Dragon Oak Temple

 

 

 

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

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 Seth. 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.

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 is depicted with a man's head crowned wearing the tall white cap of Upper Egypt, his crossed arms hold the flail and hook of royalty. His skin is shown with a greenish tinge.

One of his symbols is the djed pillar, a tree-trunk - the tet.

It was considered to represent his spine and indicated stability;
the stability of eternal life.

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.

Mummified

From the hieroglyphic texts of all periods of the dynastic history of Egypt we learn that the god of the dead, 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 charcterteristics 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 highofficials, 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.

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.

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 his 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 who 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.