Volume II Part 11 (2/2)

2. The elemental G.o.ds were Seb and Nut, of whom Seb is the earth and Nut the heavens. These two, like heaven and earth in almost all mythologies, are represented as the parents of many of the G.o.ds. The other elemental deities are but obscurely known.

3. Among solar deities are at once recognised Ra and others, but there was a strong tendency to identify each of the G.o.ds with the sun, especially to identify Osiris with the sun in his nightly absence.**

Each G.o.d, again, was apt to be blended with one or more of the sacred animals. ”Ra, in his transformations, a.s.sumed the form of the lion, cat and hawk.”*** ”The great cat in the alley of persea trees at Heliopolis, which is Ra, crushed the serpent.”****

* Their special relation to the souls of the departed is matter for a separate discussion.

** ”The G.o.ds of the dead and the elemental G.o.ds were almost all identified with the sun, for the purpose of blending them in a theistic unity” (Maspero, _Rev. de l'hist. des Rel_., i. 126).

*** Birch, in Wilkinson, iii. 59.

***Le Page Renouf, op. cit., p. 114.

In different nomes and towns, it either happened that the same G.o.ds had different names, or that a.n.a.logies were recognised between different local G.o.ds; in which case the names were often combined, as in Ammon-Ra, Sabek-Ra, Sokar-Osiris, and so forth.

Athwart all these cla.s.ses and compounds of G.o.ds, and athwart the theological attempt at constructing a monotheism out of contradictory materials, came that ancient idea of dualism which exists in the myths of the most backward peoples. As Pund-jel in Australia had his enemy, the crow, as in America Yehl had his Khanukh, as Ioskeha had his Tawiscara, so the G.o.ds of Egypt, and specially Osiris, have their Set or Typhon, the spirit who constantly resists and destroys.

With these premises we approach the great Osirian myth.

THE OSIRIAN MYTH.

The great Egyptian myth, the myth of Osiris, turns on the antagonism of Osiris and Set, and the persistence of the blood-feud between Set and the kindred of Osiris.* To narrate and as far as possible elucidate this myth is the chief task of the student of Egyptian mythology.

Though the Osiris myth, according to Mr. Le Page Renouf, is ”as old as Egyptian civilisation,” and though M. Maspero finds the Osiris myth in all its details under the first dynasties, our accounts of it are by no means so early.**

* Herodotus, ii. 144.

** The princ.i.p.al native doc.u.ments are the Magical Harris Papyrus, of the nineteenth or twentieth dynasty, translated by M. Chabas (Records of the Past, x. 137); the papyrus of Nebseni (eighteenth dynasty), translated by M. Naville, and in Records of Past, x. 159; the hymn to Osiris, on a stele (eighteenth dynasty) translated by M. Chabas (Rev. Archeol., 1857; Records of Past, iv. 99); ”The Book of Respirations,”

mythically said to have been made by Isis to restore Osiris-- ”Book of the Breath of Life” (the papyrus is probably of the time of the Ptolemies--Records of Part, iv. 119); ”The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys,” translated by M. de Horrack (Records of Past, ii. 117). There is also ”The Book of the Dead”: the version of M. Pierret, (Paris, 1882) is convenient in shape (also Birch, in Bunsen, vol. v.). M. de Naville's new edition is elaborate and costly, and without a translation. Sarcophagi and royal tombs (Champollion) also contain many representations of the incidents in the myth.

”The myth of Osiris in its details, the laying out of his body by his wife Isis and his sister Nephthys, the reconstruction of his limbs, his mythical chest, and other incidents connected with his myth are represented in detail in the temple of Philae” (Birch, ap. Wilkinson, iii. 84).

The reverent awe of Herodotus prevents him from describing the mystery-play on the sufferings of Osiris, which he says was acted at Sais, ii. 171, and ii. 61, 67, 86. Probably the clearest and most consecutive modern account of the Osiris myth is given by M. Lefebure in Les Yeux d'Horus et Osiris.

M. Lefebure's translations are followed in the text; he is not, however, responsible for our treatment of the myth. The Ptolemaic version of the temple of Edfou is published by M.

Naville, _Mythe d'Horus_ (Geneva, 1870).

They are mainly allusive, without any connected narrative. Fortunately the narrative, as related by the priests of his own time, is given by the author of _De Iside et Osiride_, and is confirmed both by the Egyptian texts and by the mysterious hints of the pious Herodotus. Here we follow the myth as reported in the Greek tract, and ill.u.s.trated by the monuments.

The reader must, for the moment, clear his mind of all the many theories of the meaning of the myth, and must forget the lofty, divine and mystical functions attributed by Egyptian theologians and Egyptian sacred usage to Osiris. He must read the story simply as a story, and he will be struck with its amazing resemblances to the legends about their culture-heroes which are current among the lowest races of America and Africa.

Seb and Nut--earth and heaven--were husband and wife. In the _De Iside_ version, the sun cursed Nut that she should have no child in month or year; but thanks to the cleverness of a new divine co-respondent, five days were added to the calendar. This is clearly a later edition to the fable. On the first of those days Osiris was born, then Typhon or Set, ”neither in due time, nor in the right place, but breaking through with a blow, he leaped out from his mother's side”.*

* De Iside et Osiride, xii. It is a most curious coincidence that the same story is told of Indra in the Rig- Veda, iv.

18, 1. ”This is the old and well-known path by which all the G.o.ds were born: thou mayst not, by other means, bring thy mother unto death.” Indra replies, ”I will not go out thence, that is a dangerous way: right through the side will I burst”. Compare (Leland, Algonquin Legends, p. 15) the birth of the Algonquin Typhon, the evil Malsumis, the wolf.

”Glooskap said, 'I will be born as others are'.” But the evil Malsumis thought himself too great to be brought forth in such a manner, and declared that he would burst through his mother's side. Mr. Leland's note, containing a Buddhist and an Armenian parallel, but referring neither to Indra nor Typhon, shows the _bona fides_ of the Algonquin report. The Bodhisattva was born through his mother's right side (Kern..

Der Buddhismus, 30). The Irish version is that our Lord was born through the crown of the head of the Virgin, like Athene. _Saltair na Rann_, 7529, 7530. Se also Liebrecht, _Zur Volkskunde_, p. 490. For the Irish and Buddhist legends (there is an Anglo-Saxon parallel) I am indebted to Mr Whitley Stokes. Probably the feeling that a supernatural child should have no natural birth, and not the borrowing of ideas, accounts for those strange similarities of myth.

Isis and Nephthys were later-born sisters. The Greek version of the myth next describes the conduct of Osiris as a ”culture-hero”. He inst.i.tuted laws, taught agriculture, instructed the Egyptians in the ritual of wors.h.i.+p, and won them from ”their dest.i.tute and b.e.s.t.i.a.l mode of living”.

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