* It has long been a dogma with Egyptologists that Osiris
came from Abydos. Maspero has shown that from his very
titles he is obviously a native of the Delta, and more
especially of Busiris and Mendes.
** The Didû has been very variously interpreted. It has
been taken for a kind of nilometer, for a sculptor's or
modeller's stand, or a painter's easel for an altar with
four superimposed tables, or a sort of pedestal bearing four
door-lintels, for a series of four columns placed one behind
another, of which the capitals only are visible, one above
the other, etc. The explanation given in the text is that of
Reuvens, who recognized the Didû as a symbolic
representation of the four regions of the world; and of
Maspero, Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie
Égyptiennes, vol. ii. p. 359, note 3. According to Egyptian
theologians, it represented the spine of Osiris, preserved
as a relic in the town bearing the name of Didû, Bidît.
1 Drawn by Boudier from a statue in green basalt found at
Sakkarah, and now in the Gîzeh Museum.
They ascribed life to this Didû, and represented it with a somewhat grotesque face, big cheeks, thick lips, a necklace round its throat, a long flowing dress which hid the base of the columns beneath its folds, and two arms bent across the breast, the hands grasping one a whip and the other a crook, symbols of sovereign authority. This, perhaps, was the most ancient form of Osiris; but they also represented him as a man, and supposed him to assume the shapes of rams and bulls,[*] or even those of water-birds, such as lapwings, herons, and cranes, which disported themselves about the lakes of that district.[**]
* The ram of Mendes is sometimes Osiris, and sometimes the
soul of Osiris. The ancients took it for a he-goat, and to
them we are indebted for the record of its exploits.
According to Manetho, the worship of the sacred ram is not
older than the time of King Kaiekhos of the second dynasty.
A Ptolemaic necropolis of sacred rams was discovered by
Mariette at Tmai el-Amdid, in the ruins of Thmûis, and some
of their sarcophagi are now in the Gîzeh Museum.
** The Bonû, the chief among these birds, is not the
phoenix, as has so often been asserted. It is a kind of
heron, either the Ardea cinerea, which is common in Egypt,
or else some similar species.
The goddess whom we are accustomed to regard as inseparable from him, Isis the cow, or woman with cow's horns, had not always belonged to him. Originally she was an independent deity, dwelling at Bûto in the midst of the ponds of Adhû. She had neither husband nor lover, but had spontaneously conceived and given birth to a son, whom she suckled among the reeds—a lesser Horus who was called Harsiîsît, Horus the son of Isis, to distinguish him from Haroêris. At an early period she was married to her neighbour Osiris, and no marriage could have been better suited to her nature. For she personified the earth—not the earth in general, like Sibu, with its unequal distribution of seas and mountains, deserts and cultivated land; but the black and luxuriant plain of the Delta, where races of men, plants, and animals increase and multiply in ever-succeeding generations. To whom did she owe this inexhaustible productive energy if not to her neighbour Osiris, to the Nile? The Nile rises, overflows, lingers upon the soil; every year it is wedded to the earth, and the earth comes forth green and fruitful from its embraces.
1 Drawn by Boudier from a green basalt statue in the Gîzeh
Museum. Prom a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey.