OSIRIS
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OSIRIS
which the murderer had thrown into the sea; and to render liim all the honor which his humanity deserved, she made as many statues of wax as there were mangled pieces of his body. Each statue contained a piece of the flesh of the dead monarch ; and Isis, after she had summoned to her presence one by one the priests of all the different deities in her dominions, gave them each a statue, intimating that in doing so she had preferred them to all the other communities of Egypt, and sue bound them by a solemn oath that they would keep se- cret that mark other favor, and endeavor to show their sense of it by establishing a form of worship and paying divine homage to their prince. They were further di- rected to choose whatever animals they pleased to rep- resent the person and the divinity of Osiris, and they were enjoined to pay the greatest reverence to that rep- resentative of divinity, and to bury it when dead with the greatest solemnity. To render their establishment more popular, each sacerdotal body had a certain portion of land allotted to them to maintain them, and to defray the expenses which necessarily attended their sacrifices and ceremonial rites. That part of the body of Osiris which had not been recovered was treated with more particular attention by Isis, and she ordered that it should receive honors more solemn, and at the same time more mysterious than the other members. As Osi- ris had particularly instructed his subjects in cultivating the ground, the priests chose the ox to represent him, and paid the most superstitious veneration to that ani- mal, Osiris, according to the opinion of some mythol- ogists, is the same as the sun, and the adoration which is paid by different nations to an Anubis, a Bacchus, a Dionysus, a Jupiter, a Pan, etc., is the same as that which Osiris received in the Egyptian temples. Isis also after death received divine honors as well as her husband; and as the ox was the symbol of the sun, or Osiris, so the cow was the emblem of the moon, or Isis. Nothing can give a clearer idea of the power and great- ness of Osiris than this inscription, which has been found on some ancient monuments : " Saturn, the younfj- €St of all the gods, was my father ; I am Osiru,who con- ducted a large and mimerous army as Jar as the deserts of India, and travelled over the greatest ]x'trt of the world, and visited the streams of the Ister, and the remote shores of the ocean, diffusing benevolence to all the inhabitants of the earth." Osiris was generally represented with a cap on his head like a mitre, with two horns; he held a stick in his left hand, and in his right a whip with three thongs. Sometimes he appears with the head of a hawk, as that bird, bj' its quick and piercing eyes, is a proper emblem of the sun (Plutarch, In Isid. and Os. ; Herodotus, ii, 144; Diodorus, i; Homer, Od. xii, 323; JEAiaM, De Anim. iii; Lucian, De l)ea Syr,; Pliny, viii). In the Egyptian Ritual, or ^^ Book of the Bead," and other inscriptions, Osiris is said to be the son of Seb or Saturn, and born of Nu or Khea ; to be the father of Horus by Isis, of Anubis, and of the four genii of the dead. Many mystic notions were connected with Osi- ris; he was sometimes thought to be the son of lia, the Sun, or of Atum, the setting Sun, and the Bennu or Pha-nix; also to be uncreate, or self-engendered, and he is identitiedin some instances with the Sun or the Creator, and the Pluto or Judge of Hades. Osiris was born on the first of the Epagomen», or five additional days of the year. When born, Chronos or Saturn is said to have given him in charge to Pamyles; having become king of Egypt, he is stated to have civilized the Egyptians, and especially to have taught them agriculture, the culture of the vine, and the art of making beer; he af- terwards travelled over the earth, and conquered the people everywhere by his persuasion. During his ab- sence, his kingdom was confided to Isis, who guarded it strictly, and Set or Typlion, tlic brother of Osiris (who was born on the third of the Epagomena:^), was unable to revolt against him. Typhon had, however, persuad- ed seventj'-two other persons, and Aso, the queen of Ethiopia, to join him in a conspiracy ; and, having taken
the measure of Osiris, he had a chest made of the same dimensions, richly ornamented and carved, and produced it at a banquet, where he promised to give it to whom- soever it should fit; and when all had lain down and tried it, and it suited none, Osiris at last laid himself down in it, and was immediately covered over by the conspirators, who placed the lid upon it, and fastened it with nails and molten lead. The chest was then hurled into the Nile, and floated down the Tanaitic mouth into the sea. This happened on the seventeenth of the month Athj'r, in the twenty-eighth year of the reign or age of Osfris. Khem or Pan, and his attendant deities, discov- ered the loss of the god; Isis immediately cut off a lock of hair and went into mourning, and proceeded in search of Anubis, the child other sister Nephthys by Osiris; and, having found him, brought him up. The chest meanwliile floated to Byblos, and, lodging in a tamarisk, became enclosed in the tree, which was cut down by the king, and the trunk, containuig the chest and the body of the god, was converted into a piUar to support the roof of the palace. The goddess proceeded to Byblos, and ingratiated herself with the queen's women by plaiting their hair and imparting to it an ambrosial smell, so that the monarch, whose name was Melcarthus, and his wife, Saosis or Nemanoun, invited her to court to take care of their own child. She endeavored to confer im- mortality upon him by placing him on a fire, and chang- ing herself into a swallow, flew around the pillar and bemoaned her fate. The queen became alarmed at the danger of her child ; Isis revealed herself, and asked for the pillar of tamarisk wood, which was given her. She then cut it open, and took out the chest, making great lamentations, and subsequently sailed for Egypt, with the eldest of the king's sons. The goddess, intending to visit Horus, her son, at Buto, deposited the chest in an unfrequented spot ; but Typhon discovered it by the light of the moon, tore it into fourteen pieces, and dis- tributed each to a nome or district. Isis recovered all by passing the marshes in a boat of papyrus ; aU except the phallus, which had been eaten by the lepidotus, the phagrus, and oxyrhynchus fish. Subsequently a battle took place between Horus and Typhon or Set, which lasted three days, and ended by Typhon having fetters placed upon him. Isis, however, liberated Ty- phon, which so enraged Horus that he tore oft' her dia- dem, but Teti or Thoth placed on her the head of a cow instead. Typhon finallv accused Horus of illegitimacy ; but the question was decided between them by Teti or Thoth and the gods. Erom Osiris, after his death, and Isis sprung Harpocrates. Osiris seems to have been finally revived, and to have become the judge of the Karneter or Hades, presiding at the final judgment of souls in the hall of the two Truths, with the forty-two demons who presided over the capital sins, and awarding to the soul its final destiny. Thoth or Hermes record- ed the judgment, and justified the deceased against his accusers, as he had formerly done for Osiris.