If, as I conjecture, these human sacrifices were intended to promote the growth of the crops—and the winnowing of their ashes seems to support this view—red-haired victims were perhaps selected as best fitted to represent the spirit of the golden grain. For when a god is represented by a living person, it is natural that the human representative should be chosen on the ground of his supposed resemblance to the god. Hence the ancient Mexicans, conceiving the maize as a personal being who went through the whole course of life between seed-time and harvest, sacrificed new-born babes when the maize was sown, older children when it had sprouted, and so on till it was fully ripe, when they sacrificed old men.[1] A name for Osiris was the “crop” or “harvest”;[2] and the ancients sometimes explained him as a personification of the corn.[3]
But Osiris was not only a corn-spirit; he was also a tree-spirit, and this was probably his original character; for, as we have already observed, the corn-spirit seems to be only an extension of the older tree-spirit. His character as a tree-spirit was represented very graphically in a ceremony described by Firmicus Maternus.[4] A pine-tree was cut down, the centre was hollowed out, and with the wood thus excavated an image of Osiris was made, which was then “buried”
- ↑ Herrera, quoted by Bastian, Culturländer des alten Amerika, ii. 639.
- ↑ Lefébure, Le mythe Osiren (Paris, 1874-75), p. 188.
- ↑ Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum, 2, § 6, defensores eorum volunt addere physicam rationem, frugum semina Osirim dicentes esse; Isim terram, Tyfonem calorem: et quia maturatae fruges calore ad vitam hominum colliguntur et divisae a terrae consortio separantur et rursus adpropinquante hieme seminantur, hanc volunt esse mortem Osiridis, cum fruges recondunt, inventionem vera, cum fruges genitali terrae fomento conceptae annua rursus coeperint procreatione generari; Eusebius, Praepar. Evang. iii. 11, 31, ὁ δέ Ὂσιρις παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις τὴν κάρπτιμον παρίστησι δύναμιν, ἣν θρήνοις ἀπομειλίσ-σονται εἰς γῆν ἀφανιζομένην ἐν τῷ σπόρῳ, καὶ ὑφ’ ἡμῶν καταναλισκομένην εἰς τὰς τροφάς.
- ↑ Op. cit. 27, § 1.
