Entrance to the Blessed Afterlife of Osiris
Osiris
God of Agriculture
God of the Dead and the Living
God of Regeneration
King of Duat
Osiris rules over Duat, the underworld, where the blessed
dead who were worthy in life receive a new and more glorious life under his patronage
(remind anyone of Christianity). Osiris is the law of the underworld, and only
those who survive the grueling trials and are judged to have worth ever come
within his domain. He is God of Fertility, Vegetation and the Harvest, his very
half-resurrected existence symbolic of the constant death and resurrection of
the plant life upon which humanity depends. So beloved was he by his people
that the story of his death and eternal parting from the world was re-enacted
again and again in festivals every year for millennia.
Osiris was the first child of Nut (Goddess of the Sky) and
Geb or Ra, and therefore the brother of Seth, Nephthys, and Isis. He was
married to his sister, Isis. He was also the Father of Horus and Anubis by his
sisters. These traditions state that Nephthys (wife of Seth) assumed the form
of Isis to seduce Seth. Osiris, happening to pass at that time, mistook her for
Isis as well and, believing her to be his wife, took her to bed despite her
protests. It was not long after that the god Anubis was born. One of many
reason Seth wanted him dead.
The oldest religious texts refer to Osiris as the Great God
of the Dead, and throughout these texts it is assumed that the reader will
understand that he once possessed human form and lived on earth. As the first
son of Geb, the original king of Egypt, Osiris inherited the throne when Geb
abdicated. At this time the Egyptians were uncivilized. Osiris saw this and was
greatly disturbed. Therefore, he went out among the people and taught them the
art of agriculture, how to properly worship the gods, and gave them laws to
followed. Thoth helped him in many ways by inventing the arts and sciences and
giving names to things. Osiris was Egypt's greatest king who ruled through
kindness and persuasion. Having civilized Egypt, Osiris traveled to other
lands, leaving Isis as his regent, to teach other peoples what he taught the
Egyptians.
Seth had been jealous of his brother Osiris' power and
popularity for some time. When Osiris decided to travel the world to bring civilization
to its people, he made Isis Regent of Egypt instead of Set. When Seth found out
that Anubis was Osiris’s son and not his. This was the last straw. Set was
strong and brave (he was not two-dimensionally "evil") but he had a
terrible temper and he vowed to kill his brother and take the power he
considered to be rightfully his.
In a state of inconsolable grief, Isis tore her robes to
shreds and cut off her beautiful black hair. Her sister Nephthys grieve as
well. When they finally regained their emotional balance, Isis set out to
search for the body of her beloved Osiris so that she might bury him properly.
Meanwhile, he was taken in the growth of the trunk of a
shrub of the family Ericaceae (probably a tree heath) the King of Byblos was
used as a pillar for his palace. The search took Isis to Phoenicia where she
met Queen Astarte. Astarte didn't recognize the goddess and hired her as a
nursemaid to the infant prince.
Fond of the young boy, Isis decided to bestow immortality on
him. As she was holding the royal infant over the fire as part of the ritual,
the Queen entered the room. Seeing her son smoldering in the middle of the
fire, Astarte instinctively (but naively) grabbed the child out of the flames,
undoing the magic of Isis that would have made her son a god.
When the Queen demanded an explanation, Isis revealed her
identity and told Astarte of her quest to recover her husband's body. As she
listened to the story, Astarte realized that the body was hidden in the
fragrant tree in the center of the palace and told Isis where to find it. Sheltering
his broken body in her arms, the goddess Isis carried the body of Osiris back
to Egypt for proper burial. There she hid it in the swamps on the delta of the
Nile river.
Unfortunately, Set came across the box one night when he was
out hunting. Infuriated by this turn of events and determined not to be
outdone, he murdered Osiris once again . . . this time hacking his body into 14
pieces and scattering them in different directions knowing that they would be
eaten by the crocodiles and other scavenger beasts.
Isis, with the help of her sister Nephthys, Anubis and Thoth,
magically located Osiris' body. They found every part of his body, save his
phallus (it had been eaten by the now-cursed Nile fish). Isis and Anubis magically
re-assembled Osiris, created a new penis (bigger than last one) and mummified
him (creating the first mummy). She resurrected him long enough to be
impregnated by him so that she could give birth to the new king Horus. Assured
that having the infant would now relieve Isis' grief, Osiris was free to
descend to become the King of the Underworld, ruling over the dead and the
sleeping. His spirit, however, frequently returned to be with Isis and the
young Horus who both remained under his watchful and loving eye.
Seth of course was not willing to surrender the throne of
Egypt to the youthful Horus and thus a tribunal of gods met to decide who the
rightful king was.
Osiris meanwhile had become the King of the Afterlife. He
was believed to be willing to admit all people to the Duat, the gentle, fertile
land in which the righteous dead lived, that had lived a good and correct life
upon earth, and had been buried with appropriate ceremonies under the
protection of certain amulets, a personalized copy of a Book of the Dead, and
with the proper recital of certain "divine words" and words of power.
His realm was said to lie beneath Nun, in the northern heavens or in the west.
In order to enter his kingdom, the deceased had to undertake
a perilous journey (aided by spells contain in the Book of the Dead and
amulets) to the hall of judgment where their heart was balanced against the
feather of Ma'at (Goddess of Justice and Balance). It is important to
distinguish this from the Christian view of judgment. The ancient Egyptians
were a realistic people. A person was not expected to be perfect, just
balanced. An example of this is the "negative confession" (in which
the deceased listed all of the evil things he had not done during his lifetime,
that is to say " I have not committed adultery") which indicates that
it was more a case of convincing Osiris that you deserved admission rather than
passively awaiting judgment.Osiris promise us a blessed afterlife if we prove ourselves worthy.
Comments
Post a Comment