The religions of ancient Egypt and Babylonia

by A. H. Sayce

It would seem, therefore, that Professor Maspero is right in holding that Osiris was primarily the god of Busiris in the Delta. It is the only nome of which he was formally the presiding deity, under the title of Ânz, “the king,” and it bordered on Hermopolis, which was dedicated to the ibis-god Thoth, who is so closely connected with the story of Osiris.[129] To the north stood the temple of Isis-Rennet,[130] to the south-west was Pharbæthos (Horbêt), which worshipped Set, while Horus was the god of many of the neighbouring nomes. The whole cycle of Osirian deities is thus to be found within the confines of a small tract of the Delta.

The name Busiris means simply “the place of Osiris.” Primitively it had been called Daddu, “the two colonnades,”[131] and Osiris became known as its lord. It was under this title that he was incarnated in the ram of the neighbouring town of Mendes on the eastern boundary of Hermopolis. The ram became his soul; all the more easily since the Egyptian words for “ram” and “soul” had the same or a similar pronunciation. At Dendera it is said that in the ram of Mendes Osiris grew young again; and in the later days of solar syncretism the four souls of Ra and Osiris, of Shu and Khepera, were united in its body. How far back this identification of the god and the sacred animal may reach we do not know. But it is significant that it was not at Daddu itself, but at a neighbouring city, that the animal was worshipped, though a seal-cylinder which belongs to the oldest period of Egyptian history already declares that Daddu was “the city of the ram.”[132]

Nebhât and Anubis had originally nothing to do with the god of Busiris. Nebhât, in fact, is merely a title which has been fossilised into the name of a deity. It is merely the ordinary title of the Egyptian lady as “the mistress of the house,” who thus stands on the same footing as “the lord of the house,” her husband. The title could have been given to any goddess who was conceived of in human form, and was doubtless applied [pg 158] to Isis the wife of Osiris. He was “the lord” of the city; she, “the lady of the house.” It reminds us of the way in which the deities of Babylonia were addressed. There, too, the god was “the lord,” the goddess “the lady.” The old titles of Osiris and Isis which have thus survived in the Osirian myth are essentially Babylonian.

Nebhât or Nephthys was individualised in order to complete the trinity of Set, of which Set was the central figure. We can tell, accordingly, when she thus developed into a separate goddess. It was when the doctrine of the Trinity first became dominant in the Egyptian schools of theology, and all the chief deities of the country were forced to conform to it. Anubis, the second person in the trinity of Set, must have already been attached to the cult of Osiris. How this came about is not difficult to discover. Anubis the jackal was the god of the underworld. Like his symbol, the jackal, he watched over the tombs, more especially in “the mountain” far away from the cultivated land. His sacred animal already appears mounted on its standard on the early slate plaques of Nekhen and Abydos by the side of the Horus-hawk. He was, in fact, worshipped in many of the nomes, above all at Siût, where he was adored as “the opener of the paths” to the world below. He was the inventor of the art of embalming; he must therefore have been the god of the dead when the Pharaonic Egyptians first settled themselves in Upper Egypt. In one sense, indeed, he was younger than Horus, since “the followers of Horus” had not brought the art with them from their earlier home; but he was already god of the dead, and the discovery of the art was accordingly ascribed to him.

The acceptance of Osiris as the god of the underworld meant the displacement of Anubis. He had to make [pg 159] way for “the lord of Daddu.” The fact is a striking illustration of the influence which the Osirian teaching must have possessed. Osiris was the feudal god only of a nome in the north of the Delta; Anubis had been adored from time immemorial throughout the valley of the Nile. The cities which recognised him as their chief deity were numerous and powerful. Nevertheless he had to yield to the rival god and take a subordinate place beside him. He remained, indeed, in the pantheon, for the Egyptians never broke with their past; but the part he had played in it was taken by another, and he was content to become merely the minister of Osiris and the guardian of the cemeteries of the dead.

Meanwhile Osiris, like the Greek Dionysos, had pursued his victorious march. Wherever his worship extended his temple rose by the side of his tomb like the temples attached to the Pyramids. Like Ptaḥ of Memphis or the mummified Horus of Nekhen, he was a dead god, and it was to a dead god consequently that the offering was made and the priest dedicated. It was at Abydos in Upper Egypt, however, that his fame was greatest. Abydos was the sepulchral temple of Osiris attached to the city of This, and This was not only the seat of a powerful kingdom, which probably succeeded that of Nekhen, but the birthplace of Menes, the founder of the united monarchy. Around the tomb of the Osiris of Abydos, accordingly, the kings and princes of the Thinite dynasties were buried, and where the Pharaoh was buried his subjects wished to be buried too. From all parts of Egypt the bodies of the dead were brought to the sacred ground, that they might be interred as near as possible to the tomb of the god, and so their mummies might repose beside him on earth as they hoped their souls would do in the paradise of the Blest. Even the rise of the Memphite dynasties did not deprive [pg 160] Abydos of its claim to veneration. Its sanctity was too firmly established; hundreds of Egyptians still continued to be buried there, rather than in the spacious necropolis of the Memphite Pharaohs.[133] Abydos, with its royal memories, threw the older city of Osiris into the shade. He still, it is true, retained his ancient title of “lord of Daddu,” but it was an archaism rather than a reality, and it was as “lord of Abydos” that he was now with preference addressed.

But other sanctuaries disputed with Abydos its claim to possess the tomb of the god of the dead. Wherever a temple was erected in his honour, his tomb also was necessarily to be found. An attempt was made to harmonise their conflicting claims by falling back on the old tradition of the custom of dismembering the dead: the head of the god was at Abydos, his heart at Athribis, his neck at Letopolis. But even so the difficulty remained: the separate limbs would not suffice for the number of the tombs, and the same member was sometimes claimed by more than one locality. At Memphis, for example, where Osiris was united with Apis into the compound Serapis, his head was said to have been interred as well as at Abydos.

Abydos, at the outset, was the cemetery, or rather one of the cemeteries, of This. And the god of This was the sun-god Anher, who was depicted in human form. In the age which produced the doctrine of the Ennead, Anher was identified with Shu, the atmosphere, or, more strictly speaking, the god of the space between sky and earth was merged into the god of the sun. But it was [pg 161] not only at This that Anher was worshipped. He was also the god of Sebennytos, which adjoined the Busirite nome, and where, therefore, the human sun-god was in immediate contact with the human god of the dead. What the mummy was to the living man, that Osiris was to Anher.[134]

The double relation between Osiris and Anher in both Lower and Upper Egypt cannot be an accident. Osiris became the god of Abydos, because Abydos was the cemetery of This, whose feudal god was Anher. The relation that existed in the Delta, between Anher the sun-god of Sebennytos, and Osiris the god of the dead at Busiris, was transferred also to Southern Egypt.

Whom or what did Osiris originally represent? To this many answers have been given. Of late Egyptologists have seen in him sometimes a personification of mankind, sometimes the river Nile, sometimes the cultivated ground. After the rise of the solar school of theology the Egyptians themselves identified him with the sun when it sinks below the horizon to traverse the dark regions of the underworld. Horus the sun-god of morning thus became his son, born as it were of the sun-god of night, and differing from his father only in his form of manifestation.[135]