Page:Books on Egypt and Chaldaea, Vol. 32--Legends of the Gods.pdf/123

form of the cult of Isis and Osiris introduced by the Ptolemies into Egypt extended to the great cities of Greece and Italy, still further modifications took place in it, and the characters of Isis and Osiris were still further changed. By degrees Osiris came to be re­garded as the god of death pure and simple, or as the personification of Death, and he ceased to be regarded as the great protecting ancestral spirit, and the all-powerful protecting Father of his people. As the importance of Osiris declined that of Isis grew, and men came to regard her as the great Mother-goddess of the world. The priests described from tradition the great facts of her life according to the Egyptian legends, how she had been a loving and devoted wife, how she had gone forth after her husband’s murder by Set to seek for his body, how she had found it and brought it home, how she revivified it by her spells and had union with Osiris and conceived by him, and how in due course she brought forth her son, in pain and sorrow and loneliness in the Swamps of the Delta, and how she reared him and watched over him until he was old enough to fight and vanquish his father’s murderer, and how at length she seated him in triumph on his father’s throne. These things endeared Isis to the people everywhere, and as she herself had not suffered death like Osiris, she came to be regarded as the eternal mother of life and of all living things. She was the creatress of crops, she produced fruit, vege­tables, plants of all kinds and trees, she made cattle