Osiris and Isis Adventures Part 6/6

Osiris and Isis Adventures
At the Delta town of Busiris there was an annual festival in which Osiris God’ dismembered body was reconstituted. Here, apparently, the pillar came to stand for his backbone (which could also explain its shape), and in this festival it was erected as part of the ritual. Coffins in the New Kingdom had the pillar painted on the bottom as a suggestion that the corpse became Osiris God when his backbone became one with the painted one.

A wall painting at the Temple of Seti I at Abydos shows a series of scenes in which the king assisted Isis Goddess in raising the pillar and thereby resurrecting Osiris God . The obvious phallic symbolism of the totem also suggested the sexual resurrection of Osiris God, commemorated elsewhere at this temple. In other drawings of the pillar here and there throughout Egypt it is shown with arms holding the crook and flail in the same attitude often used for Osiris God ; vignettes in the Book of the Dead, as well as drawings elsewhere, showed the pillar with eyes staring out between the cross-members, just as if Osiris God were looking out from inside.

Ramses II Presenting Offerings to Osiris and Isis, Temple of Seti I

 The popularity of the Osiris-Isis myth had led many scholars to try to explain its significance. Most interpretations can probably be reduced to three simple themes: the transferal of the power of kingship, celebration of the cycle of nature and its annual rejuvenation, and rituals for achieving immortality.

Older scholars, such as E. A. Wallis Budge and James Frazer, were chiefly interested in the myth as a statement about death and resurrection. Budge, of course, wrote a massive study of Osiris God and did not limit himself to any one aspect of the myth, but the motif of resurrection lies at the heart of all his research.

Frazer compared Osiris God to the Greek god Adonis and Near Eastern god Attis in one of the most important volumes of The Golden Bough, and he concluded: “In the resurrection of Osiris God the Egyptians saw the pledge of a life everlasting for themselves beyond the grave They believed that every man would live eternally in the other world if only his surviving friends did for his body what the gods had done for the body of Osiris God . Hence the ceremonies observed by the Egyptians over the human dead were an exact copy of those which Anubis, Horus, and the rest had performed over the dead god.”

Rudolf Anthes believes that the myth was a statement of the way ritual serves to satisfy religious needs, because the rituals associated with the resurrection of Osiris God became an important part of Egyptian culture. Anthes notes the ludicrous elements in the story, especially in the Horus-Seth conflict (to be told in the next chapter), but he believes that the common people worshipped the gods and enjoyed the story-telling aspect of the tales at the same time. There was great dignity in the rituals associated with Osiris God and Isis Goddess , and some of the hymns and charms that have survived are literary works of considerable beauty.

The myth of Osiris God is intimately connected with the Egyptian view of death, according to Siegfried Morenz: “Egyptian religion, in so far as it was related to death, preserved ancient ways of ensuring everlasting life and kept on discovering new ones.” Egyptian religion maintained the beliefs that life would be prolonged in the tomb and those deceased individuals and possessions in their tombs could be rejuvenated through certain rituals. The best way for a dead king to transcend death was “to become Osiris God ” through the clearly prescribed ritual that would unite the king with the god, thereby raising him above the possibility of being judged like other mortals. The myth of Osiris God , then, provided a ritualistic method for overcoming death.

The best way to approach this myth, as R. T. Rundle Clark has written, is to seek its symbolic value. Out of the story emerges a human-god who is the essential victim. Yet he is avenged and his passion has an end at last, when justice and order are reestablished on earth. The other gods are transcendent, distinct from their worshippers. Osiris God , however, is immanent. He is the sufferer with all mortality, but at the same time he is all the power of revival and fertility in the world. He is the power of growth in plants and of reproduction in animals and human beings. He is both dead and the source of all living. Hence, to become Osiris God is to become one with the cosmic cycles of death and rebirth.

The myth, then, is finally seen in archetypal terms.

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Osiris and Isis Adventures Part 5/6

Osiris and Isis Adventures Part 5
Diodorus wrote that Isis, after she had seen to the survival of Osiris God ’ body and the continuation of his worship, made a vow never to marry again. She remained the perfect queen to her people and was renowned for her sense of justice and her charity. Her efforts to revive both her son and husband from illness and death created in her an interest in medicine that she was later able to use to help humankind. At her death some claimed she was buried at Memphis, while others believe she was put to rest in her temple at Philae. After death, she is supposed to have taken her place among the rest of the gods, especially in support of Osiris God . Her fame in medicine was widespread.

Ancient Egyptian Gods and Goddess

The buildings erected in Osiris God’ memory gave Egypt some fine examples of religious architecture, but the most outstanding was the temple at Abydos, which claimed to be the repository of his head. A stele describes in detail the festival in which Ikhernefert, an official during the Twelfth Dynasty, played the important role of Horus. This was a sort of play that began with a procession of priests, laymen, a representation of Horus, and a boat holding a statue of the god Qsiris. Horus engaged the enemies of Osiris God in battle when they attacked the boat, and many of the people defended the great god, but he was nevertheless slain. Probably (the text is not clear on this) Isis Goddess and Nephthys found the body and began the rituals of lamentation. Horus then directed that the body be buried at Peger, whose location has never been determined by modern scholars.

Following the burial, Horus sought out Osiris God ’ enemies and avenged his father’s death in a great battle; the theatrical recreation of this event must have been one of the more thrilling and dangerous parts of the play. After his victory, Horus set Osiris God in a boat to sail before the crowds of people gathered at Abydos to celebrate the defeat of Seth and his troops, and to greet the risen god. It is possible that the performance of the play and the following festivities could have lasted three or four weeks.

Memphis also claimed to have the buried head, and enough temples claimed possession of his legs to have more than adequately equipped him with several pairs.

The djed pillar, which entered the Osiris God myth as the tree containing his coffin, was also connected with an important festival in his honor. Many of the symbols found in Egyptian mythology had foreign origins, but two-the eye and the djed pillar-were distinctly Egyptian. Although the latter came to be associated with the god Osiris God, it was probably a prehistoric Egyptian fetish. In shape, this object was a tallish pillar that flared out to provide a base when expected to stand alone; otherwise it had the same diameter from top to bottom and was planted in the ground like a maypole. Near the top were four cross-members that gave the appearance of short limbs or branches. The word djed meant “stability.”

Manfred Lurker believed that the pillar was originally a symbolic fertility pole on which were tied ears of corn in tiers (hence the cross-members). The ritualistic use of the pillar began in Memphis, according to Lurker, where it was associated with Ptah, who was called the “noble djed" in the Old Kingdom. If so, the king probably helped to raise the pillar in order to associate his reign with stability. R. T. Rundle Clark found a different origin: he pointed out that in the Old Kingdom the pillar was shown in wall decorations at the Step Pyramid at Sakkara.

In these drawings djed pillars were shown in the royal palace where they formed columns supporting windows. When one looked through the windows, the pillars gave the appearance of holding up the sky beyond. Clark wrote: “The purpose is clear: ... the djed columns are world pillars, holding up the sky and so guaranteeing the space of air and world in which the king’s authority holds well.” Clark believed that in the prehistoric era, the pillar was part of a “simple harvest ritual” performed by peasants in the Delta.

Both scholars agreed that, whatever its physical origins, the djed pillar found a place in mythology once the Osiris God myths were widely disseminated. In the Pyramid Texts the pillar was connected with Osiris God and described as being charred. It was thought of as the tree that grew up around Osiris God’ coffin after the waters of the Nile had floated it away. Isis Goddess had used fire as part of the ritual of release, which would account for the references to charred wood. Reference was also made to the top lying beside the pillar, which makes sense if the top were the branches of the tree that had been cut off when the tree was felled to be used in the king’s palace as a column.

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Osiris and Isis Adventures Part 4/6

Part 4 of  Osiris and Isis
Isis Goddess once more set out on a search for her husband’s body, but this time she had to find its parts. Attended by birds and beasts, she sailed up and down the Nile in a frail boat of papyrus reeds lashed together. The dreaded crocodile avoided the boat and refused to harm its divine passenger, thus originating the belief that the crocodile will not attack anybody floating in a papyrus boat. One by one Isis Goddess found the dismembered parts of Osiris God.

Isis 

Wherever she found one, she pretended to bury it and to build a shrine marking the spot. Actually, according to Diodorus, Isis Goddess made a waxen mold of each part, presented it to local priests and made them swear to protect forever this “part” of the god’s body. In return she promised each priest the personal use of one third of the land set aside for the worship of Osiris God . The historian explained the result: “accordingly it is said that the priests, mindful of the benefits of Osiris God, desirous of gratifying the queen, and moved by the prospect of gain, carried out all the instructions of Isis Goddess .

'While some believed that she actually buried the god’s parts ]n these shrines and tombs, most accepted the idea that this was Part of an elaborate ruse to trick Seth, and that she took the real Parts of Osiris God' body to Horus in order that he might put them together again. It seems that she found all but one of the parts: the god’s sexual organ, which had been eaten by fish the lepid, tus, phagrus, and oxyrhynchus. Unable to reassemble the body completely, Isis Goddess made a mold of the missing part and, according to Plutarch, “instituted a solemn festival to its memory, which is even to this day observed by the Egyptians.” Unfortunately for the curious, this festival seems not to have survived Plutarch’s day.

Osiris

Isis Goddess’ trick of pretending to bury the body wherever she found a part helps to explain why there are so many shrines to Osiris God. Each site jealously guarded its claim to have responsibility for protecting the god, and before many centuries had passed, new sites arose claiming to be authentic as well.


As Isis Goddess delivered the parts of Osiris God’ body, Horus-with the assistance of Anubis and Thoth-set about reassembling it. Once it was all together, except of course the part eaten by the fish, the body was wrapped in white linen and placed in state at the Temple of Abydos. After Horus had fought his battle with Seth, he returned to Abydos with the eye he had won from his evil uncle.  

Osiris God sat on a throne with his arms crossed holding the flail and scepter. Horus reverently opened his father’s mouth and allowed him to eat of the eye, which gave him eternal life (the mythic origin of the ritual of the Opening of the Mouth). Horus then put into place a long ladder that stretched from Abydos to heaven, and slowly Osiris God climbed upward, accompanied by Isis Goddess and Nephthys wearing beautiful robes. Thoth followed carrying the book of the gods, and Horus helped his father climb whenever he needed slight assistance.

As he climbed higher, Osiris God was able to see the mountains to the east and west and feel the cool breezes from the four corners of the earth. The solar boat lighted his passage and finally he stepped out onto the crystal floor of heaven, which rested on the peaks of two mountains. Now an immortal, it became his task to judge the lives of the mortals who sought to follow him.

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Osiris and Isis Adventures Part 3/6

The Adventures of Osiris and Isis Facts Part 3 
Once Horus was born, Thoth appeared to his mother and urged her to flee with the child to protect him from his evil, red-haired uncle. The great god of wisdom advised her to hide the little boy until he was old enough to “assume the office of Ruler of the Two Lands.” His mother then took Horus deep into the swamps of Lower Egypt where she placed her baby under the care of the goddess Wadjet (variant spelling, Uazet) who resided at Pe, a city on a floating island. Isis Goddess loosened the ropes that held the island fast and allowed it to drift further into the swamp where no man or god would know where to locate it or its divine resident.

Osiris and Isis

During the time of her flight with Horus, much adversity befell the goddess who felt utterly alone against the world while she walked far with her baby and her seven scorpion companions. Once, looking for refuge, they wearily approached the house of a wealthy woman who lived in a small settlement. When the woman saw the outlandish party, she hurriedly shut her door against them, not knowing whom she was turning away. Chagrined and hurt, Isis Goddess continued her wandering. After a time she found rest in the home of another woman, but her anger with the first continued unabated. Six of her scorpions transferred all their poison into the sting of one, Tefen, who slipped through a crack under the woman’s door and stung her son with the power of seven scorpions. Despite his mother’s piteous lamentations, the child soon died. The woman rushed about the town trying to find help, but this time it was she who was denied admission to other houses.

In the midst of her grief she remembered her treatment of the strange woman who so much needed a friend, and she repented of her behavior now that she understood what it meant to be alone and rejected. Isis Goddess then showed mercy, calling upon her scorpions to withdraw their poison: “The child shall live, the poison shall die! As Horus is strong and well for me, his mother, so shall this child be strong and well for his mother!” From that day on, when a mortal suffered the sting of the scorpion, these words of Isis Goddess were used as a charm to relieve the effects of the poison.

Later, Isis Goddess left her home in the swamp disguised as a beggar woman, for the great goddess had been reduced to begging for food to keep her son alive. When she returned home, she discovered the boy lying on the ground with tears in his eyes and saliva flowing from his mouth. Not even milk from a divine breast could ease his pain, and never had Isis Goddess felt more desperate. Finally, there appeared a woman bearing an ankh, who diagnosed the source of the problem: a scorpion bite. Isis Goddess repeated a series of charms, but nothing relieved the child’s pain. Then Thoth appeared again to the mother. He had just come, he said, from the solar boat where the gods were worried. The sun was standing still and the world would remain in darkness until the sun god of the future was cured.

The anguished mother chided her old friend for moving so slowly. Didn’t he understand how much Horus suffered? Thoth in his own time assured her that he had come to help and finally began to recite a long charm designed to kill the poison; soon his ministrations had the desired effect. Once the child began to recover, Thoth ordered the women of the Delta to help protect Horus from his enemy and assured them that one day he would rule the Two Lands with the help of Ra, Osiris God , and Isis Goddess. The god of wisdom then returned to the solar boat to report to the boy’s father that all was well below.

All was not well, however, for Osiris God and Isis Goddess. Seth was not satisfied that he was safe as long as Osiris God’ body existed. After Isis Goddess and Nephthys had embalmed the body with the assistance of Anubis and Thoth who had been sent for this task by Ra, Isis Goddess hid the body and set out to visit Horus at Pe. While she was gone, Seth went hunting wild boars by moonlight: he enjoyed the evil things that roamed at night. He was at full gallop after a boar when he saw the finely wrought chest he had used to trick Osiris God, and reined in his horse.

Gleefully he jerked the body from the chest and tore it into fourteen pieces. Some said that he then scattered the pieces across Egypt, but the more widely accepted myth is that he threw the pieces into the Nile and let the waters carry them the length of the river. Then he laughed aloud and boasted across the world: “It is not possible to destroy the body of a god, but I have done what is impossible, I have destroyed Osiris God.” But Seth was mistaken.

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Osiris and Isis Adventures Part 2/6

The Adventures of Osiris and Isis Facts Part 2
The infant son of the queen suffered from an incurable illness, but Isis Goddess offered to restore him to health: “I can make him strong and well, but in my own way I will do it, and no one must interfere.” Every day the child seemed stronger, but no one knew what Isis Goddess did to help him. Finally the queen hid herself in the nursery to uncover Isis Goddess ’ secret, and what she saw shocked her.

Isis Goddess first locked the doors and then built a high scorching flame behind them. Putting the child to the flames, she turned herself into a swallow that flew around and around the pillar making the most mournful twitterings. The queen in fright seized her son and began to run from the room, but suddenly she was confronted, not by a strange woman, but by Isis Goddess the goddess. “0 foolish mothers,” said the goddess, “Why did you seize the child? But a few days longer and all that is mortal in him would have been burned away and he would have been like the gods immortal and forever young.” The mother regretted her haste, but recognized that she was in the presence of divinity. When she and her husband asked the goddess to accept a gift for restoring their son to health, all Isis Goddess asked for was the pillar supporting the roof. As soon as this

Osiris and Isis story

Usual request was granted, she sent for carpenters who split open the trunk and removed the chest. Isis Goddess then had the men bind the tree back together and wrap it in fine linen. She strewed it with spices and scented flowers and returned it to the king and queen. (This became the djed pillar, which was worshipped from that day on by the people of Byblos, because it had once held the remains of Osiris God  . Its use spread throughout Egypt, where it became a symbol of strength.) This done, Isis Goddess flung herself on the chest and began her lament for her husband. The sight of the goddess in such distress was so terrible that one of the king’s sons died of fright.

Isis Goddess loaded the chest and body on a ship and set sail for home with the elder of the king’s sons as a passenger. During the voyage she opened the chest and fell into grief over the body. The boy had crept up silently behind her and, when she heard him, she looked round with such terror that he too died on the spot. So it was that the king and queen of Byblos lost a second son to the lamentations of the goddess.

During the voyage Osiris God’ body rested on the open deck. When the waves and currents from a little river they were passing caused the ship to rock, Isis Goddess used her magic to dry up its waters.

Once she had arrived in the safety of the Delta, she set the chest on land and she and Nephthys tried to revive Osiris God. A beautiful hymn extolled Isis Goddess ’ efforts to love her husband as before; she is said to be the goddess:

• Who worked on your lifeless body with knotted cords?
• Who warmed your body with the warmth of her breast?
• Who made air to enter with the beating of her wings?
• Who made life flow from your body up into Isis?

To the chamber of the abode of life.

The hymn explains that her magic was able to warm and breathe life into Osiris God ’ body long enough for it to stir and impregnate her with Horus. The walls of the Temple of Dendera depict graphically the awakening of Osiris God and Isis Goddess’ appearance as a bird hovering over her husband’s erect penis from which she received the seed that enabled her to continue the great line of the gods.

Seth hunted Isis Goddess down and shut her into a dark prison, but with the help of Anubis, she escaped and fled into the swamps. When the time came for her to deliver her child, she sat alone among the reeds of the river. Her pain was great, but no matter how hard she strained, no matter how hard she pushed, the baby would not be born. Suddenly two gods appeared at her side and smeared her forehead with blood-a sign of life and finally her body split and the boy sprang forth, like the sun when it breaks from darkness. As the day of his birth was the vernal equinox, the beginning of spring, Horus appeared at the time young shoots of grain were beginning to sprout from the darkness of the ground.
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Osiris and Isis Adventures Part 1/6

The Adventures of Osiris and Isis Facts 

Isis' Hunt for the Body

At that time Isis Goddess was visiting the village of Chemmis not far from Thebes in Upper Egypt. The fauns and satyrs in that area were the first to know of their king’s assassination, and they quickly spread word of the horror. Isis Goddess , however, knew immediately of her husband’s death without having to be told and went into mourning- She cut off a lock of hair and put on mourning robes without moving from the spot on which she stood. Ever since, the town has been known as Koptos (modern Qift), or the City of Mourning.

The Goddess Isis, wall painting, c. 1360 BCE

Full of grief, Isis Goddess set out looking for the chest and its contents. 5he wandered across the country and inquired of everyone she met whether he or she had news of her husband’s body. Nowhere did she receive help until she chanced across some children playing near her road. They told her they had indeed seen the chest being thrown into the river and floating northward toward the sea. From this time on, Egyptians revered children for their prophetic powers.

During her mourning Isis Goddess was told that her sister Nephthys had fallen in love with Osiris God and tricked him into her bed. A garland he had left behind after the event was proof of the truth of the stoty- Rumor said that Nephthys had become pregnant from the occasion, but fearing the reaction of her husband, Seth, she had left the baby boy to be exposed immediately after his birth. Wild dogs found the child and saved him, and Isis Goddess soon located the pack and rescued her nephew.

She took the young god to be reared as her own son and gave him the name of Anubis. From this time onward he watched over Isis Goddess the way mortal dogs watch over humans. Isis Goddess was quick to forgive Nephthys, and the two females shared their grief for Osiris God . Even though Nephthys was married to Seth, she soon left him and devoted herself to the search for Osiris God ’ body. The songs of lamentation sung by the sisters were described by the scholar James Breasted as “the most sacred expression of sorrow known to the heart of the Egyptian.”

Eventually Isis Goddess heard that the body had been washed ashore at a place called Byblos, but there is disagreement over just where this was. Some accept the Greek notion that it was on the coast of Syria; others believe that it was a corruption of the name for a Papyrus swamp in the Delta of Egypt. Whichever it was, Isis Goddess went there in search of the chest. The waves had carried it ashore and lifted it into the branches of a tamarisk tree growing nearby. When the tree grew to encompass and hide the chest, its gigantic Slze and beautiful flowers made it widely known, and eventually King Malkander and his wife Queen Athenais came from the Palace to see the marvelous sight. He ordered the tree to be cut down and used as a pillar to support the roof of his palace, but no one suspected that this piece of wood contained the body of a king and god.

Following the information from the children, Isis Goddess traced the passage of the chest to Byblos where she came ashore and sat without speaking. The queen’s handmaidens, coming to bathe in the waters, were struck by the sight of this beautiful woman who sat so quietly. Fascinated, they began a conversation with the stranger who was dressed in white with her breasts exposed after the fashion of the Egyptians. She showed them how to braid their hair and wear their jewels, and her breath perfumed the women and their clothes with a wonderful fragrance. On their return to the palace the queen inquired about the fragrance, and they told her of the beautiful stranger. When she went to the shore, the two women immediately became companions and Isis Goddess was invited to attend Athenais at court.

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The Murder of Osiris

The Adventures of Osiris and Isis Facts

The Murder of Osiris

The myths concerning Osiris God and his sister-wife are among the most entertaining and illuminating of Egyptian mythology. The story of Osiris God ’ murder and Isis’ hunt for his body is known worldwide and is an integral statement of Egyptian beliefs in life after death. R. T. Rundle Clark called Osiris God “the most vivid achievement of the Egyptian imagination.”

Actually no complete Egyptian version of the stories has survived from ancient times, and the earliest version was written down by Plutarch, a Greek traveler and historian of the first century after Christ. For the next four hundred years, other Western writers such as Diodorus Siculus, Firmicus Maternus, and Macrobius recounted the adventures of the two gods and added details of their own to the stories. Much of this non-Egyptian material has been confirmed as authentic by Egyptologists working in temples and other sites where murals tell fragmented stories of the divine pair. Finally, the Pyramid Texts and other early writings contain numerous references to Osiris God and Isis and help complete the story when pieced together. What is told here is a compilation of these sources, but Plutarch’s writings provide the basic outline.

Osiris Egyptian God

The Murder of Osiris
Osiris God , while in human form, was first a legendary leader of mortals. At the moment of his birth a voice announced: “The lord of all the world is born.” Other supernatural signs pointed to the occurrence of a marvelous event, especially at a temple at Thebes where a man named Pamyles had gone to draw a jug of water. He heard a voice commanding him to go forth among the people proclaiming that “the good and great King Osiris God was then born.” Having fulfilled his charge, Pamyles was rewarded by the grateful gods by being given the responsibility for Osiris’ education.

Osiris God was born a god but grew up as a man. He became king of Egypt at a time when the country was full of wild men who knew only the habits of barbarism (including cannibalism, according to some versions of the myth). As a civilizing force for these people, Osiris God discovered methods of organized agriculture and taught his people how to cultivate corn and barley.

He was the first man to drink wine and showed his people how to plant vines to provide grapes for this remarkable new beverage. In order to refine their rough customs, Osiris God instructed the citizens of his land in rituals for honoring the gods, and gave them laws to govern their behavior. He relied heavily on the advice of Thoth who taught human beings rhetoric and names for objects that heretofore had been nameless. Thoth invented the letters of the alphabet, arithmetic, music, sculpture, and astronomy-gifts that Osiris God passed on to humans for their betterment. The people recognized that Osiris was responsible for improving their lives and greatly revered his ideas.

Satisfied with his progress at home, Osiris God decided to export his civilization to other lands. First, he arranged for Isis to govern Egypt while he was gone and gave her Thoth as assistant. Then, he marched toward Ethiopia with an army and a few friends. Greeted by a company of satyrs for his entertainment, he added musicians and dancers to their numbers.

He taught the local inhabitants agricultural methods, constructed dams and canals to control the flooding of the Nile, and built cities. In areas too dry t grow grapes, he taught the people to make beer from barley. He then passed through Arabia on his way to India, where he built cities and introduced the ivy plant. Next he traveled across the Hellespont into Europe where he was forced to kill a king who resisted his new and fair system of government.

During his absence Isis had no serious problems since she was careful and cautious, but Seth, their brother, was jealous of Osiris God ’ success, his land, and his wife. He bided his time and plotted the assassination of the king. He gathered around him seventy-tw0 conspirators and convinced Aso, a queen of Ethiopia who presumably was jealous of Osiris God ’ success in her country, to join the plot. The hypocritical conspirators greeted their king with smiles when he returned home, but in their hearts they were plotting murder. Seth, who had secretly taken the measurements of Osiris God ’ body, constructed a fine chest to fit those measurements exactly.

This richly decorated wooden box was a prize worthy of any man or god. At a feast at Seth’s banquet hall, the guests drank wine and sang songs while slaves scattered flowers about the room. At the height of the entertainment, the chest was carried in while the guests cried out in appreciation of its beauty. With words sweet as honey, Seth told those gathered there: “He who lies down in this coffin and whom it fits, to that man I will give it.” The guests eagerly stepped forward, but each found that it was not the right size. When all the others had failed to fit the chest, Seth jokingly challenged the king to try. Proudly Osiris stepped into the chest and lay down to discover that it was a perfect fit, but no sooner was he inside than the conspirators slammed the lid over his head. While some nailed the top tight, others poured hot lead around the edge so that Osiris God quickly suffocated. The party guests then took the chest to the Nile and threw it with its divine contents into the waters, which carried them far away.

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Isis Goddess of Magic and Healing

Isis Egyptian Goddess of Magic and Love
One of the best known of the ancient goddesses, Isis Goddess represents the archetype of wifely love and devoted motherhood. Her life as the wife of Osiris was pleasant until Seth’s jealousy led him to murder his elder brother and to persecute his widow. Isis Goddess mourned her husband and located his body. She hid it from his vindictive brother and gave birth to Horus, who was to avenge his father’s death and succeed him as chief god on earth. Seth feared the powers of his nephew and sought his death too, so Isis Goddess had to hide and protect her son until he was old enough to take care of himself. Her ordeals and the faithfulness with which she followed her duty earned her the title of “Great Mother.”

Isis Egyptian Goddess

The love she bore her husband is beautifully expressed in a lament she sang for him after his death:

I am seeking after love:
Behold me existing in the city, great are its walls:
I grieve for your love for me
Come, you only, now and that you have departed!
Behold your son, who caused Seth to retreat from destruction!
Hidden am I among the plants, and concealed is your son that he cannot answer you, while this great calamity remains!
Yet concerning you
There is no likeness of your flesh left:
I follow you alone and surround the plants, each of which holds danger for your son—
Look truly, I, a woman, in front of all.

Isis Goddess ’ behavior to those about her was full of contradictory passions. On one hand, she could be ruthless in the pursuit of her husband’s body. The king of Byblos offered the protection of his home and the help of his empire in recovering the body; her anguish, however, led to the deaths of two of his sons-horrible repayment for his friendship. In another myth she inflicted great Pam on Ra, her great-grandfather, in order to gain the power of his secret name, and she called on the other gods to bring total destruction on her enemies. Yet on the other hand, when she saw Seth, her husband’s murderer, about to be defeated in a battle she had ordered, she took pity on him and used her magic to permit his escape, a deed that rightly earned her the anger of her son.

Her power was often the result of her use of magic. She learned magical charms from Thoth in order to restore life to Osiris, and she practiced them later when Horus was bitten by Seth’s scorpions. Throughout her life she used her magic on both friend and foe, and this secret knowledge gave her the reputation as a great healer of the sick, which lasted into the Christian era.

The usual drawing or statue of Isis Goddess showed her with human features. On her head she wore at different periods a vulture headdress, the horns of Hathor with a solar disk between them, or the throne. This last symbol, the throne, evolved from the sound of her name and associated her with regal authority. She was sometimes identified by an amulet, called the blood of Isis Goddess now, but called the thet by the ancient Egyptians.

This charm was made of a red, semiprecious stone and placed in coffins to provide the dead with the power of the goddess who had raised her own husband and son from the dead. It resembles the! With its arms folded down and was often drawn alongside the djed pillar, the symbol of Osiris. The nineteenth-century scholar E. A. Wallis Budge suggested that the shape of the amulet resulted from the identification of Isis Goddess as the universal mother, and was a stylized representation of the vagina and uterus In the Book of the Dead Isis Goddess was usually depicted standing immediately behind Osiris and alongside her sister Nephthys; the two goddesses provide support for their brother in his role as supreme judge of the dead. The vignettes also show the feminine pair as vultures guarding the bier on which rests the body of the dead person who has now assumed the characteristics of Osiris.

One of the most common depictions of Isis Goddess was of her nursing her son. This scene-in statue, wall paintings, and papyri-sometimes showed other gods, such as Thoth, in attendance bringing gifts to the mother and child. The resemblance of Isis Goddess and her son to the Madonna and Child was observed early in the Christian era and probably helped ease the way for the early acceptance of Christianity along the Nile.

The most important shrine to Isis Goddess is the Temple of Philae, on an island on the lake between the two dams at Aswan. This beautiful temple, one of those moved to preserve it from the rising waters, associated Isis Goddess with the Nile and reaffirms some scholars’ notion that in the most ancient days Isis Goddess was a corn (that is, grain) goddess in consort with her husband, the corn god. The largest of the temples here was built by Nectanebo I and later renovated by Ptolemy II, which makes it more recent than some of the other important temples to the north.

At Luxor Isis Goddess was represented on the walls of the Temples of Luxor, where she watches over Khnum as he molds a child on his potter’s wheel in the Birth House. Across the river in the tomb of Seti I, she and Nephthys provided special protection for the king who through death has become a god. She was distinctly represented in the treasures of Tutankhamun found in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings and now residing in the Egyptian Museum. This museum contains many additional representations of Isis Goddess , including Pieces from Abydos and Saqqara.

Outside Egypt Isis Goddess is probably the most famous of the Egyptian gods. Her powers were well known in Greece and Rome, thanks especially to Plutarch, who featured her in one of 1S books and who saw similarities with the Greek Artemis and the Roman Diana. Palestine and other countries of the Middle East were hospitable to her, and her fame has lasted into modern times.

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