The legend of their contest may be a reminiscence of dynastic struggles.
These legends of a contest for the throne of Egypt [pg 018] may perhaps contain a reminiscence of real dynastical struggles which attended an attempt to change the right of succession from the female to the male line. For under a rule of female kinship the heir to the throne is either the late king's brother, or the son of the late king's sister, while under a rule of male kinship the heir to the throne is the late king's son. In the legend of Osiris the rival heirs are Set and Horus, Set being the late king's brother, and Horus the late king's son; though Horus indeed united both claims to the crown, being the son of the king's sister as well as of the king. A similar attempt to shift the line of succession seems to have given rise to similar contests at Rome.[32]
Osiris represented as a king in tradition and art. The tomb of Osiris at Abydos.
Thus according to what seems to have been the general native tradition Osiris was a good and beloved king of Egypt, who suffered a violent death but rose from the dead and was henceforth worshipped as a deity. In harmony with this tradition he was regularly represented by sculptors and painters in human and regal form as a dead king, swathed in the wrappings of a mummy, but wearing on his head a kingly crown and grasping in one of his hands, which were left free from the bandages, a kingly sceptre.[33] Two cities above all others were associated with his myth or memory. One of them was Busiris in Lower Egypt, which claimed to possess his backbone; the other was Abydos in Upper Egypt, which gloried in the possession of his head.[34] Encircled by the nimbus of the dead yet living god, Abydos, originally an obscure place, became from the end of the Old Kingdom the holiest spot in Egypt; his tomb there would seem to have been to the Egyptians what the Church of the Holy [pg 019] Sepulchre at Jerusalem is to Christians. It was the wish of every pious man that his dead body should rest in hallowed earth near the grave of the glorified Osiris. Few indeed were rich enough to enjoy this inestimable privilege; for, apart from the cost of a tomb in the sacred city, the mere transport of mummies from great distances was both difficult and expensive. Yet so eager were many to absorb in death the blessed influence which radiated from the holy sepulchre that they caused their surviving friends to convey their mortal remains to Abydos, there to tarry for a short time, and then to be brought back by river and interred in the tombs which had been made ready for them in their native land. Others had cenotaphs built or memorial tablets erected for themselves near the tomb of their dead and risen Lord, that they might share with him the bliss of a joyful resurrection.[35]
The tombs of the old kings at Abydos. The tomb of King Khent identified with the tomb of Osiris. The sculptured effigy of Osiris. The hawk the crest of the earliest dynasties.
Hence from the earliest ages of Egyptian history Abydos would seem to have been a city of the dead rather than of the living; certainly there is no evidence that the place was ever of any political importance.[36] No less than nine of the most ancient kings of Egypt known to us were buried here, for their tombs have been discovered and explored within recent years.[37] The royal necropolis lies on the edge of the desert about a mile and a half from the temple of Osiris.[38] Of the graves the oldest is that of King Khent, the second or third king of the first dynasty. His reign, which fell somewhere between three thousand four hundred [pg 020] and three thousand two hundred years before our era, seems to have marked an epoch in the history of Egypt, for under him the costume, the figure drawing, and the hieroglyphics all assumed the character which they thenceforth preserved to the very end of Egyptian nationality.[39] Later ages identified him with Osiris in a more intimate sense than that in which the divine title was lavished on every dead king and indeed on every dead man; for his tomb was actually converted into the tomb of Osiris and as such received in great profusion the offerings of the faithful. Somewhere between the twenty-second and the twenty-sixth dynasty a massive bier of grey granite was placed in the sepulchral chamber. On it, cut in high relief, reposes a shrouded figure of the dead Osiris. He lies at full length, with bare and upturned face. On his head is the White Crown of Upper Egypt; in his hands, which issue from the shroud, he holds the characteristic emblems of the god, the sceptre and the scourge. At the four corners of the bier are perched four hawks, representing the four children of Horus, each with their father's banner, keeping watch over the dead god, as they kept watch over the four quarters of the world. A fifth hawk seems to have been perched on the middle of the body of Osiris, but it had been broken off before the tomb was discovered in recent years, for only the bird's claws remain in position. Finely carved heads of lions, one at each corner of the bier, with the claws to match below, complete the impressive monument. The scene represented is unquestionably the impregnation of Isis in the form of a hawk by the dead Osiris; the Copts who dismantled the shrine appear to have vented their pious rage on the figure of the hawk Isis by carrying it off or smashing it. If any doubt could exist as to the meaning of these sculptured figures, it would be set at rest by the ancient inscriptions attached to them. Over against the right shoulder of the shrouded figure, who lies stretched on the bier, are carved in hieroglyphics the words, “Osiris, the [pg 021] Good Being, true of speech”; and over against the place where the missing hawk perched on the body of the dead god is carved the symbol of Isis. Two relics of the ancient human occupants of the tomb escaped alike the fury of the fanatics and the avarice of the plunderers who pillaged and destroyed it. One of the relics is a human skull, from which the lower jawbone is missing; the other is an arm encircled by gorgeous jewelled bracelets of gold, turquoises, amethysts, and dark purple lapis lazuli. The former may be the head of King Khent himself; the latter is almost certainly the arm of his queen. One of the bracelets is composed of alternate plaques of gold and turquoise, each ornamented with the figure of a hawk perched on the top of it.[40] The hawk was the sacred bird or crest of the earliest dynasties of Egyptian kings. The figure of a hawk was borne before the king as a standard on solemn occasions: the oldest capital of the country known to us was called Hawk-town: there the kings of the first dynasty built a temple to the hawk: there in modern times has been found a splendid golden head of a hawk dating from the Ancient Empire; and on the life-like statue of King Chephren of the third dynasty we see a hawk with out-spread wings protecting the back of the monarch's head. [pg 022] From the earliest to the latest times of Egyptian civilization “the Hawk” was the epithet of the king of Egypt and of the king alone; it took the first place in the list of his titles.[41] The sanctity of the bird may help us to understand why Isis took the form of a hawk in order to mate with her dead husband; why the queen of Egypt wore on her arm a bracelet adorned with golden hawks; and why in the holy sepulchre the four sons of Horus were represented in the likeness of hawks keeping watch over the effigy of their divine grandfather.[42]
The association of Osiris with Byblus.
The legend recorded by Plutarch which associated the dead Osiris with Byblus in Phoenicia[43] is doubtless late and probably untrustworthy. It may have been suggested by the resemblance which the worship of the Egyptian Osiris bore to the worship of the Phoenician Adonis in that city. But it is possible that the story has no deeper foundation than a verbal misunderstanding. For Byblus is not only the name of a city, it is the Greek word for papyrus; and as Isis is said after the death of Osiris to have taken refuge in the papyrus swamps of the Delta, where she gave birth to and reared her son Horus, a Greek writer may perhaps have confused the plant with the city of the same name.[44] However [pg 023] that may have been, the association of Osiris with Adonis at Byblus gave rise to a curious tale. It is said that every year the people beyond the rivers of Ethiopia used to write a letter to the women of Byblus informing them that the lost and lamented Adonis was found. This letter they enclosed in an earthen pot, which they sealed and sent floating down the river to the sea. The waves carried the pot to Byblus, where every year it arrived at the time when the Syrian women were weeping for their dead Lord. The pot was taken up from the water and opened: the letter was read; and the weeping women dried their tears, because the lost Adonis was found.[45]