Osiris was sometimes interpreted by the ancients as the moon.
Before we conclude this study of Osiris it will be worth while to consider an ancient view of his nature, which deserves more attention than it has received in modern times. We are told by Plutarch that among the philosophers who saw in the gods of Egypt personifications of natural objects and forces, there were some who interpreted Osiris as the moon and his enemy Typhon as the sun, “because the moon, with her humid and generative light, is favourable to the propagation of animals and the growth of plants; while the sun with his fierce fire scorches and burns up all growing things, renders the greater part of the earth uninhabitable by reason of his blaze, and often overpowers the moon herself.”[321] Whatever may be thought of the physical qualities here attributed to the moon, the arguments adduced by the ancients to prove the identity of Osiris with that luminary carry with them a weight which has at least not been lightened by the results of modern research. An examination of them and of other evidence pointing in the same direction will, perhaps, help to set the original character of the Egyptian deity in a clearer light.[322]
1. Osiris was said to have lived or reigned twenty-eight years. This might fairly be taken as a mythical expression for a lunar month.[323]
2. His body was reported to have been rent into fourteen pieces.[324] This might be interpreted of the waning moon, [pg 130] which appears to lose a portion of itself on each of the fourteen days that make up the second half of a lunar month. It is expressly said that his enemy Typhon found the body of Osiris at the full moon;[325] thus the dismemberment of the god would begin with the waning of the moon. To primitive man it seems manifest that the waning moon is actually dwindling, and he naturally enough explains its diminution by supposing that the planet is being rent or broken in pieces or eaten away. The Klamath Indians of Oregon speak of the moon as “the one broken to pieces” with reference to its changing aspect; they never apply such a term to the sun,[326] whose apparent change of bulk at different seasons of the year is far too insignificant to attract the attention of the savage, or at least to be described by him in such forcible language. The Dacotas believe that when the moon is full, a great many little mice begin to nibble at one side of it and do not cease till they have eaten it all up, after which a new moon is born and grows to maturity, only to share the fate of its countless predecessors.[327] A similar belief is held by the Huzuls of the Carpathians, except that they ascribe the destruction of the old moon to wolves instead of to mice.[328]
3. At the new moon of the month Phamenoth, which was the beginning of spring, the Egyptians celebrated what they called “the entry of Osiris into the moon.”[329]
4. At the ceremony called “the burial of Osiris” the Egyptians made a crescent-shaped chest “because the moon, when it approaches the sun, assumes the form of a crescent and vanishes.”[330]
5. The bull Apis, held to be an image of the soul of Osiris,[331] was born of a cow which was believed to have been [pg 131] impregnated, not in the vulgar way by a bull, but by a divine influence emanating from the moon.[332]
6. Once a year, at the full moon, pigs were sacrificed simultaneously to the moon and Osiris.[333]
7. In a hymn supposed to be addressed by Isis to Osiris, it is said that Thoth—
“Placeth thy soul in the bark Ma-at,