The Nile flows northward to the Mediterranean, and the chest washes ashore at Byblos modern Lebanon. According to the myth, there is a huge storm that blows the chest into the branches of a tree, which grows to tremendous proportions, encompassing the chest in its trunk.
The king of Byblos wants to build a palace, and he needs large trees—cedars of Lebanon—for pillars. This particular tree is cut down and incorporated into the palace as a pillar, where Osiris is hidden. Isis, the devoted wife, sets out on a journey to recover the body of her husband. Eventually, she finds out where Osiris is, talks to the queen of Byblos, is given a job as her handmaiden and explains that her husband is in a pillar in the palace.
The queen is sympathetic, and the pillar is cut down. The chest is taken out and Osiris is indeed dead. Isis then brings the body back to Egypt for proper burial. Seth, always scheming, finds the body and hacks it into 14 pieces, which he scatters up and down the Nile. Isis, wanting to give her husband a proper burial, finds the pieces, aided by her sister Nebthet.
They find almost all of the pieces of Osiris, but the phallus is missing. It was thrown into the Nile and devoured by fish. Isis reassembles Osiris, fashions an artificial phallus to complete him, says magical words, and breathes life into him. Osiris resurrects and he becomes the God of the Dead. In this sense, Osiris is the first mummy. Learn more about the elements of ancient Egyptian magic. Almost every funerary belief that the Egyptians had can be traced from this story.
There is something special about Egypt and Egyptian soil. This belief is why the Egyptians never colonized, as no one wanted to die away from Egypt. Another funerary practice follows from Osiris missing one part, the phallus, and Isis creating an artificial one. Isis's magical healing powers, and her knowledge of weaving, crop growing, corn grinding and flax spinning were also passed on to the Egyptian people.
Holding a crook and flail, Osiris sits on his throne under a canopy in judgement of the dead. His wife, Isis left , and his sister Nephthys stand behind him. One day, disaster struck. Seth , the god of disorder, murdered his brother Osiris, the god of order.
Seth was furious because his wife, Nephthys , had conceived a child, named Anubis , by Osiris. The murder happened at a banquet when Seth invited guests to lie down in a coffin he had made for the king.
Several guests tried unsuccessfully. When Osiris climbed in, Seth and his conspirators nailed down the lid, weighed the coffin down with lead and cast it into the Nile. This happened in July when the waters of the Nile were rising. Nun the primeval sea took Osiris away to hide his secrets.
The death of Osiris threw the cosmos into chaos and made the gods weep. Isis, greatly distraught, wandered throughout the land in search of her husband, asking everyone if they had seen him.
Through divine revelation, Isis found out that the coffin had drifted down to the sea and washed ashore at Byblos, in Phoenicia. A tamarisk tree had grown up around the coffin, completely enclosing it in its trunk. When Isis found the tree, she released the coffin from it and shipped it back to Egypt. While grieving over her husband's body, she transformed herself into a kite.
As she flew over the body, she miraculously conceived a child. One day, Seth discovered Osiris's coffin and dismembered his body into fourteen parts that he scattered throughout the land.
Isis managed to find all the parts, except the phallus, which she reconstituted. She anointed his body with precious oils and performed the rites of embalming for the first time. In so doing, she restored Osiris to eternal life. Osiris went on to live in the land of the deceased, presiding over the judgement of the dead. Firstly, Osiris is brought down by Seth in Nedit. The two sisters discover the body there.
They resuscitate him. Then Isis conceives hiss son Horus. Seth, on finding the corpse, cuts it in pieces which he throws into the Nile. Horus leaves to search for them, collects them.
Entrusted to Nut they are buried inside the sarcophagus. The dismembered body is reconstituted, recomposed like that of an embryo, before being put back into the world of the beyond. The Pyramid Texts, in addition, develop the nursing and feeding of the newborn.
Secondly, Osiris is brought down by Seth and cut in pieces. Isis and Nephthys recover them in Nedit. The body is reconstituted, buried, resuscitated. The conception of Horus takes place at that moment. A variant of the second scenarios: Osiris is put to death two times brought down, then cut up , the corpse having been discovered a first time by Isis and Nephthys, then reconstituted and buried before being resuscitated.
The second scenario and its variant come up against the tradition making of Horus, the one who collects the pieces of his father's corpse we also find him in the same way in the sides of Isis and Nephthys in the Jumilhac Papyrus, at the bottom, V [13].
However, one could consider this quest as a sort of abridgement, a metaphor: Horus would not literally collect the parts of his father's body but his inheritance. In any case, it seems preferable to conceive a death in two stages, as passed on to us by Plutarch. Indeed, in the Old Kingdom, one repeatedly finds traces of such a practice within the framework of funeral rites. In necropolises such as the one of Deshasheh [14] - but the examples do not limit themselves to this one -, we possess several examples of corpses whose bones have been arranged in disorder, which supposes a first burial or, more probably, to allow the corpse to dry up and to decompose by itself and a secondary burial permitting a different arrangement of the body.
Such a burial in two stages is even present in the rituals of the month of khoiak, when the mummy of Osiris was buried before being committed to the earth [15]. It would be necessary, of course, to recover all the archaeological files. However be that as it may, the death of Osiris, as one can restore it according to the Pyramid Texts, is a very real death. Contrary to very widespread opinion [16] , it is not concealed, nor toned down.
It is even mentioned with a certain brutality. Besides, the Pyramid Texts make allusion repeatedly to mummification and make it possible to define in a very precise way the ritual of the funeral. All this shows, if it was necessary, that it is about an ancient and well established tradition, where it is possible to discover hidden layers, but revealing the very ancient existence of the myth of Osiris, who is probably not a newcomer to the Egyptian pantheon, as was often written.
Compared to the recension of Plutarch, all the anecdotal elements are missing the scene of the banquet, episodes of the quest of Isis, primarily in Byblos. Only the essential events have been retained. This choice is quite logical and answers the fundamental value of the compilation which constitute the Pyramid Texts: having as its function to ensure the passage of the demise of life, the death of Osiris and his resurrection, it acts as a model and a myth of reference.
Thus the actual death is accentuated, by the reference to the decomposition of the corpse; the destruction of the body, by dismemberment which refers maybe to very precise practices in use during the prehistoric period and again in the Old Kingdom, as we have seen ; then the re-constitution of the body and the birth, as well as the institution of the funeral ritual coming with these different stages.
Beyond its setting in words and in pictures, the double death of Osiris is rich with several teachings: Firstly, to return to the point of departure, to start, it is necessary to give back life.
Osiris is Atum, the one who accomplished the cycle, whose other face is Re, one being the nocturnal part, the vital strengths, the other the diurnal part, the luminous strengths, according to the famous formula of the tomb of Nefertari. In other words, the death is generative of life: Horus, the descendant, symbol of the continuity, is born of his dead father.
In the same way, vegetation is born of the decomposition the humours , both sperm and humours being two generating liquids of life. Dismemberment is necessary to the being's future re-conctruction, who, however, is not going to be born again in the land of the living but in the celestial and nocturnal beyond, which means either individually, as at the time of his first birth, or as a component of the universe, thus built into the eternal cycle of the living one.
It is the very teaching of the Pyramid Texts, where the Pharaoh dies like Osiris. His dismembered body is reconstituted like the one of a newborn, and who will himself become a source of life, having acquired in turn the elements strength, mobility, light which are necessary to him, and having drawn to Osiris, in the night of the serdab, the "Cave of Nouou", the creative power.
Notes: [1] Quoted translation in the article by B. Heermavan Voss, Kampen, , p. On the pieces of the body of Osiris and the relics preserved in the different sacred places, see H. It has been discussed by P. According to him, it doesn't mean "to drown himself ", but "to bathe, immersed", then "to dive, to drift". See P. See also B. Champs Flammarion, Paris, , p. From "Iside and Osiride" by Plutarch, which escape the Egyptian restrictions, even inform us about the bloody details of the story".
Most occurrences use a neutral term, the verb rdj , "to place" or "to put", or even no verb at all: 3. Geb came …. But others mention a violent action: 7.
0コメント