"The basic myth of dynastic Egypt was that
of the death and resurrection of Osiris, the
good king, 'fair of face', who was born to
the earth-god Geb and sky-goddess Nut. He
was born together with his sister-wife, the
goddess Isis, during the sacred interval of
those five supplementary days that fell
between one Egyptian calendric year of 360
days and the next. He and his sister were
the first to plant wheat and barley, to
gather fruit from trees, and to cultivate
the vine, and before their time the races of
the world had been savage cannibals.
But Osiris's evil brother, Set, whose
sister-wife was the goddess Nephtys, was
mortally jealous both of his virtue and of
his fame, and so, stealthily taking the
measure of his good brother's body, he
caused a beautifully decorated sarcophagus
to be fashioned and on a certain occasion in
the palace, when all were drinking and
making merry, had it brought into the room
and jestingly promised to give it to the one
whom it should fit exactly.
All tried, but, like the glass slipper of
Cinderella, it fitted but one; and when
Osiris, the last, laid himself within it,
immediately a company of seventy-two
conspirators with whom Set had contrived his
plot dashed forward, nailed the lid upon the
sarcophagus, soldered it with molten lead,
and flung it into the Nile, down which it
floated to the sea. Isis, overwhelmed with
grief, sheared off her locks, donned
mourning, and searched in vain, up and down
the Nile; but the coffin had been carried by
the tide to the coast of Phoenicia, where,
at Byblos, it was cast ashore.
A tamarisk immediately grew up around it,
enclosing the precious object in its trunk,
and the aroma of this tree then was so
glorious that the local king, and queen,
Melqart and Astarte - who were, of course, a
divine king and queen themselves, the local
representatives, in fact, of the common
mythology of Damuzi and Inanna, Tammuz and
Ishtar, Adonis and Aphrodite, Osiris and
Isis - discovering and admiring its beauty,
had the tree felled and fashioned into a
pillar of their palace.
The bereaved and sorrowing Isis, meanwhile,
wandering over the world in her quest - like
Demeter in search of the lost Persephone -
came to Byblos, where she learned of the
wonderful tree. And, placing herself by a
well of the city, in mourning, veiled and in
humble guise - again like Demeter - she
spoke to none until there approached the
well the handmaidens of the queen, whom she
greeted kindly. Braiding their hair, she
breathed upon them such a wondrous perfume
that when they returned and Astarte saw and
smelt the braids she sent for the stranger,
took her into the house, and made her the
nurse of her child. The great goddess gave
the infant her finger instead of breast to
suck and at night, having placed him in a
fire to burn away all that was mortal, flew
in the form of a swallow around the pillar,
mournfully chirping.
But the child's mother, Queen Astarte,
happening in upon this scene, shrieked when
she spied her little son resting in the
flames and thereby deprived him of the
priceless boon. Whereupon Isis, revealing
her true nature, begged for the pillar and,
removing the sarcophagus, fell upon it with
a cry of grief so loud that the queen's
child died on the spot. Sorrowing, then, the
two women placed Osiris's coffer on a boat,
and when the goddess Isis was alone with it
at sea, she opened the chest and, laying her
face on the face of her brother, kissed him
and wept.
The myth goes on to tell of the blessed
boat's arrival in the marshes of the Delta,
and of how Set, one night hunting the boar
by the light of the full moon, discovered
the sarcophagus and tore the body into
fourteen pieces, which he scattered abroad;
so that, once again, the goddess had a
difficult task before her. She was assisted,
this time, however, by her little son Horus,
who had the head of a hawk, by the son of
her sister Nephtys, little Anubis, who had
the head of a jackal, and by Nephtys
herself, the sister-bride of their wicked
brother Set.
Anubis, the elder of the two boys, had been
conceived one very dark night, we are told,
when Osiris mistook Nephtys for Isis; so
that by some it is argued that the malice of
Set must have been inspired not by the
public virtue and good name of the noble
culture hero, but by this domestic
inadventure. The younger, but true son,
Horus, on the other hand, had been more
fortunately conceived - according to some,
when Isis lay upon her dead brother in the
boat, or, according to others, as she
fluttered about the palace pillar in the
form of a bird.
The four bereaved and searching divinities,
the two mothers and their two sons, were
joined by a fifth, the moon-god Thoth (who
appears sometimes in the form of an
ibis-headed scribe, at other times in the
form of a baboon), and together they found
all of Osiris save his genital member, which
had been swallowed by a fish.
They tightly swathed the broken body in
linen bandages, and when they performed over
it the rites that thereafter were to be
continued in Egypt in the ceremonial burial
of kings, Isis fanned the corpse with her
wings and Osiris revived, to become the rule
of the dead. He now sits majestically in the
underworld, in the Hall of the Two Truths,
assisted by forty-two assessors, one from
each of the principal districts of Egypt;
and there he judges the souls of the dead.
These confess before him, and when their
hearts have been weighed in a balance
against a feather, receive, according to
their lives, the reward of virtue and the
punishment of sin." (Campbell) |