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The Cult of Osirus

The religious legends which had the most widespread and enduring popularity, and which exercised by far the greatest practical influence upon the lives of the Egyptians, were those concerning the god Osiris. Osiris, as we have seen, had his place, though not a foremost one, in the Great Heliopolitan Ennead. But he had also an independent place and mythology of his own, and around him the whole fabric of the Egyptian conception of the life after death gathered itself. The Osiris legend is probably one of the very oldest developments of Egyptian religious thought, and is certainly anterior in its main outlines to the solar legends which we have just been considering. Allusions to it are constant in the earliest religious writings, the Pyramid Texts. Unfortunately, we only have it connectedly in a very late version; but there is no reason to doubt that this version represents the facts with reasonable accuracy.

Osiris, then, was a god who became sovereign of Egypt, and ruled in a humane manner, teaching men the elements of civilization. Later he journeyed over the world, conquering men, not by force of arms, but by wisdom, and teaching them, as he had taught the native Egyptians. His brother Set, however, was jealous of him, and conspired against him during his absence. When he returned, Set, along with the other conspirators, adopted a stratagem to get rid of him. At a feast Set exhibited a beautiful chest which he had caused to be made, offering it to him whose body should fit it. After the others had tried, Osiris lay down in the chest, whereupon Set and his fellow-conspirators made haste to nail it up, poured molten lead over it, and threw it into the Nile.

Isis, the wife of the god who had thus been slain, went everywhere seeking her dead husband, and at last found the chest at Byblos. Bringing it home still closed, she opened it in Egypt, and mourned over the dead body; but Set, coming upon the remains of his brother, tore them into fragments, which he scattered over the land. The indefatigable Isis went in search of the fragments, and wherever she found a member of the body, she buried it. Thus there are many sepulchres of Osiris in Egypt. An earlier version of this portion of the legend states that Ra sent down the fourth of his sons, Anubis, to wrap the body of Osiris in bandages like those of a mummy, while Isis with her wings caused breath to enter into it, and Osiris moved and lived again. Unable to return to his former life as an earthly king, he reigned in the spirit-world, and became the god of the dead.

While Isis mourned over his dead body, she conceived a son — Horus, the avenger of his father. She brought him up in secret among the swamps of the Delta, and though many dangers threatened him from the malignity of Set, her care averted them all. Isis in this aspect became to the Egyptians the type of true and holy maternity, and is as frequently represented in religious pictures with her son Horus upon her knee as is the Madonna with the infant Christ in Christian art.

When Horus grew to maturity, he entered into conflict with Set. In the battle both combatants were seriously wounded, Horus losing an eye, while Set was even more fearfully mutilated; but in the end Horus triumphed, and was welcomed by the assembled gods. The persistent Set brought an accusation of illegitimacy against his conqueror; but the case was tried by the gods, and the legitimacy of Horus was vindicated. He was established as his father's heir, and the crowns of both lands were placed upon his head. At this same assize, which took place in the great hall of Heliopolis, Set also made some accusation against Osiris; but the assembled judges acquitted Osiris, pronouncing him ' true of voice,' and the god placed his foot upon his prostrate enemy. He then ascended into heaven, and reigns there as god of the spirits of the dead; or, in the other version, where the dead abide in the underworld, has his throne there.

The Osiris legend became connected with the belief in personal immortality. In the very earliest age the mythical history of Osiris was considered to be repeated in the experience of the Pharaoh. He, too, reigned over men; he was slain by death; his son, like Horus, arose to take his place upon his father's throne. From these resemblances there was but a step to anticipating for the dead Pharaoh in the other world the destiny experienced by his great prototype. The king was identified with Osiris, and was believed to be raised to life again in the person of the god, and placed upon the throne of the underworld. Gradually this belief in the possibility of identification with Osiris extended from the Pharaoh to the mass of his subjects, and it came to be held that not only the king, but any man, might, if the due rites and ceremonies had been performed, be awakened to new life after death, and become one with Osiris. The idea finally became universal, and every Egyptian believed that, because Osiris died and rose again, and lived in eternal blessedness, he himself might anticipate the same destiny if the requirements of religion had been duly satisfied.

But this consummation was not supposed to be attained merely by the performance of ceremonies and the recitation of magical formulae, important as these might be. To suppose this would be to do injustice to the ethical sense of the Egyptian. It was here that the legend of the accusation and justification of Osiris was brought into play as the basis of that conception of the judgment after death which is so remarkable a feature of Egyptian religious thought. Osiris, after his death and revival, had been tried before the gods and pronounced just; therefore the person who wished to share in the blessedness of Osiris had to undergo a similar ordeal. Entering the great hall of justice, the ' Hall of Maati,' the deceased had to appear before forty-two terrible beings, half human, half monstrous. Before these he had to make a statement in which he asserted to each daemon that he had not been guilty of the particular sin which that daemon had authority to punish.

This statement is the famous 'Negative Confession,' in which the moral code of the Egyptians is practically embodied. The sins denied are such as these: 'I have slain neither man nor woman;' 'I have not made light the bushel;' 'I have not pried into matters to make mischief;' 'I have not multiplied my speech beyond what should be said ;' 'I have not fouled running water ;' 'I have not uttered curses against God.' After this confession has been made, the heart of the dead man is weighed in a balance against the feather which was the symbol of Maat, the Goddess of Truth. The god Anubis tests the tongue of the balance, while Thoth writes down the result of the weighing. Should the heart not prove satisfactory, it is thrown to the devourer of the unjustified, a composite monster, part crocodile, part hippopotamus, which sits awaiting its prey. Should confession and weighing prove satisfactory, the now justified person is pronounced, like Osiris, 'true of voice,' is led by Horus into the presence of the great God of the Dead, and enters upon a life of everlasting blessedness. This fully developed doctrine of the judgment after death is of somewhat later date, though the germ of it is found in texts of the Old Kingdom.

Until a comparatively modern period, the images of Jesus Christ, in churches (some of which are still to be seen in country Italian churches), as the Young Child, was black, evidently taken from the ancient Egyptian Osiris, who was represented in a dark-green colour, clothed with white raiments. On no other hypothesis but one, can this fact be accounted for, and that is, on astronomical grounds, as symbolical of the Sun rising from the depth and darkness of night into day ; and ascending from the wintry depths to the heights of summer light and heat. Precisely the same idea is embodied in Church architecture, with the nave stretching and pointing eastward, that is, towards the rising Sun.

The parentage of Christianism is in Egyptian Osirianism. It would appear that even the early Christians were anything but worshippers of a personal Christ, as appears from the following. At the end of the seventh century, it was decreed by the Council of Trullo, that for the future the figure of the real historic personal Jesus should be portrayed upon the crucifix. It was proclaimed that the Lamb was to be superseded in the images of Christ our God. He shall be represented in his human form, instead of the lamb, as in former times." In the fifth century, " Leo (the Roman Pontiff) was compelled to rebuke the pestiferous persuasion of those Christians, who celebrated Christmas day, not for the birth of Jesus Christ, but for the resurrection of the Sun."

Until a comparatively modern period, the images of Jesus Christ, in churches (some of which are still to be seen in country Italian churches), as the Young Child, was black, evidently taken from the ancient Egyptian Osiris, who was represented in a dark-green colour, clothed with white raiments. On no other hypothesis but one, can this fact be accounted for, and that is, on astronomical grounds, as symbolical of the Sun rising from the depth and darkness of night into day ; and ascending from the wintry depths to the heights of summer light and heat. Precisely the same idea is embodied in Church architecture, with the nave stretching and pointing eastward, that is, towards the rising Sun.