Chapter 43 (part 86)

tav 346.] {p. cxiii} Ausar or Osiris , the sixth member of the company of the gods of Annu, was the son of Seb and Nut, and the husband of his sister Isis, the father of "Horus, the son of Isis," and the brother of Set and Nephthys. The version of his sufferings and death by Plutarch has been already described (see p. xlviii.). Whatever may have been the foundation of the legend, it is pretty certain that his character as a god of the dead was well defined long before the versions of the pyramid texts known to us were written, and the only important change which took place in the views of the Egyptians concerning him in later days was the ascription to him of the attributes which in the early dynasties were regarded as belonging only to Ra or to Ra-Tmu. Originally Osiris was a form of the sun-god, and, speaking generally, he may be said to have represented the sun after he had set, and as such was the emblem of the motionless dead; later texts identify him with the moon. The Egyptians asserted that he was the father of the gods who had given him birth, and, as he was the god both of yesterday and of to-day, he became the type of eternal existence and the symbol of immortality; as such he usurped not only the attributes of Ra, but those of every other god, and at length he was both the god of the dead and the god of the living. As judge of the dead he was believed to exercise functions similar to those attributed to God. Alone among all the many gods of Egypt, Osiris was chosen as the type of what the deceased hoped to become when, his body having been mummified in the prescribed way, and ceremonies proper to the occasion having been performed and the prayers said, his glorified body should enter into his presence in heaven; to him as "lord of eternity," by which title as judge of the dead he was commonly addressed, the deceased appealed to make his flesh to germinate and to save his body from decay.[1] The various forms in which Osiris is depicted are too numerous to be described here, but generally speaking he is represented in the form of a mummy wearing a crown and holding in his hands the emblems of sovereignty and power. A very complete series of illustrations of the forms of Osiris is given by Lanzone in his Dizionario , tavv. 258-299. The ceremonies connected with the celebration of the events of the sufferings, the death and the resurrection of Osiris occupied a very prominent part in the religious observances of the Egyptians, and it seems as if in the month of Choiak a representation of [1. Compare ###. Naville, Todtenbuch , Bd. I., Bl. 179.] {p. cxiv} them took place in various temples in Egypt; the text of a minute description of them has been published by M. Loret in Recueil de Travaux , tom. iii., p. 43 ff, and succeeding volumes. A perusal of this work explains the signification of many of the ceremonies connected with the burial of the dead, the use of amulets, and certain parts of the funeral ritual; and the work in this form being of a late date proves that the doctrine of immortality, gained through the god who was "lord of the heavens and of the earth, of the underworld and of the waters, of the mountains, and of all which the sun goeth round in his course,"[1] had remained unchanged for at least four thousand years of its existence.