Egyptian sun cannot with any show of reason be described as dead in winter.[1] But if his daily death was the theme of the legend, why was it celebrated by an annual ceremony? This fact alone seems fatal to the interpretation of the myth as descriptive of sunset and sunrise. Again, though the sun may be said to die daily, in what sense can he be said to be torn in pieces?[2]
In the course of our inquiry, it has, I trust, been made clear that there is another natural phenomenon
- ↑ Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 113. Cp. Maspero, Histoire ancienne,4 p. 35; Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i. §§ 55, 57.
- ↑ There are far more plausible grounds for identifying Osiris with the moon than with the sun—1. He was said to have lived or reigned twenty-eight years; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, CC. 13, 42. This might be taken as a mythical expression for a lunar month. 2. His body was rent into fourteen pieces (ib. CC. 18, 42). This might be interpreted of the moon on the wane, losing a piece of itself on each of the fourteen days which make up the second half of a lunation. It is expressly mentioned that Typhon found the body of Osiris at the full moon (ib. 8); thus the dismemberment of the god would begin with the waning of the moon. 3. In a hymn supposed to be addressed by Isis to Osiris, it is said that Thoth
“Placeth thy soul in the bark Ma-at,
In that name which is thine, of God Moon.”And again,
“Thou who comest to us as a child each month,
We do not cease to contemplate thee,
Thine emanation heightens the brilliancy
Of the stars of Orion in the firmament,”
etc.Records of the Past, i. 121 sq.; Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 629 sq. Here then Osiris is identified with the moon in set terms. If in the same hymn he is said to “illuminate us like Ra” (the sun), this, as we have already seen, is no reason for identifying him with the sun, but quite the contrary. 4. At the new moon of the month Phanemoth, being the beginning of spring, the Egyptians celebrated what they called “the entry of Osiris into the moon.” Plutarch, Is. et Os. 43. 5. The bull Apis, which was regarded as an image of the soul of Osiris (Is. et Os. CC. 20, 29), was born of a cow which was believed to have been impregnated by the moon (id. 43). 6. Once a year, at the full moon, pigs were sacrificed simultaneously to the moon and Osiris. Herodotus, ii. 47; Plutarch, Is. et Os. 8. The relation of the pig to Osiris will be examined later on.
Without attempting to explain in detail why a god of vegetation, as I take Osiris to have been, should have been brought into such close connection with the moon, I may refer to the intimate relation which is vulgarly believed to subsist between the growth of vegetation and the phases of the moon. See e.g. Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 221, xvi. 190, xvii. 108, 215, xviii. 200, 228, 308, 314; Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. iii. 10, 3; Aulus Gellius, xx. 8, 7; Macrobius, Saturn. vii. 16, 29 sq. Many examples are furnished by the ancient writers on agriculture, e.g. Cato, 37, 4; Varro, i. 37; Geoponica, i. 6.
