in every city, pretending it was his body, in order that Osiris might be worshipped in many places, and to prevent Typhon from discovering the real corpse. Afterwards her son Horus fought against Typhon, conquered him, and bound him fast. But Isis, to whom he had been delivered, loosed his bonds and let him go. This angered Horus, and he pulled the crown from his mother’s head; but Hermes replaced it with a helmet made in the shape of a cow’s head. Typhon was subsequently defeated in two other battles. The rest of the myth included the dismemberment of Horus and the beheading of Isis.
So much for the myth of Osiris. Of the annual rites with which his death and burial were celebrated we unfortunately know very little. The mourning lasted five days,[1] from the 8th to the 12th of the month Athyr.[2] The ceremonies began with the “earth-ploughing,” that is, with the opening of the field labours, when the waters of the Nile are sinking. The other rites included the search for the mangled body of Osiris, the rejoicings at its discovery, and its solemn burial. The burial took place on the 11th of November, and was accompanied by the recitation of lamentations from the liturgical books. These lamentations, of which several copies have been discovered in modern times, were put in the
- ↑ So Brugsch, op. cit. p. 617. Plutarch, op. cit. 39, says four days, beginning with the 17th of the month Athyr.
- ↑ In the Alexandrian year the month Athyr corresponded to November. But as the old Egyptian year was vague, that is, made no use of intercalation, the astronomical date of each festival varied from year to year, till it had passed through the whole cycle of the astronomical year. From the fact, therefore, that, when the calendar became fixed, Athyr fell in November, no inference can be drawn as to the date at which the death of Osiris was originally celebrated. It is thus perfectly possible that it may have been originally a harvest festival, though the Egyptian harvest falls, not in November, but in April; cp. Selden, De diis Syris, p. 335 sq.; Parthey on Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, c. 39.
