Osiris – The son of the earth and sky, king of the dead

Osiris was the son of the earth God Geb and Geb’s twin sister, the sky Goddess Nut. It is thought Osiris may well have been the original fertility god of the earth and the underworld. The origin of Osiris’ name is an enigma (Hornung, 1996). In the Old Kingdom there is a nexus of importance between the Pharoah and Osiris (Hart, 2005).

The ancient texts puts his birthplace to be Rosetau (Hart, 2005). Some of his epithets highlight his role as the king of the underworld. He is called “foremost of the westerners” and “he who is in the god’s tent”. The great hymn to Osiris describes him as being the “king of the gods” and “the lord of eternity”. Both of these titles highlight his everlasting quality as a resurrected king and his dominion over the other gods, especially in the afterlife where the other pharaohs, who upon their death become gods, had been resurrected to life. The God is also given another title – Wenenefer (𓃹𓈖𓈖𓄤) – which shows his everlasting good condition and his victory over the decay of death.

His chief cult centre was Abydos where he was worshiped along with his sister Isis (Oakes, & Gahlin, 2006). Osiris and Isis are recorded as husband and wife. They also had a son Horus. The triad of Osiris, Isis and Horus were the ideal example and pattern for the royal family to follow (Tyldesley, 1998).

Osiris was also believed by the Egyptians to be the first Pharaoh of Egypt and that he had taught the people how to make bread, wine and had coordinated the temples and statues of the Gods, in other words, Osiris had civilised Egypt.

After having civilised Egypt, Osiris set off to bring civilisation to other lands, highlighting the Egyptian belief that Egypt was the birth place of the civilised world. While he was away, his evil brother Seth had concocted a plan to kill Osiris out of jealousy and to take the throne from him.

When Osiris returned, Seth and his companions hosted a great banquet to celebrate his return to Egypt.

After much eating and drinking and when the guests were relaxed and their guard was down, Seth suggested that they play a game he had invented. He had a chest laid out in the hall. The idea of the game was that all in attendance had to get in and see if they could fit in the chest, some of the guests were too big, while others were too small. However, when Osiris got in , the chest was a perfect fit. Unbeknowst to Osiris, the chest was actually a coffin made for him – it was a trap!

With Osiris inside, Seth and his companions shut the lid so that Osiris couldn’t get out which then led to his death. The coffin was then thrown into the Nile where it floated out to sea. Other stories have Seth dismembering the body.

When Isis learns that her brother-husband has been killed and the body done away with, She sets off searching for the body or his body parts. After a while she finds his body – or what is left of it, the only part she could not find was his penis. After finding his body she resurrects him () with the help of their sister Nephthys, and makes a penis for him and conceives a son. The son she gives birth to comes to be known as Horus. Horus would let grow up to avenge his father and hold his uncle to account .Through these actions Isis sets the example that Egyptian women were meant to follow, that of dedication and loyalty to their husband.

With his death Osiris becomes the Pharaoh of the Underworld. Osiris, since then has been depicted as a mummified man green in colour,holding a crook and flail with the Atef crown on his head (Oakes, & Gahlin, 2006).

It was said that Isis “planted” symbols of her husband’s missing penis in many burial shrines all over Egypt, thus spreading his cult and ensuring the fertility of the land (Leeming, 2005). This follows the idea that the ability to create, sustain, and produce life is with in the male seed.

The death of Osiris is a lesson that Egyptian Gods can be mortal (Hornung, 1996). As a prototype of the resurrected dead man, Osiris and his cult spread widely, and during the Roman Empire assumed the form of a major religious sect in many provinces (Cotterell, 1997).

The basis of the Hellenistic/Roman Osirian mysteries however was probably the ‘festival of Khoiak, the celebration of Osiris’ death and resurrection (Gordon, 2012).In the Roman period (from the 1st cent. bc), the Osiris Canopus, a jar with the head of Osiris carried in processions, becomes the preferred public form, alluding to the water of life given by Osiris (Gordon, 2012).

Bibliography:

Cotterell, A. (1997). Osiris. In A Dictionary of World Mythology. : Oxford University Press,.

Fletcher, J. (2009).The Egyptian book of living & dying. London: Duncan Baird.

Gordon, R. (2012). Osiris. In The Oxford Classical Dictionary. : Oxford University Press,.

Hart, G. (2005).The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. New York: Routledge.

Hornung, E. (1996).Conceptions of God in ancient Egypt. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

Leeming, D. (2005).The Oxford companion to world mythology. [Oxford]: Oxford University Press.

Oakes, L., & Gahlin, L. (2006).Ancient Egypt. London: Hermes House.