Legend of Osiris and Isis
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The legend of Osiris, Isis, Horus and Set became one of the most important and powerful in Egyptian mythology during the New Kingdom. It arose originally during the Middle Kingdom as a result of attempts to merge the Ogdoad and Ennead systems. [citation needed] The legend concerns the death of Osiris and birth of Horus.
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[edit] Origin
In the Ennead, Osiris is the husband of Isis, and sibling of Set, all of whom are the great-grandchildren of the creator god Atum, and Horus is not present within the system. In the Ogdoad, Osiris is not present within the system, and Horus is the husband of Isis and son of Ra, the creator god. When the Ennead and Ogdoad merged, Ra and Atum were identified as one-another, becoming Atum-Ra, and Horus was initially considered the fifth sibling of Osiris, Isis, Nephthys and Set. However, Horus' mother, Hathor, gradually became identified as a form of Isis, leading to Horus becoming said to be Isis' son, and therefore the son of Osiris.
As Osiris was the god of the land of the dead, a legend grew up seeking to explain how Osiris could father a son who was very demonstrably alive (Horus was originally the god of the sky) with his wife, who was also very much a part of the land of the living. [citation needed]
So it became said that Osiris died, thus being able to be lord of the dead, but his wife, with the magical powers that Isis was believed to possess, resurrected him for long enough to have sex, resulting in the birth of Horus.[citation needed]
[edit] Original legend
According to the original legend, Osiris was originally king over Egypt and civilised the nation with the assistance of Thoth's inventions of writing, law, the arts, and science. Having improved the Egyptians, Osiris travelled to other lands, placing Isis as his regent. However, Apep, the god of evil, was jealous and killed Osiris, so Isis had a son from Osiris by magic, namely Horus, to avenge him. While young, Isis fled from Apep, a dangerous serpent, by hiding with Horus in the marshland of the Nile delta, where serpents would not follow. When Horus, a sun god, had grown up, he engaged in a great battle of light over the darkness of Apep, a battle so fierce that it was only ended when the other gods judged in Horus' favour and banished Apep.
[edit] Set and resurrection
Originally, Osiris' death was blamed on Apep, but after the time of the foreign Hyksos overlords (at the end of the Middle Kingdom), Set, the favourite god of the Hyksos, was increasingly viewed by the Egyptians as an evil god, having originally been a hero, and so the blame was transferred to Set.[citation needed]
In the legend, Osiris was only alive before Horus' birth, and Horus obviously only alive after. Reflecting Anubis' funerary preparation of the dead body of Osiris before Isis performed magic upon it.
[edit] The coffin and the acacia
The original form of the myth states that Osiris was killed by a wooden sarcophagus secretly being made to his measurements, and then a party held where the coffin was offered to whoever it fitted. A few people tried to fit in, but to no avail, until Osiris was encouraged to try, who, as soon as he lay back, had the lid slammed on him and was locked. It was then sealed with lead and thrown into the nile. Upon hearing that Osiris was gone, Isis set out to look for him. And she learned that the coffin was embedded in a tree, which had been taken and used as a pillar to hold up a palace. She managed to extract the coffin without harming the palace and took Osiris' body out into the desert. She freed him from the coffin and resurected him temproarially to concieve. after he died again, she hid his body in the desert. Later, she had his son, Horus.
The act of evil in drowning Osiris was said to have been the work of 72 unnamed conspirators, reflecting the legend in which 1/72nd of the moon's light was said to have been won by Thoth for the birth of the five major gods - Set, Nepthys, Osiris, Isis, and Horus, each 1/72nd of the moon's light given for the five days reflecting an individual piece of darkness left in its place during the 360. [citation needed] This legend was itself based on the fact that 1/72 over 360 days, the length of the year in the older Egyptian calendar, produces 5 whole days, reflecting the duration of the newer 365 day Egyptian calendar.
[edit] The moon and the oxyrhynchus
In late Egyptian thought, the righteous dead were sometimes said to become the stars, and thus the moon was occasionally seen as having a connection to Osiris, lord of the dead.[citation needed] As a death and resurrection legend, in which evil seeks to destroy a deity, thus bringing darkness, it thus developed an association with the lunar cycle, in which the moon appears to be destroyed by darkness, and is then brought back to life. Thus it later became said that Osiris had been killed by being dismembered into 13 parts, each part representing one of the 13 full moons seen each year (there are roughly 13 lunar months per year). Another interpretation is that the pieces were 14 (they number up to sixteen in some versions) were the phases of a single moon's cycle (one sliver cut off each night for 14 days, then reassembled over the next 14 days - see Janet McCrickard, Eclipse of the Sun, 1990). The original form of Set's murder of Osiris was incorporated into this later version, though it was said that the attempt had failed when Isis and Nepthys found the coffin and rescued it.[citation needed]
Consequently, it became said that before resurrecting Osiris/Horus, Isis put together 12 of the 13 parts, but was unable to find the 13th, which was said to have been destroyed completely by the Oxyrhynchus fish (a fish with an unusual curved snout resembling depictions of Set), had swallowed the part that was Osiris'.
Osiris was resurrected. Although alive he could only live for one night and then would become the just ruler of the underworld. So it was on this night that Isis conceived Horus. [1].
[edit] Development and mystery
As a life-death-rebirth deity, Horus/Osiris became a reflection of the annual cycle of crop harvesting as well as reflecting people's desires for a successful afterlife, and so the legend became extremely important, outstripping all others. The legend's ventures into both life and afterlife meant that religious rites associated with the legend eventually began to take on aspects of a mystery religion, where initiates were said to be able to partake in Horus/Osiris' resurrection, purging themselves of past ills, and entering a new life.
In Greece, the Demeter-Persephone death-resurrection cult at Eleusis, had a similar nature, and began at an extremely similar time. Many centuries later this led to interest in the Egyptian cult by the Greeks, including Plato. Eventually, a derived form of the Egyptian cult, having been infused with Platonism, spread to areas of Greek influence, particularly during the hellenic era of control over Egypt. As the cult referred to foreign gods, the forms of the cult in Greek nations were adopted to describe suitable local deities and merged and expanded to include elements from the local cultures. This produced a collection of closely related versions of the cult, whose central deities had been deformed to be similar to the Egyptian cult, and were by the 1st century BC collectively known as Osiris-Dionysus.[citation needed]
[edit] Influences
Some scholars and researchers (including some skeptical of the actuality of early Christian accounts) have argued that there are similarities and parallels between the story of Osiris, and later Christian stories, such as the story of the resurrection of Jesus or of Lazarus. Furthermore, some suggest that the earlier Egyptian tales influenced and helped shape the later Christian accounts.
For example, the original written spelling of Lazarus was given in Koine Greek as "Lazaros", which has been suggested as a corruption of "El-Azar-Os". This is a Hebrew theophoric prefix and a Graecising suffix, and as a whole is cognate with Osiris, who was originally called Azar. The name Osiris itself has a similar etymology - it is the Greek transcription of the original Demotic name Azar, with an additional Graecising suffix of is (i.e. Azar-is).
It's also been argued that there are parallels between Jesus and Horus, and that they are syncretistic.
