Osiris (God of the Dead and the Afterlife): Myths, Cults, Rituals | Middle East And North Africa

OSIRIS

Isis, Osiris and Horus

Osiris was the God of the Dead and the Afterlife. He was the Judge of the Divine Court and presided over the judgement of the dead. He was the first mummy and one of the most revered and powerful deities. He was often depicted with a tall conehead-like headdress and a crook in one hand and a flail in the other. These object are often pictured on images of pharaohs to represent their divine power. Isis was Osiris's wife and Horus’s father. He was murdered by Seth. his evil brother.

According to legend Osiris was originally a local fertility and vegetation god in southern Egypt linked with the growth of crops. He was slain by Seth and had his body parts scattered all over the world. Isis collected the pieces and wrapped them in a magical cloth woven from her hair by the embalming god Anubis, allowing Osiris to be reborn as the god of the dead. In one version of the story his body was torn into 14 pieces and all of them were found except one piece — Osiris's penis. Mummification is viewed as reenactment of the events of Osiris's death.

Osiris was the mythological first king of Egypt and one of the most important of the gods. In some versions of his myth, Osiris was a human who died and was resurrected as a god. He acted sort of like an Egyptian Jesus, giving humans the hope of an afterlife. Many Christian rituals — crucifixes, rosaries, communion and holy water — can be traced back to the Egyptian Osiris cult. It is said that he brought civilization to mankind. Unnefer (Wenen-nefer, Onnophris) — a name meaning 'he who is continually happy' — was given to Osiris after his resurrection. +\

Mark Millmore wrote in discoveringegypt.com: Osiris “is usually depicted as a mummy holding the crook and flail of kingship. On his head he wears the white crown of Upper Egypt flanked by two plumes of feathers. Sometimes he is shown with the horns of a ram. His skin is depicted as blue, the color of the dead; black, the color of the fertile earth; or green, representing resurrection. Osiris’s head was thought to have been buried at Abydos, his main cult center. Each year, during his festival, there was a procession and a reenactment of his story in the form of a mystery play. [Source: Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com]

Barbara Waterson wrote for the BBC: “Osiris, a member of the Great Ennead, was not only god and chief judge of the Underworld but also god of resurrection, the Inundation and vegetation...According to the myth of Osiris, he was an enlightened king of Egypt, who was murdered by his jealous brother, Seth, but was resurrected. This myth ensured that he was worshipped at Abydos, his chief cult centre,where his death and resurrection were celebrated annually in a miracle play. He was also universally revered, not least for the hope of eternal life that he held out to all Egyptians.” [Source: Barbara Waterson, BBC, March 29, 2011]

Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Discovering Egypt discoveringegypt.com; BBC History: Egyptians bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians ; Ancient History Encyclopedia on Egypt ancient.eu/egypt; Digital Egypt for Universities. Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate topics. ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt ; British Museum: Ancient Egypt ancientegypt.co.uk; Egypt’s Golden Empire pbs.org/empires/egypt; Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org ; Oriental Institute Ancient Egypt (Egypt and Sudan) Projects ; Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre in Paris louvre.fr/en/departments/egyptian-antiquities; KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt kmtjournal.com; Egypt Exploration Society ees.ac.uk ; Amarna Project amarnaproject.com; Abzu: Guide to Resources for the Study of the Ancient Near East etana.org; Egyptology Resources fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

Osiris, the Dead and the Afterlife

Mark Smith of the University of Oxford wrote: For the Egyptians, the god Osiris provided a model whereby the effects of the rupture caused by death could be totally reversed, since that deity underwent a twofold process of resurrection. Mummification reconstituted his “corporeal” self and justification against Seth his “social” self, re- integrating him and restoring his status among the gods. Through the mummification rites, which incorporated an assessment of the deceased’s character, the Egyptians hoped to be revived and justified like Osiris. These rites endowed them with their own personal Osirian aspect or form, which was a mark of their status as a member of the god’s entourage in the underworld. Thus the deceased underwent a twofold resurrection as well. Not only were their limbs reconstituted, and mental and physical faculties restored, but they entered into a personal relationship with Osiris that simultaneously situated them within a group. [Source: Mark Smith, University of Oxford, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2008, escholarship.org ]

“To understand why the life, death, and resurrection of Osiris were so significant, one must first grasp how the ancient Egyptians conceived of the human being. Their conception was essentially a monistic one. They did not divide the person into a corruptible body and immortal soul. They did, however, perceive each individual as having a “corporeal self” and a “social self”. For both, “connectivity” was an essential prerequisite. Just as the disparate limbs of the human body could only function effectively as parts of a properly constituted whole, so too could the individual person only function as a member of a properly structured society. Death brought about a twofold rupture, severing the links between the constituent parts of the body while at the same time isolating the deceased from the company of his or her former associates. In effect, it was a form of dismemberment, both corporeal and social.

Ancient Egyptian Gods Related to Death

Owen Jarus wrote in Live Science: While Osiris is often considered the Egyptian god of the underworld or god of the dead,

Orisis

experts told Live Science it's not that simple. It would be a mistake to call Osiris a god of death, Andrea Kucharek, who directs a project at Heidelberg University in Germany that looks at Osirian ritual texts, told Live Science. "He does not bring or cause death but is sovereign of the dead," Kucharek said. "In fact, he is also very much a god of life, ensuring the fertility of plants, animals and humans." [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, October 4, 2022]

"Osiris was unusual among Egyptian deities since he himself had died and had been restored to life in a new transfigured state thanks to the help of rituals that were performed for him," Mark Smith, a retired professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford, told Live Science. "Ordinary deceased people in Egypt hoped to undergo the same process of transfiguration and restoration to life using the same rituals that were performed for Osiris, so in a sense, he served as a model for them."

Other Egyptian deities were associated with the dead, such as Anubis, Horus, Hathor and Isis. However, it would also be inaccurate to call any of them a god of death. The jackal-headed Anubis is a particularly important god associated with the dead. He "is the god of embalming," Emily Teeter, an Egyptologist and researcher at the University of Warsaw, told Live Science. In Egyptian mythology, Anubis "performed the very first mummification — of Osiris himself," Laura Ranieri Roy, the founder and director of Ancient Egypt Alive, told Live Science.

The "ancient [Egyptians] had no death cult, and as a result, they did not worship a god of death," Egyptologist Martin Bommas, director of the Macquarie University History Museum in Australia, told Live Science. The closest supernatural being the ancient Egyptians had to a "god of death" might be a scarcely recorded Egyptian deity called "Death, The Great God," John Baines, a professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Oxford, told Live Science. "There is an ancient Egyptian god called 'Death, The Great God,' but this god is extremely rarely attested and a malign presence, not a beneficial one."

One of the very few instances in which this enigmatic god is recorded appears on a papyrus that dates to around 3,000 years ago, to the 21st dynasty. This papyrus shows a "winged serpent with two pairs of human legs and a human head, his tail ending in a jackal's head,"Françoise Dunand, professor emeritus of history at the University of Strasbourg in France, and Christiane Zivie-Coche, director emeritus of studies at École Pratique des Hautes Etudes, also in France, wrote in their book "Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 B.C. to 395 CE" The writing on the papyrus says this deity is called "death, the great god who makes gods and men," Dunand and Zivie-Coche wrote in their book. It's possible that the person who wrote this papyrus tried to create this "Death, The Great God" but that it never caught on, Dunand and Zivie-Coche noted. As a result, while the Egyptians had gods dedicated to the dead and mummification, the idea of a god dedicated to death itself never took on a life of its own.

Osiris Story

Mark Smith of the University of Oxford wrote: “According to a widespread Egyptian tradition, the god Osiris was born in Thebes on the first epagomenal day, the 361st day of the year, asthe eldest child of Geb and Nut, although some variant accounts provide different details about the day and place of his birth and his parentage. At delivery, he measured one cubit (52.3 cm) in length. As an adult his full height was eight cubits, six palms, and three fingers, or approximately 4.7 m. Like other Egyptian deities, his hair was blue-black in color. He married his younger sister Isis, with whom he had initiated a sexual relationship while both were still in their mother’s womb, and was crowned king of Egypt in succession to his father in Herakleopolis, adopting the fivefold titulary “Horus powerful of arms, Two Ladies mighty in valor, Horus of Gold Osiris, King of Upper and Lower Egypt Osiris, Son of Ra Wennefer the triumphant”. One source records that he held the offices of vizier, chief priest of Heliopolis, and royal herald before his assumption of the throne; another, that he had instigated a rebellion against Shu prior to his accession. [Source: Mark Smith, University of Oxford, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2008, escholarship.org ]

Orisis

“At the age of 28 the god was murdered by his brother, Seth. According to some sources, the killer justified his act with the claim that he had acted in self- defense. According to others, he took retribution because Osiris had engaged in an illicit affair with his wife, Nephthys . The offspring of this adulterous union was Anubis, who is sometimes called the eldest son of Osiris . A few texts say the god also had a daughter or daughters, without indicating who their mother was, by one of whom he fathered additional sons. After the murder of her husband, Isis searched for and discovered his corpse, which was then reconstituted through mummification. Using her potent spells and utterances, she was able to arouse Osiris and conceive her son Horus by him. Thus a sexual relationship that began before either deity was actually born continued even after one of them had died.

“The child Horus was raised in secret by his mother in the marshes of Khemmis in the delta, where he was safe from Seth’s attempts to find and kill him. On reaching adulthood, he avenged the crime committed against Osiris. Seth was brought to justice, found guilty, and punished for his deed, while Horus was acclaimed as king and rightful successor to his father. Now vindicated against his enemy, and with the legitimacy of his heir firmly established, Osiris himself was installed as ruler of the underworld and its inhabitants.

“This brief sketch is a composite assembled from a number of Egyptian sources of different dates and from different parts of the country. It illustrates one salient fact, however. Osiris is one of the few Egyptian divinities of whom it is possible to write even the outline of a biography. More personal details about him are extant than about any other god or goddess. This is not simply an accident of preservation. The Egyptians considered some deities important because of their impersonal attributes and powers, the roles they were believed to play in the maintenance of the cosmos. But the crucial significance of Osiris for them lay in what he personally had done and undergone. His life, death, and resurrection were perceived to be particularly momentous in relation to their own fates, and thus they figure more prominently in the textual record than do accounts of the exploits of other divinities. Moreover, because so much importance was invested in the fact that these were events actually experienced by a real individual, and not merely abstractions, personal detail was essential in recounting them.”

Myth of Osiris

The Myth of the Osirian Cycle goes: “Now, Great Re had at last grown old. He saw that man had become fearful and angry. They had made the first weapons, and attacked anyone who might be an enemy of the Sun God. Sadly, Re chose to leave the Divine Throne and moved far away from the land; He moved where He could still see mankind, but be far out of their reach. He made the stars and scattered them along the belly of Nuit. He made the Field of Peace and the Field of Reeds as homes for the blessed dead. Finally, He summoned Wise Thoth. He spake unto Him and said, "See, I will shine here in the heavens. I will light the sky above and the sky below. You must represent Me on earth, and record the deeds of men." He then created the Ibis form of Thoth, and made Him the Scribe of the Gods. [Source: Theology WebSite] “When Re was in the underworld, the world was engulfed in Darkness, and men were afraid; They wept for the loss of the Sun God. Their cries reached Re Himself, and the Divine One also transformed Thoth into the Great White Baboon. Thoth shone with a silvery Light, and man no longer feared the sinking of the Sun. This was the mercy of Re to the children of His tears.

“Finally, Re commanded Geb and Nun to guard the world against the Serpents of Chaos; and He set His Great Grandson, Osiris, Lord of Eternity, as the new Pharoah of Egypt, and made Isis it's Queen. Osiris proved to be a wise and kindly ruler. He taught man how to irrigate the land from the flood-waters of the Nile, and to grow crops therefrom. He taught them how to know and worship the Gods. He gave them the law of the land. He guided them away from canabalism and incest, and brought civilization to the people.

“Soon, the Great Pharoah had brought a Golden Age to Egypt, and He set off to share His wisdom with distant countries as well. Isis was left in his place, and She ruled as well as Osiris Himself had done. Her brother, Seth, Dark Lord of Storm, She watched as a mongoose eyes the cobra. For Seth coveted the Throne of Osiris for His own.”

Seth Murders Osiris

Seth

“When Osiris returned to Egypt, Seth had designed a plot for His overthrow with the aid of seventy-two conspirators. A banquet had been planned in honour of Osiris; one that Cunning Isis would not be attending. During the festivities, Seth began to speak of a splendid chest that had been made for Him. He sent for the chest, and all present admired the fine wood and gilding. Seth declared that He would gift the chest to any man who could fit it exactly. [Source: Theology WebSite]

“Each man, in his turn, laid within the chest. Some were too short, and others too tall. Seth knew that only Osiris would fit the chest exactly, for he had constructed it to Osiris' exact measurements. Osiris' turn came, and He lay trustingly back into the chest, fitting snuggly within it. There was laughter amoung the guests who thought that Seth had lost His prize to the Pharoah. Seth signaled his conspirators, and the chest was immediately slammed shut and locked. The chest was carried in the dark of night to a branch of the Nile, and was tossed into the cold waters. Seth then declared the death of the King, and crowned Himself King of Egypt. When Isis came to know of Her husband's death, she became half mad with grief. She cuff off a lock of Her hair and dressed in widow's clothing. She then went out in search of Her husband's body.

“During Her travels, Isis came to learn that Osiris had known Her sister Nephthys. From that union had been born a child-Anubis-but Nephthys had turned Him away at birth. And so Kindly Isis tracked Him with the help of dogs, and raised Him to be Her guardian and attendant. From village to village She traveled, until finally She found that the chest had come to rest in the land of Byblos. It had been entangled in the roots of a young sapling. Strengthend by the murdered God, it had grown in a single night into a tall and graceful tree. When the King of Byblos heard of this marvel, he had sent for the tree to be made into a pillar for his palace. No one suspected that the tree contained a coffin within it's trunk.

“Isis heard of this and made Her way into the palace, residing there for many months. At last she convinced the Queen of Byblos to give Her the pillar, and she cut it open to reveal the coffin inside. She was given the best boat in Byblos, and She journed home to Egypt; finally hiding Osiris' body in the marshes by the Nile. One night, whilst Mighty Isis slept, Seth happened upon the Dead King. In a fury, He tore the body of Osiris into fourteen pieces and scattered them throughout Egypt to ensure they would not all be found.”

Isis Resurrects Osiris from the Dead

“When Isis found the empty coffin, Her cries reached unto the heavens; even unto the ears of Her beloved Nephthys. She came to Isis' side, and the two sisters searched the land for the scattered body of Osiris. For many sad years the Daughters of Nuit wandered through Egypt. Everywhere They found a fragment They built a shrine. At last, all the pieces were gathered; with the exception of the God's phallus. Isis reassembled Osiris' body, and fashioned a phallus of pure gold to replace the lost member. She wrapped the body in cloth and perfumed it with many scents. Thus was Osiris whole again, and mummification was created. [Source: Theology WebSite]

“Isis then transformed Herself into the form of a swallow, and with Her wings She fanned the Breath of Life into Her husband. The Lord of Eternity arose, restored to life at last. But it was only to last for the length of one night, so that He and Isis could conceive their Divine Son Horus. Because of the loss of His phallus, He could not return to the land of the living. Instead, Re-Atum made Him the King of the Dead in the relm of the Beautiful West. From that time onwards, every Egyptian knew that death was nothing to fear, for his spirit would live on in the Kingdom of Osiris. “Even Horus could not have been come into being had not His Half-Brother Anubis sacrificed a day of His own life so that Horus could be born. The Young God lived a perilous childhood, yet survived to grow strong and proud. Soon He came of age and set out to fullfill His destiny-to pull the Crown from His uncle, Seth, and thus avenge His Father's death and claim His place as rightful Heir to the Throne.”

Osiris and Mummification

Osiris in the Book of the Dead

Mark Smith of the University of Oxford wrote: “Osiris provided a model whereby the effects of this rupture could be reversed, for the god underwent a twofold process of resurrection. Just as mummification restored his corporeal integrity, so too justification against Seth and the events that followed it restored his social position and re-integrated him within the hierarchy of the gods. These two concepts, mummification and justification, are intimately linked. The latter has been described, with good reason, as “moral mummification”. In obtaining justice against Seth, Osiris regained full life, since his death was an injustice. [Source: Mark Smith, University of Oxford, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2008, escholarship.org ]

“By his justification, he gained total mastery over death. In the same way that Osiris was restored to life and declared free of wrongdoing, so all who died hoped to be revived and justified, as a result of the mummification process and its attendant rituals. These actually incorporated an assessment of the deceased’s character, which prefigured the one conducted in the underworld. A favorable assessment helped to ensure their integration into the society of gods and blessed spirits in the afterlife, just as the embalming restored their corporeal integrity. Conversely, an unfavorable assessment resulted in torment, which began even while the victim still lay on the embalmer’s table. From this it should be evident that, if justification can be described as “moral mummification,” it is no less accurate to speak of mummification as “corporeal justification.”

“At the end of the embalming rites, having been returned to life and freed from imputation of wrongdoing, the deceased was endowed with an Osiris-aspect. In fact, the performance of such rites was sometimes described as “giving an Osiris to” someone. Many Egyptian texts for the afterlife are addressed or refer to “the Osiris of” an individual—that aspect or form which the dead person acquired through the efficacy of the rituals performed for his benefit in the embalming place, and in which he was supposed to endure for the rest of eternity.”

Death: Becoming an Osiris Follower in the Underworld

Mark Smith of the University of Oxford wrote: “Acquisition of this Osiris-aspect did not involve identification with the deity himself, contrary to what is said in many books on Egyptian religion. Rather, it meant that the deceased was admitted to the god’s following and became one of his devotees in the underworld. Thus it was a unio liturgica rather than a unio mystica. Unlike the latter, the former does not involve a personal, individual identification with a deity, but rather adherence to that deity’s sphere. It means being admitted to a body of worshippers, a cultic community, whose members perform the “liturgy” of a deity. In this particular instance, the community was composed of the inhabitants of the next world. By participating in their worship, the dead person acquired the same status as theirs. Since they were, in the first instance, divine beings themselves, the deceased acquired divine status as well, and with it, immortality. Thus, the concept of unio liturgica involves an element of identification, but this is collective rather than individual. The deceased was identified with a constellation of adoring deities, not the object of their devotion. [Source: Mark Smith, University of Oxford, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2008, escholarship.org ]

“The Osirian form was an outward mark of an individual’s status as a member of this community of worshippers. Both men and women could be endowed with the form in question. The gender difference between the latter and the god posed no obstacle to a woman’s acquisition of an Osirian aspect, since females as well as males were eligible to join in his worship. This sort of relationship between form and status has a striking parallel in Papyrus Louvre E 3452, a demotic collection of transformation spells written for a priest named Imhotep who died in 57 or 56 B.C. . By virtue of these spells, he was supposed to be able to assume various non-human forms in the afterlife—falcon, ibis, phoenix, dog, and serpent—each associated with a particular deity. But assumption of such a form does not result in him becoming that deity. Instead, the text says that he will follow or serve the god in question. In fact, its title states specifically that the purpose of undergoing such transformations is to enable the deceased to “follow any god of any temple and to worship him according to his wish in the course of every single day”. Here too, acquisition of a form associated with a particular deity results not in identification but in assumption of the role of devotee.

Isis bringe Osiris back to life

“As the evidence of this text shows, the Egyptian verb that best describes the relationship between the god Osiris and the Osiris of a deceased person is not xpr, “become,” but rather Sms, “follow”. The dead person can be said to follow the deity in two distinct senses: on the one hand, he joins the retinue of Osiris’s worshippers; on the other, through the efficacy of the mummification rites, which reconstitute his corporeal and social selves, he follows in Osiris’s footsteps by undergoing the same twofold process of resurrection previously undergone by that god.

“Some have attempted to minimize the distinction between “becoming” and “following” in this context. Assmann, for instance, claims that becoming Osiris and being introduced to that god’s cultic sphere are simply “two faces of the same medal,” both being parts of the deceased’s initiation into the underworld. This assessment is influenced unduly by Greek mystery religion, in which a devotee is actually identified with the divinity he worships. The Egyptian conception is very different. The Coffin Texts include a number of spells for becoming various deities, including one, Spell 227, with the title “Transformation into Osiris”. This utterance was supposed to ensure the beneficiary’s identification with that deity, yet it was to be employed by someone who had already been endowed with an Osirian form. If that form was, in itself, sufficient to ensure identification with the god, what was the purpose of the spell? In another utterance, Spell 4, the Osiris of a deceased person is addressed with the words “You will become Osiris”. Once again, the individual already possesses an Osirian form, yet his becoming Osiris is treated as a future event, something that has not yet taken place. These examples show clearly that, from an ancient Egyptian perspective, acquisition of an Osirian form and identification with that deity are two totally separate things.”

Emergence Osiris Worship 4500 Years Ago

The reign of Niuserre (2453-2422 B.C.) was the period when Osiris, the lord of the netherworld, was mentioned for the first time. Eric A. Powell wrote in Archaeology magazine: Hieroglyphic inscriptions praising the god have been discovered in the tombs of officials in Abusir and Saqqara. He was first invoked as an important deity in texts discovered in a tomb at Saqqara belonging to an official named Ptahshepses, who served Userkaf and died during the reign of Niuserre. The official’s son, also named Ptahshepses, was Niuserre’s son-in-law. The younger man’s many titles included Privy to the Secret of the House of Morning and Overseer of All Works of the King. He seems to have been the first vizier whose power came close to equaling that of the pharaoh, and his many functions and titles were passed on to his descendants. In fact, his funerary monument in Abusir was more spectacular than the tombs of members of the royal family and rose in pride of place in front of the pyramids of Sahure and Niuserre. No hieroglyphs have been discovered in the tomb of the younger Ptahshepses acclaiming Osiris as the king of the dead, but it is likely that, just as his father had been, he was loyal not only to the pharaoh on Earth, but to the pharaoh in the next world as well. [Source: Eric A. Powell, Archaeology magazine, November-December 2020]

By end of the 5th Dynasty, the cult of Osiris was in ascendance. The line’s last two kings did not even build solar temples, and the royal cemetery was moved from Abusir back to Saqqara. The final 5th Dynasty pharaoh, Unis (r. ca. 2353–2323 B.C.), was the only pharaoh of his line not to take a regnal name linked to the god Ra, perhaps further illustrating that Osiris had begun to eclipse the sun god in importance. Unis’ pyramid at Saqqara was also the smallest one ever built during the Old Kingdom, but inside the modest complex was an innovation that would endure for thousands of years.

Unis commissioned a series of sacred formulas or spells known as the Pyramid Texts to be carved on the walls of his burial chamber. These include instructions for properly carrying out a funeral and references to the sun that were both codified earlier, perhaps during the 4th Dynasty. But most of the text is devoted to the worship of Osiris. By this time, the god of death had finally become more important than the sun god, upon whose power the earlier 5th Dynasty rulers had relied. Nevertheless, the Pyramid Texts were still intended to reinforce the pharaoh’s legitimacy. “On a symbolic level, the king needed to come up with a new unique form of his extraordinary standing, being a deputy of the gods on Earth,” says Bárta. “The Pyramid Texts were just such a means of achieving this.” Variations of the Pyramid Texts would be included in the tombs of the 6th Dynasty pharaohs, and even in the pyramids of their queens. Within just a few hundred years, the formulas and spells of the Pyramid Texts had spread beyond royal burials, and were inscribed on the coffins of officials throughout Egypt.

Honoring Osiris at His Cult Center in Abydos

Osiris

Osiris’s head was thought to have been buried at Abydos, his main cult center. Each year, during his festival, there was a procession and a reenactment of his story, death and resurrection in the form of a mystery play. Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner wrote in Archaeology magazine: “The ancient Egyptians celebrated Osiris, the god of death and regeneration, at the cult center of Abydos in Upper Egypt for thou-sands of years. Beginning in the early second millennium B.C., the site drew people from all walks of life to participate in a festival that dramatized the god's postmortem transformation. During the festival's main procession, which traveled more than half a mile across the desert from Osiris' temple to his tomb, priests carried statues of the god and his divine retinue in boat^shaped shrines. Along the way Osiris' murder was dramatically reenacted. Upon reaching the subterranean tomb, priests performed rituals intended to regenerate his inert, mummified body When the reborn Osiris emerged from his tomb to return to the temple, the assembled crowd roared and rejoiced in celebration of the god's victory over his enemies and the triumph of the individual over death. For the ancient Egyptians, Osiris' death and rebirth served as a model for their own immortality. [Source: Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner, Archaeology, January-February 2013 ^|^]

“The Osiris myth also had political significance. The Egyptians believed that, in the far distant past, the god had ruled Egypt. After his brother Seth murdered and dismembered him, Osiris' wife and sister, the goddess Isis, reassembled the scatrtered parts. Isis then reanimated the god's body long enough to conceive a son named Horus, whom she raised in secret. When he was old enough, Horus challenged Seth's right to rule. A divine tribunal judged Horus the rightful heir to the throne of Egypt. For millennia the myth served as a model for the passing of kingship from father to son. ^|^

“In their eagerness both to secure their own access to the afterlife and to legitimize their lines of succession, royal patrons and elite members of society built mudbrick chapels and erected elaborately carved limestone stelae along the processional route to Osiris' temple. Those with fewer resources set up simpler markers or left behind small flakes of limestone painted with their names. Many also brought offerings of food, drink, and incense in coarse pottery cups — hundreds of which have been found on the site — evidence of popular religious practices preserved only in the archaeological record.^|^

“Royal patrons and elite members of society often placed funerary figurines (shabtis) shaped like mummies near Osiris' tomb. These sometimes bore the names of their dedicators or deceased family members and were provided to perform any work the dead might require in the afterlife. Many shabtis were made of faience, a quintessentially Egyptian material made of easily molded silica-rich paste that, when fired, produced a glazed surface resembling enamel. The most typical color of faience is turquoise— a result of super-heating the copper in the paste— which symbolized birth and regeneration. These examples were found in the tomb of an elite individual dating to about 1100 b.c The tomb had been built inside a chapel that was approximately 150 years older. Although the tomb had been robbed long before the 2011 excavations, the plunderers had left behind almost 50 shabtis, which provide both the name and titles of the tomb's owner, possibly "Priest of the [house of] bread, Shed-Aset." A later clay shabti (below, third from left) also found in this context points to the tomb's reuse. The shabti's back (below, right) bears a small fingerprint likely belonging to the child who made it.” ^|^

Osiris Procession at the Khoiak Festival at Abydos

On the so-called Khoiak Festival at Abydos. Martin Stadler of Wuerzburg University wrote: “For the Middle Kingdom, the procession of the underworld god Osiris during the Khoiak Festival is well documented. The procession can be reconstructed as follows: It left the god’s temple at Abydos to visit his desert burial place, called Pqr (“Poker”), located in what is known today as Umm el-Qa’ab, the Pre- and Early Dynastic royal necropolis of Abydos. At this site is situated the tomb of 1st-Dynasty king Djer (2974 – 2927 B.C.), which was considered to be that of Osiris from (at least) around 2000 B.C. onward. [Source: Martin Stadler, Wuerzburg University, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2008, escholarship.org ]

“Thus the procession of the deceased royal god Osiris combined both royal and funereal elements. The exact route the procession took to Poker is not entirely certain, but the great number of Middle Kingdom stelae and chapels lining the so-called “terrace of the great god” (rwd n nTr aA) behind the temple of Osiris indicates that here the nSmt, the sacred bark of Osiris, passed by—an indication reinforced by the stelae’s recurrent formula expressing the dedicatees’ hope of seeing the “perfection” (nfrw) of Osiris. Seeing Osiris’s perfection was a symbol of having passed the judgment at death and of having entered the hereafter. The North and Middle cemeteries adjacent to the Abydene “terrace of the great god” may themselves be seen as flanking the processional way into the desert to the aforementioned tomb of Djer.

Ani before Osiris

“The procession’s exact structure, however, is still quite obscure, because the activities of the feast itself were kept secret. The Khoiak Festival probably comprised multiple processions, with the procession of Wepwawet (prt Wp-wAwt) preceding the “great procession” (prt aAt) of Osiris. It is likely that during these processions the myth of Osiris was dramatically re-enacted, or at least recited. Further evidence, consisting of inscriptions and scenes in the Osiris chapels on the roof of the late Ptolemaic-early Roman Hathor temple at Dendara, may give us some idea of these Khoiak “mysteries.” Despite the late date of these attestations there is reason to consider that parts of the texts can be traced as far back as the Middle Kingdom.”

On a festival held in conjunction the Khoiak Festival during Ptolemic and Roman times, Filip Coppens of Charles University, Prague wrote: “The “Festival of the Coronation of the Sacred Falcon” (xaw nswt) was but one of many examples of this type of feast. It was celebrated during the first days of the month of Tybi and is depicted in detail on the inner face of the temple’s enclosure wall. The festival followed almost immediately upon the feasts surrounding the internment and resurrection of the god Osiris, in his role as ruler of Egypt and father of Horus, at the end of the month of Khoiak. On the first day of the fifth month of the year, Horus, as the son and legitimate heir of Osiris, assumed the kingship over the two lands. The annual Festival of the Coronation of the Sacred Falcon can be seen as a re-enactment of both Horus and the ruling pharaoh taking their rightful place upon the throne of Egypt. The main events of this festival consisted of a series of processions within the temple precinct. The main stages of the feast included: a procession of the falcon-headed statue of Horus from the sanctuary to the “Temple of the Sacred Falcon”, located in front of the main temple; the election of a sacred falcon, reared within the temple precinct, as the heir of the god; the display of this falcon (from the platform between the two wings of the pylon) to the crowd of people gathered in front of the temple; the falcon’s coronation in the temple; and, finally, a festive meal in the “Temple of the Sacred Falcon”. Another important festival in the temple of Edfu of which more than the name has been preserved is the “Festival of Victory” (Hb qnt) depicted on the interior of the enclosure wall. [Source: Filip Coppens, Czech Institute of Egyptology, Charles University, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2009, escholarship.org ]

Orisis and Isis Milk Libation Ritual

Some of the massive reliefs on the temples on the island of Philae near Aswan in southern Egypt depict Ptolemaic pharaohs and other important religious officials offering libations to gods, often Isis and Osiris and their son Horus. Isma’il Kushkush wrote in Archaeology Magazine: In Egyptian mythology, Osiris was killed and dismembered by his brother Seth. Their sister and Osiris’ wife, Isis, managed to reassemble his body and he was brought back to life as the god of the underworld. The Egyptians offered libations, usually water or wine, to Osiris during rituals intended to symbolically aid in his rebirth. At Philae, depictions of this ritual include examples that show Ptolemaic pharaohs offering Osiris water in two small bottles, as was customary in Egyptian practice. However, others appear to show them offering Osiris libations of milk, which they pour out before the god from a situla, a long narrow vessel with a looped handle. This, Egyptologist Solange Ashby of the University of California, Los Angeles believes, was a distinctly Nubian practice. “What we see at these temples is this different type of libation, which is to pour out a stream of milk that goes over offerings laid out on an offering table,” she says. [Source: Isma’il Kushkush, Archaeology Magazine, November/December 2021]

Osiris Temple at Abydos

Egyptologists have debated for a century whether or not these scenes are intended to depict milk libations or offerings of wine or water. “I say this is milk,” says Ashby. She points to a scene inside the temple of Isis at Philae depicting Ptolemy VIII (r. 170–116 B.C.) offering a libation to Osiris, with Isis standing behind the god. “The hieroglyphs around him say this milk comes from the breast of the goddess Hesat,” Ashby explains, referring to a celestial cow goddess. Some scholars have argued that even if the depictions show milk libations, they must represent an Egyptian tradition. For Ashby, even though the depictions of the milk libation occur in Ptolemaic temples, the ritual is a purely Nubian practice. “I suggest they adopted it from Nubian worshippers,” she says. She points out that the earliest depictions of milk libations are found in Lower Nubia at the temple of Dakka, in a sanctuary that was built by the Meroitic king Arkamani (r. 275–250 B.C.). Milk libations are also depicted in royal funeral chapels farther south, in Upper Nubia, which is part of modern-day Sudan. At the temple of Musawwarat es-Sufra, for example, reliefs depict herdsmen preparing milk offerings for the Nubian lion-headed god Apedemak. But there are no such depictions in temples north of the first cataract, in Egypt proper.

Hieroglyphs at Philae’s temple of Isis refer to milk as ankh-was, or “life and power.” “Milk seems to be infused with this magical element of transferring life and power to the one who is deceased, much in the way that the breast milk of a mother keeps her infant alive and growing,” says Ashby. “There seems to be this connection in the mind of Nubians.” For the Nubians, then, milk would have been the ideal offering to aid in the rebirth of Osiris.

Milk libation rituals would have been performed during annual funerary rites for Osiris. Known as the Festival of Entry, this ceremony was held during the month of Khoiak, in the early fall, when the Nile flooding reached its peak. Gilded statues of Isis and Osiris were taken from the Isis temple at Philae to boats moored outside a structure known as the Gate of Hadrian. They were then rowed across the Nile to the island of Biga, where Osiris was thought to have been buried. There, at a sanctuary known as the Abaton, milk libations were offered to the god. Ashby notes that, until quite recently, milk played a central role in rituals surrounding death in Nubia. Within living memory, a widow would traditionally pour milk on her husband’s grave on the second day after his death, a distant echo, perhaps, of the milk libations offered to Osiris.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated July 2024