Chapter 43 (part 37)

21 ff.; and t. v., p. 85 ff. The various mysteries which took place thereat are minutely described. 2 On the cutting of the hair as a sign of mourning, see W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites , p. 395; and for other beliefs about the hair see Tylor, Primitive Culture , vo1. ii., p. 364, and Fraser, Golden Bough , pp. 193-208. 3 The story continues that Isis then wrapped the pillar in fine linen and anointed it with oil, and restored it to the queen. Plutarch adds that the piece of wood is, to this day, preserved in the temple of Isis, and worshipped by the people of Byblos. Prof. Robertson Smith suggests ( Religion of the Semites , p. 175) that the rite of draping and anointing a sacred stump supplies the answer to the unsolved question of the nature of the ritual practices connected with the Ashera. That some sort of drapery belonged to the Ashera is clear from 2 Kings xxiii., 7. See also Tylor, Primitive Culture , vol. ii., p. 150; and Fraser, Golden Bough , vol. i., p. 304 ff.] {p. li} Plutarch's version. chest by ship to Egypt, where she opened it and embraced the body of her husband, weeping bitterly. Then she sought her son Horus in Buto, in Lower Egypt, first having hidden the chest in a secret place. But Typhon, one night hunting by the light of the moon, 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[1]--a plant abhorred by crocodiles--and sailing about she gathered the fragments of Osiris's body.[2] Wherever she found one, there she built a tomb. But now Horus had grown up, and being encouraged to 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 many days, and Typhon was made captive. But Isis, to whom the care of the prisoner was given, so far from aiding her son Horus, set Typhon at liberty. 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 Typhon, Horus was the victor.[3] Identity of the deceased with Osiris. This is the story of the sufferings and death of Osiris as told by Plutarch. Osiris was the god through whose sufferings and death the Egyptian hoped that his body might rise again in some transformed or glorified shape, and to him who had conquered death and had become the king of the other world the Egyptian appealed in prayer for eternal life through his victory and power. In every funeral inscription known to us, from the pyramid texts down to the roughly written prayers upon coffins of the Roman period, what is done for Osiris is done also for the deceased, the state and condition of Osiris are the state and condition of [1. The ark of "bulrushes" was, no doubt, intended to preserve the child Moses from crocodiles. 2.