Osiris

“ Those whose seats are invisible, who fetter the members of Osiris, who fetter Heart-souls and Spirit-souls, who set a seal upon the dead, and who would do evil to me, shall do no evil to me. Haste on the way to me. Thy heart is with thee. My Heart-soul and my Spirit-soul are equipped; they guide thee. I sit down at the head of the great ones who are chiefs of their abodes. The wardens of the members of Osiris shall not hold thee captive, though they keep ward over souls, and set a seal on the shadow which is dead. Heaven shall not shut thee in. ”

“ Hail, Rā! the royal Osiris is Nun. Hail Rā! the royal Osiris is thyself and reciprocally. Hail, Rā! thy spirit is that of Osiris, thy course is his in the empyrean. Hail, Rā! he dwells in the empyrean, he traverses the good Ament. Such as thou art, such is the royal Osiris. Thy intellect, Rā, is his. Osiris worships the hidden gods, he praises their spirits, these latter say to one another that thy course (Rā!) is that of Osiris, that thy way is his, great god who dwellest in the empyrean. Hail! god of the disk with the brilliant rays, praise be to the spirit Keschi! four times. ”

“ Enough to say that of all the gods, called into being by the hopes and fears of men who dwelt in times of yore on the banks of the Nile, Osiris was the most beloved. Osiris the benign father, Isis his sorrowful and faithful wife, and Horus whose filial piety and heroism shine like diamonds in a heap of stones—about this trinity were woven the ideals of Egyptian faith and family life. Hear now the story of the oldest drama of the race, which for more than three thousand years held captive the hearts of men. ”

“ Behold, grant thou that the Osiris Nu may be great in heaven even as thou art great among the gods; deliver thou him from every evil and murderous thing which may be wrought upon him by the Fiend, and fortify thou his heart. Grant thou, moreover, that the Osiris Nu may be stronger than all the gods, all the Khus, and all the dead. The Osiris Nu is strong and is the lord of powers. The Osiris Nu is the lord of right and truth which the goddess Uatchit worketh. The strength which protects the Osiris Nu is the strength which protects the god Rā in heaven. ”

“ Osiris is triumphant against his enemies.
I have come to the lord of Ta-tsert, Osiris the bull of the Amenta, who lasts forever. I give an eternal protection to thy limbs; I have come bearing the amulet in my hand; my protection is active every day. ”

“ Behold, when men, and gods, and Khus, and the dead see the Osiris Nu in the form of Horus with the ureret crown stablished upon his head, they fall down upon their faces. And the Osiris Nu, the overseer of the palace, the chancellor-inchief, triumphant, is victorious over his enemies in the heights of heaven, and in the depths thereof, and before the divine sovereign chiefs of every god and of every goddess. ”

“ Let him come forthwith, with all his sins, before the judgment-seat of the holy Pharaoh, and in the immediate presence of him whom Osiris has sent down from heaven, the son of Ra, the beloved of the gods. Let him come without fear, but let him come covered with remorse. ”

“ Osiris is powerful through thy two eyes; walking god, the course of Osiris is thy course. Rā, the journeys of Osiris are thy journeys, Osiris makes thee rule over thy enemies, thou makest Osiris rule over his enemies, by means of the great splendor which is the splendor of Rā in the empyrean, they cry to him: Bull of the country of the dead, thou art Rā, thy body rests in peace, thou art blessed in thy mysteries. ”

“ It is not so much as king of the dead that Osiris here appears, but every deceased Egyptian was regarded as himself an Osiris, as having undergone all the indignities inflicted upon the god, but finally triumphant over the powers of death and evil impersonated by Seth. This notion became so popular, that beside it all other views of the dead sink into insignificance; it permeates the funerary cult in all its stages, and from the Middle Kingdom onwards the dead man is regularly called “the Osiris so-and-so,” just as though he were completely identical with the god. ”

“ Osiris, the divine being who had died, was judge of the dead. Before him each departed spirit must appear in the judgment-hall of Truth. There the heart is weighed and the life is judged unerringly. He who passes that ordeal becomes himself Osiris, and is henceforth called by his name. ”

“ Thy soul flyeth to the east, because thou art as the image of Ra.
Those existing in the realms of the dead are accepted with rejoicing:
Sab, who existeth therein, openeth unto thee.
They come to thee with an offering, and travel to thee with an offering from Deddu. [24]
Osiris is exalted before thee—he is exalted twice over in peace.
There cometh unto thee Isis, lady of the horizon, who hath begotten herself alone in the image of the gods.
It is she who is avenged before thee—it is she who is avenged before thee! ”

“ The legend of Osiris goes on to say that his sepulchre was at Philæ, in the Cataract of the Nile, where for long centuries the Pharaohs and their people made devout pilgrimage; and thence year by year he still sends blessings to the thirsty land in the overflow of the mighty river. Here still stands the temple of Isis, the sorrowing widow of Osiris, whose little child, Horus, is emblematic of life beyond the grave, and who sits for evermore enthroned on a lotus blossom before the judgment throne of Osiris and Isis, encouraging the spirits during their trial. ”

“ Thou hast heard fair things, O Osiris! Thy strength is vigorous, O Osiris! Thy head is fastened on thy body, O Osiris! Thy neck is made firm, O Osiris! Thy heart is glad, [O Osiris!] . Thy speech is made effective, O Osiris! Thy princes rejoice Thou art established the Bull in Amentet. Thy son Horus hath ascended thy trrone, and all life is with him. Millions of years minister unto him, and millions of years hold him in fear. The Company of the Gods are his servants, and they fold him in fear. The god Tem, the Governor, the only One among the gods, hath spoken, and his word passeth not away. ”

“ The Greeks and Jews never could grasp the mystery of a god changing his almighty subjectivity into an objective human form, in order to attain, through suffering and death, what he could have fulfilled in a thousand other ways. Osiris was not only the supreme ruler in heaven, but he was also the supremely just and inexorable judge in hell. The division of the universe into an abode of bliss for the departed just, and of eternal darkness and fire for the unjust, was an Indian, Persian, and Egyptian dogma. ”

“ Osiris, in some of his aspects, was identified with the Nile, and with Rā, and with several other "gods" known to the Egyptians, but it was in his aspect as god of the resurrection and of eternal life that he appealed to men in the valley of the Nile; and for thousands of years men and women died believing that, inasmuch as all that was done for Osiris would be done for them symbolically, they like him would rise again, and inherit life everlasting. ”

“ Rā setteth as Osiris with all the diadems of the divine spirits and of the gods of Amentet. He is the one divine form, the hidden one of the Tuat, the holy Soul at the head of Amentet, Un-nefer, whose duration of life is for ever and ever. ”

“ Osiris—we will take him as being an Egyptian god, instead of Serapis in whose mysterious attributes you would find much to commend itself even to a Christian soul—Osiris, like your Master, voluntarily passed through death—to redeem the world from death—in this resembling your Christ. He, the Risen One, gives new light, and life, and blossom, and verdure to all that is darkened, dead and withered. All that seems to have fallen a prey to death is, by him, restored to a more beautiful existence; he, who has risen again, can bring even the departed soul to a resurrection ”

“ He must himself be an Osiris, according to the Egyptian expression. His individuality remained intact; as he had been on earth, so would he be in heaven. The Osiris, in fact, was a spiritualised body in which the immortal parts of man were all united together. Soul and spirit, heart and double, all met together in it as they had done when the individual was on earth.
It is clear that the doctrine of the Osiris in its developed form is inconsistent with the idea of the ka. But it is also clear that without the idea of the ka it would never have been formed. ”

“ He appeareth unto us in thy image, like the one beloved.
Behold thou me, thy sister Isis, loved of thy heart, loved by thy body;
Loved art thou, because of the inundation of the land this day.
Travel thou among us, oh thou praised one,—
Raise us living in place of what thou hast made empty.
Come thou in peace, oh our lord, whom we behold; our prince!
Approach in peace; drive away tempest from before our temple;
Send thy protection over us like a male protector (Repeat.)
Lo! the two goddesses! Behold Osiris, bull of Amentit, who is alone established!
Very great is he among the gods ”

“ He convoked around the corpse the gods who had worked with him at the embalmment of Osiris: Anubis and Thot, Isis and Nephthys, and his four children—Hâpi, Qabhsonûf, Amsît, and Tiûmaûtf—to whom he had entrusted the charge of the heart and viscera. They all performed their functions exactly as before, repeated the same ceremonies, and recited the same formulas at the same stages of the operations, and so effectively that the dead man became a real Osiris under their hands, having a true voice, and henceforth combining the name of the god with his own. ”

“ With the sun-gods are joined the goddesses of the heavens,—Nut, Hather, Isis, and others. But Osiris became the most famous sun-god. His worship was originally at Abydos and Busiris. At length his cult spread over the whole land. In the legend, he is murdered by Seth; but Horus is his avenger. Horus conquers the power of darkness. Henceforward Osiris reigns in the kingdom of the West, the home of the dead. He is the sun in the realm of the shades. He receives the dead, is their protector, and the judge whose final award is blessedness or perpetual misery. ”

“ All who have even the slightest acquaintance with the ancient history of Egypt, know that Osiris and his wife Isis were supreme divinities among that people.
The likeness of any Beast - בהמה behemah, such as the ox and the heifer. Among the Egyptians the ox was not only sacred but adored, because they supposed that in one of these animals Osiris took up his residence: hence they always had a living ox, which they supposed to be the habitation of this deity; and they imagined that on the death of one he entered into the body of another, and so on successively. ”

“ Osiris is one of the chief gods of Egyptian mythology. That he is identical with the sun is no mere inference of modern scholars; the identity is asserted in a vast number of authoritative texts. The benefits conferred upon the earth and upon mankind are sung in hymns, many of which are still extant; and the euhemerising Greeks, as we see in Plutarch or Diodorus, derived from them the tales which recent writers on mythology call 'culture-myths.' But in the original Egyptian texts it is distinctly to Osiris as the sun, and not to a deified king, that all the benefits are ascribed. ”

“ It is Osiris to whom was ordained the Leadership among the gods, upon that day when the Two Earths were united before the Inviolate god.
The junction of the Two Earths is the head of the coffin of Osiris whose father is Râ [23] the beneficent Soul in Sutenhunen, the giver of food and the destroyer of wrong, who hath determined the paths of eternity.
It is Râ himself.
Deliver me from that god who seizeth upon souls, who consumeth all filth and corruption in the darkness or in the light: all those who fear him are in powerless condition. ”

“ Osiris was dear to the hearts of the people. He was pre-eminently 'good.' He was in life and death their friend. His birth, death, burial, resurrection and ascension, embraced the leading points of Egyptian theology." "In his efforts to do good, he encounters evil. ”

“ The story of Osiris—the beneficent god, the friend of man, slain and dismembered by Typhon, buried in a score of graves: sought by Isis; recovered limb by limb; resuscitated in the flesh; transferred from earth to reign over the dead in the world of shades—is one of the most complex of Egyptian legends. Osiris under some aspects is the Nile. He personifies abstract good, and is entitled Unnefer, or “The Good Being.” ”

“ O ye, these gates, who are the gates to Osiris, ye who guard their gates, ye who herald the things of the world to Osiris every day. Osiris N. knows you—he knows your names; for he is born in Restau, where all the glory of the horizon was given him. N. receives the investiture in Pu, like the purification of Osiris. N. receives the saying (4) in Restau, when he leads the gods on the horizon with the ministrant, the protectors of Osiris. I am one of them in their leading. N. is the glorious one, the lord of the glorious, a glorious one who performs the rites. ”

“ Originally they looked upon Osiris as a man who lived on the earth as they lived, who ate and drank, who suffered a cruel death, who by the help of certain gods triumphed over death, and attained unto everlasting life. But what Osiris did they could do, and what the gods did for Osiris they must also do for them, and as the gods brought about his resurrection so they must bring about theirs, and as they made him the ruler of the underworld so they must make them to enter his kingdom and to live there as long as the god himself lived. ”