Osiris myth

The remainder of the story focuses on Horus, the product of the union of Isis and Osiris, who is at first a vulnerable child protected by his mother and then becomes Set's rival for the throne.

Their often violent conflict ends with Horus's triumph, which restores maat (cosmic and social order) to Egypt after Set's unrighteous reign and completes the process of Osiris's resurrection.

The myth, with its complex symbolism, is integral to ancient Egyptian conceptions of kingship and succession, conflict between order and disorder, and especially death and the afterlife.

Many of its elements originated in religious ideas, but the struggle between Horus and Set may have been partly inspired by a regional conflict in Predynastic or Early Dynastic times.

[3] In particular, the myth conveys a "strong sense of family loyalty and devotion", as the Egyptologist J. Gwyn Griffiths puts it, in the relationships between Osiris, Isis, and Horus.

[12] The most complete ancient Egyptian account of the myth is the Great Hymn to Osiris, an inscription from the Eighteenth Dynasty (c. 1550–1292 BCE) that gives the general outline of the entire story but includes little detail.

[14] The text was long thought to date back to the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 BCE) and was treated as a source for information about the early stages in the development of the myth.

[19] It vividly characterizes the deities involved; as the Egyptologist Donald B. Redford says, "Horus appears as a physically weak but clever Puck-like figure, Seth [Set] as a strong-man buffoon of limited intelligence, Re-Horakhty [Ra] as a prejudiced, sulky judge, and Osiris as an articulate curmudgeon with an acid tongue.

[22] In the early 2nd century AD,[23] Plutarch wrote the most complete ancient account of the myth in On Isis and Osiris, an analysis of Egyptian religious beliefs.

[26] His colleague John Baines, on the other hand, says that temples may have kept written accounts of myths that were later lost, and that Plutarch could have drawn on such sources to write his narrative.

[27] At the start of the story, Osiris rules Egypt, having inherited the kingship from his ancestors in a lineage stretching back to the creator of the world, Ra or Atum.

[28] Osiris is connected with life-giving power, righteous kingship, and the rule of maat, the ideal natural order whose maintenance was a fundamental goal in ancient Egyptian culture.

The Egyptians believed that written words had the power to affect reality, so they avoided writing directly about profoundly negative events such as Osiris's death.

Osiris becomes the first mummy, and the gods' efforts to restore his body are the mythological basis for Egyptian embalming practices, which sought to prevent and reverse the decay that follows death.

Set—whom Plutarch, using Greek names for many of the Egyptian deities, refers to as "Typhon"—conspires against Osiris with seventy-two unspecified accomplices, as well as a queen from ancient Aethiopia (Nubia).

This episode, which is not known from Egyptian sources, gives an etiological explanation for a cult of Isis and Osiris that existed in Byblos in Plutarch's time and possibly as early as the New Kingdom.

[58] Other deities also take important roles: Thoth frequently acts as a conciliator in the dispute[59] or as an assistant to the divine judge, and in "Contendings", Isis uses her cunning and magical power to aid her son.

"Contendings" describes the two gods appealing to various other deities to arbitrate the dispute and competing in different types of contests, such as racing in boats or fighting each other in the form of hippopotami, to determine a victor.

Horus may receive the fertile lands around the Nile, the core of Egyptian civilization, in which case Set takes the barren desert or the foreign lands that are associated with it; Horus may rule the earth while Set dwells in the sky; and each god may take one of the two traditional halves of the country, Upper and Lower Egypt, in which case either god may be connected with either region.

[85] The new king performs funerary rites for his father and gives food offerings to sustain him—often including the Eye of Horus, which in this instance represents life and plenty.

[92] One influential hypothesis was given by the anthropologist James Frazer, who in 1906 said that Osiris, like other "dying and rising gods" across the ancient Near East, began as a personification of vegetation.

The cases in which the combatants divide the kingdom, and the frequent association of the paired Horus and Set with the union of Upper and Lower Egypt, suggest that the two deities represent some kind of division within the country.

[98] Griffiths sought a historical origin for the Horus–Set rivalry, and he posited two distinct predynastic unifications of Egypt by Horus worshippers, similar to Sethe's theory, to account for it.

Much later, at the end of the Second Dynasty (c. 2890–2686 BCE), King Peribsen used the Set animal in writing his serekh-name, in place of the traditional falcon hieroglyph representing Horus.

[35] Noting the uncertainty surrounding these events, Herman te Velde argues that the historical roots of the conflict are too obscure to be very useful in understanding the myth and are not as significant as its religious meaning.

By the early Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BCE), non-royal Egyptians believed that they, too, could overcome death as Osiris had, by worshipping him and receiving the funerary rites that were partly based on his myth.

[84] As ruler of the land of the dead and as a god connected with maat, Osiris became the judge in this posthumous trial, offering life after death to those who followed his example.

[109] Another major funerary festival, a national event spread over several days in the month of Khoiak in the Egyptian calendar, became linked with Osiris during the Middle Kingdom.

[116] He and Horus were often juxtaposed in art to represent opposite principles, such as good and evil, intellect and instinct, and the different regions of the world that they rule in the myth.

In some local cults they were worshipped together; in art they were often shown tying together the emblems of Upper and Lower Egypt to symbolize the unity of the nation; and in funerary texts they appear as a single deity with the heads of Horus and Set, apparently representing the mysterious, all-encompassing nature of the Duat.

Gold statuette of three human figures. On the right is a woman with a horned headdress, in the center is a squatting man with a tall crown on a pedestal, and on the left is a man with the head of a falcon.
The family of Osiris, the protagonists of the Osiris myth. Osiris is depicted on a lapis lazuli pillar in the center, flanked by Horus on the left and Isis on the right in this Twenty-second Dynasty statuette.
Wall covered with columns of carved hieroglyphic text
The Pyramid Texts in the Pyramid of Teti
Relief of a man wearing a tall crown lying on a bier as a bird hovers over his phallus. A falcon-headed man stands at the foot of the bier and a woman with a headdress like a tall chair stands at the head.
Isis, in the form of a bird, copulates with the deceased Osiris. At either side are Horus, although he is as yet unborn, and Isis in human form. [ 37 ]
Painted relief of a seated man with green skin and tight garments, a man with the head of a jackal, and a man with the head of a falcon
The gods Osiris, Anubis, and Horus depicted together in the Tomb of Horemheb ( KV57 ) in the Valley of the Kings.
Small statue of a seated woman, with a headdress of horns and a disk, holding an infant across her lap
Isis nursing Horus
Relief of a falcon-headed man standing on a hippopotamus and driving a spear into its head as a woman stands behind them
Horus spears Set, who appears in the form of a hippopotamus, as Isis looks on
Relief of a man with an elaborate crown between two figures who gesture toward the crown. The figure on the left has the head of an animal with square ears and a long nose, while the one on the right has a falcon's head.
Horus and Set as supporters of the king
Fresco of a crowned man holding a curved stick-like implement in front of a man in mummy wrappings
The opening of the mouth ceremony , a key funerary ritual, performed for Tutankhamun by his successor Ay . The deceased king takes on the role of Osiris, upon whom Horus was supposed to have performed the ceremony. [ 103 ]