The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani) · 275 of 357 · tr. E.A. Wallis Budge
Chapter 43 (part 36)
The days are called in hieroglyphics ###, "the five additional days of the year," e?pago'menai!hme'rai pe'nte ; see Brugsch, Thesaurus Inscriptionum Aegytiacarum , Abt.
ii.
( Kalendarische Inschriften ), Leipzig, 1883, pp.
479, 480; Brugsch, Aegyptologie , p.
361 Chabas, Le Cálendrier , Paris (no date), p.
99 ff.
3.
Osiris was born on the first day, Horus on the second, Set on the third, Isis on the fourth, and Nephthys on the fifth; the first, third, and fifth of these days were considered unlucky by the Egyptians.
4.
The mouths of the Nile are discussed and described by Strabo, XVII., i., 18 (ed.
Didot, p.
681) and by Diodorus, I., 33, 7 (ed.
Didot, p.
26).] {p.
l} Plutarch's version.
the month Hathor,[1] when Osiris was in the twenty-eighth year either of his reign or of his age.
The first to know of what had happened were the Pans and Satyrs, who dwelt hard by Panopolis; and finally the news was brought to Isis at Coptos, whereupon she cut off a lock of hair[2] and put on mourning apparel.
She then set out in deep grief to find her husband's body, and in the course of her wanderings she discovered that Osiris had been united with her sister Nephthys, and that Anubis, the offspring of the union, had been exposed by his mother as soon as born.
Isis tracked him by the help of dogs, and bred him up to be her guard and attendant.
Soon after she learned that the chest had been carried by the sea to Byblos, where it had been gently laid by the waves among the branches of a tamarisk tree ({Greek e?pei'khj tini` }), which in a very short time had grown to a magnificent size and had enclosed the chest within its trunk.
The king of the country, admiring the tree, cut it down and made a pillar for the roof of his house of that part which contained the body of Osiris.
When Isis heard of this she went to Byblos, and, gaining admittance to the palace through the report of the royal maidens, she was made nurse to one of the king's sons, Instead of nursing the child in the ordinary way, Isis gave him her finger to suck, and each night she put him into the fire to consume his mortal parts, changing herself the while into a swallow and bemoaning her fate.
But the queen once happened to see her son in 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,[3] and her lamentations were so terrible that one of the royal children died of fright.
She then brought the [1.
In the Calendar in the fourth Sallier papyrus (No.
10,184) this day is marked triply unlucky, and it is said that great lamentation by Isis and Nephthys took place for Un-nefer (Osiris) thereon.
See Chabas, Le Calendrier , p.
50.
Here we have Plutarch's statement supported by documentary evidence.
Some very interesting details concerning the festivals of Osiris in the month Choiak are given by Loret in Recueil de Travaux , t.
iii., p.
43 ff; t.
iv., p.
Themes
◆Anthropomorphismtheology
Attributing human characteristics, emotions, or form to the divine; embodied divine imagery.
The myth described features gods with human relationships, emotions, and physical forms (e.g., Osiris as king, Typhon plotting, Isis ruling).
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
Osiris is described as establishing laws and instructing nations, reflecting divine ordering of human affairs.
The Egyptian principle of truth, balance, and right order underlying both the cosmos and human conduct; the parallel to Zoroastrian asha and Greek dike.
Osiris's establishment of a 'code of laws' and peaceful flourishing aligns with the Egyptian principle of Maat.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The passage describes the doctrine of 'resurrection of a glorified or transformed body' based on Osiris's resurrection.
[auto] The passage explicitly discusses Pyramid texts, tomb inscriptions, and the Book of the Dead as literature concerning the dead and guiding the doctrine of resurrection.