. However, Justinian dispatched a General Narses to Philae, who destroyed the Osirian temples and sanctuaries, threw the priests into prison, and carted the sacred images off to Constantinople. However, by that time, the soteriology of Osiris had assumed various forms which had long spread far and wide in the ancient world.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

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• Meeks, Dimitri and Meeks-Favard, Christine. Daily life of the Egyptian gods. Translated from the French by G.M. Goshgarian. Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, 1996. ISBN 0801431158.
• Mercer, Samuel A. B. (translator). The Pyramid Texts. 1952. Accessed online at [www.sacred-texts.com/egy/pyt/index.htm sacred-texts.com].
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External links

• The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity Retrieved June 25, 2007.

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