Egyptian mythology is one of the oldest in the world. Over the years, the master of the land of the dead, the god Osiris, became the supreme god, whose cult evoked a feeling of respect and fear. It was he who decided what the soul deserved: eternal life or oblivion. Each person fell into his court, where good deeds and sins were weighed.
Divine Dynasty
Myths are always interesting. Ancient people believed that everything human is not alien to the gods, and especially in feelings. Therefore, they fell in love, quarreled, gave birth to children. This is what legends tell about.
Egyptian legends say that earlier the earth was an endless ocean. Waves covered her, cold and dead. The ocean was called Nun. But once a phoenix bird flew over the endless water and changed the expanses with its cry. Atum descended from the surface - the first deity. After a few generations, Osiris appeared. The forefather God realized that the sea would freeze again without wind, and created his son Shu. Together with him, the twin daughter Tefnut was born, who became the patroness of the ocean, order and thought. They were two deities with one soul, feminine and masculine. Subsequently, it was the patroness of water who helped create the world.
But the earth remaineddark. The father lost his children and searched for them for a long time. To find the firstborn, he gouged out his own eye and threw it into the water. The Eye was supposed to find the children. But Atum did it himself and was so happy that a lotus appeared from the water, and from it the god Ra, the lord of the sun. He wept with happiness, and his tears turned into people. Later, this god became a reflection of Atum. But the eye, which had spent its strength, was offended and in anger became a snake. Then the supreme god placed him on his crown.
Shu and Tefnut became the first heavenly couple. They had two children: Geb - the patron of the earth and Nut - the owner of the sky. They loved each other so much that they never broke their embrace. Therefore, from the very beginning, the earth and the sky were connected. But when they quarreled, Ra ordered the wind Shu to separate them. The sky goddess rose up. The height made her dizzy, so her father, the wind, supported her during the day, and lowered her to the ground every night. Mother Tefnut - the goddess of dew and rain - also held her daughter, but quickly got tired. When she was having a hard time, water poured onto the ground.
In the dark, Nut met with her husband. Ra, learning about this, was angry. He cursed Nut so that she would not give birth. But through the cunning of Thoth, she still managed to have children, among whom was the god of Egypt - Osiris.
The wisdom of the great god
Thoth - the patron of wisdom and magic - decided to help the heavenly Nut. He went to the moon and won 5 days from her by cunning. Then Nut and Geb had children. The first was Osiris. His brothers and sisters were Nephthys - the ruler of the dead, Isis - kept love and fate, Seth - evil.
When Osiris was born, a voice said that he would be the lord of all things. According to legends, it was believed that he was a direct descendant of Ra.
Growing up, Osiris took the throne of his father Geb. This was the fourth god-pharaoh. The first thing he did when he took the throne was to teach people wisdom. Before that, the tribes lived as savages and ate their own kind. Pharaoh taught to eat and grow cereals. The one who was the symbol of wisdom came to the rescue. Together they established the main laws. He came up with names, gave names to things, gave writing, taught art and various crafts. The Egyptian god Osiris told how to worship the higher powers. He was a master of agriculture and made everyone work. With his will, people learned medicine and magic. They made wine and brewed beer. Cities were built with its installations. Processed ore and copper. The reign was called the Golden Age. The rule was carried out without bloodshed and wars. He married, according to family tradition, his sister Isis, who fell in love with him while still in the womb.
Having put his lands in order, he went to neighboring lands, where until now chaos reigned. Peace and wisdom began to rule in other tribes. The wife remained on the throne, who passed on to her people the knowledge of household and the science of family life.
Pantheon Intrigues
While Osiris was sharing his experience, his brother Set secretly fell in love with Isis. His feelings were so strong that he decided to remove his brother from the world. Seth did not look for supporters for long. Many demons did not like the current situation. The brother of the god Osiris made a sarcophagus, gilded it and decorated it with expensive stones. Before hesecretly measured the growth of the god of fertility. Then he arranged a feast, where he invited the elite of Egypt. When the guests got drunk with wine, Seth brought out the box. The audience gasped at the beauty they saw. They liked the chest. Then the god of evil said that he would give it to someone who fits perfectly there. Everyone decided to try to lie in the box, but one was cramped, the other long. When Osiris lay down there, the traitors closed the lid and boarded up the coffin. The trap worked. The box was taken out and thrown into the river. But the current did not carry the sarcophagus into the sea.
Egyptian mythology clearly indicates that beyond the Nile there is a line of life and death. The river carried him away from the land of men into the realm of souls. God, who was considered eternal, passed into the world of the dead.
Having learned about the trick, Isis began to wear mourning. She grieved for a long time and searched the earth for the body of her beloved. After some time, the woman was told where they saw the coffin. But the box was overgrown with heather, and one of the kings took it to his palace like a column. Isis found out about this and began to serve in the castle as a commoner. Subsequently, the inconsolable widow carried away the sarcophagus. The cut veres that stood as a pillar was later used as a symbol of the god Osiris. When the lid was opened, the goddess burst into tears. In Egypt, she hid the box in the Nile Delta.
Great power of divine love
There was another reason why Seth hated his brother. According to family tradition, the children of the same parents were married. This happened in a pair of twins Shu and Tefnut, Nut and Geb. This fate awaited their children - Osiris and Isis and Set plus Nephthys.
God of Evilwas married to his second sister. But this woman sincerely fell in love with the Egyptian pharaoh and part-time brother. One night she reincarnated as Isis and shared a bed with him. So the son of Duat Anubis was born, who became a master of mummification. The woman hid the truth from Seth for a long time. But when the tide turned against Osiris, she turned to the side of good and became an ally of her sister.
Further events unfold as follows. One evening Seth was fishing on the Nile and came across a sarcophagus. In a fit of anger, he cut his brother's body into 14 pieces and scattered them around the world. Poor Isis and her sister started looking for the body. The search was successful, they found all the pieces except the phallus. Subsequently, it was replaced with clay.
Where the part of the body was taken from, a temple was built. Seth saw the sanctuary and thought that the ashes were buried forever, not even suspecting that they want to resurrect the enemy.
The wife of the god Osiris and his supporters, sister Nephthys, friend Thoth and son Anubis, created a mummy. The process lasted 70 days. Isis was very sad because she had no children. But due to great magic, she turned into a bird Hut, cast spells and became pregnant.
The fate of the heir
For a long time, the widow, who was expecting a baby, was hiding. When she gave birth, she said that her son would avenge the death of his father. The child was named Horus. Isis raised him and waited for the day when justice would prevail. The whole pantheon protected her and the baby from the bad Seth.
When Horus grew up, there was a battle with his uncle for the throne. During the war, Seth gouged out an eyenephew. One of the legends says that when the eye returned to its owner, Chorus took it to the mummy. The son of the god Osiris stuck his eye into the body of the deceased, and he was resurrected. But the man no longer belonged to this world, but was supposed to rule the kingdom of the dead. Before parting, the father asked several riddles to Horus and made sure that his son could adequately replace him. Then he blessed the child to win.
Since then, the Egyptians believed that everyone passes the path of Osiris, that is, dies and is resurrected. And mummification does not allow the body to smolder. Like this god, nature also resurrects every year. In the next world, he weighs the sins of people and acts as a judge.
80 years of uncle and nephew battles continued. Tired of constant wars, Set and Horus turned to the higher gods. The court decided that the throne belongs to the son of Osiris. Set became the lord of the desert and the storm. The Egyptian god Osiris and his son were the last mystical rulers. After them, people ruled the earth.
Portrait of an earth god
The image of this creature is extremely complex and has gone through many transformations. It is believed that his first name was Jedu, and he was worshiped in the eastern part of the Nile Delta. Then his essence connected with the face of Anjeta, the patron of another city. Therefore, a staff and a shepherd's whip appeared in his hands. Over the years, he gains new strength, becomes the king of farmers and acquires a vine and a lotus.
From 1600 BC e. he was portrayed as a sprouted grain.
At the end of the New Kingdom associated with Ra. The image of the god Osiris began to be served with a solar disk above his head.
Becoming the head of the dead, he did not stop showing off among the riot of plants. A pond filled with lotus blossomed in front of their feet. A tree was placed nearby, on which a soul in the face of a phoenix sat.
Kingdom of the Dead
Leaving the earthly world, God became the lord of the dead. Mythology says that he led 42 deities who decided the fate of the deceased. Everyone who passed into the afterlife, fell into the hall of two truths. The person spoke an oath of renunciation, the essence of which is that the speaker began phrases with the prefix “not”: he did not violate, he did not deceive.
Next was the weighing procedure. The heart of the deceased was placed on the scales on one side, and the feather of the goddess of truth on the other. Osiris watched over everything. God determined the afterlife. There were two options: the happiness of the fields of Iaru, where joy and fun, or the heart of a sinner was given to the monster Ammut, which doomed him to eternal death.
The cult of the afterlife was so great that in the era of the New Kingdom, Osiris was the highest among the gods. This is where the new theory comes from. From now on, eternal existence awaits not only the rich, but also the poor. A ticket to heaven is an exemplary existence, morality, obedience.
According to the Egyptians, relatives should have taken care of all the blessings of the next world, since death was perceived as a deep sleep. In order for a person to be able to live normally after waking up, the body was mummified. It was not a whim, but an integral part of the practice.
The court of the god Osiris caused a feeling of fear and awe. And he himself was not only the first mummy, but also the founder of the cult of the dead.
Image of the dark lord
The Lord of Souls became the unofficial ancestor of literature and art. The Force inspired people to create stories about his exploits. They were depicted on the walls and parchment. Most of the pages dedicated to him in the Book of the Dead. These works reveal to us the image of God.
Like all celestial beings, Osiris was part human. The judge met the subjects sitting. His legs were bandaged. In the hands were symbols of power - a hook and a chain.
God Osiris in Ancient Egypt had a trait inherent only to him. It was a crown called atef. This crown was made of papyrus. The color is white, two red ostrich feathers are attached to the sides. They curled up on top. Sometimes the oblong cap had ram's horns. It was by this crown that the researchers recognized the god of darkness on the frescoes.
You can find drawings where Osiris is depicted as green. This is a reference to his earthly reign, where he was the patron of fertility and agriculture. If the god is red, then this is the color of the soil. Also in his hands may be a vine, because it was he who taught people how to make wine. Not uncommon is the image of the plant god among the trees.
The oldest is considered a fresco, which was created during the reign of the 5th dynasty of Pharaoh Djedkara - ca. 2405-2367 BC e. It depicts the god Osiris. The photo, which has a thousand-year history, is of interest to both scientists and ordinary people.
Egyptian gods in Greece and Christianity
The world first learned about the gods of Ancient Egypt from Greek thinkers. Josephus, Julius Africanus and EusebiusCaesarea studied in detail the history of the neighboring kingdom. But most of all, contemporaries draw from the studies of Plutarch. This man wrote a treatise On Isis and Osiris. Many interesting things can be found in his work. The only negative is that the work is full of interweaving of Egyptian myths with Greek ones. So, for example, there are inaccuracies associated with the name "Osiris". A god with that name did not exist in Egypt, but there was a cult of Usiro. The name we know is just closer to Plutarch's language. There are other substitutions: Ra became Helios, Nut - Rhea, Thoth - Hermes. And the main character winemaker became Dionysius.
Many scholars see similarities between the Egyptian and Christ. So, both taught people wisdom and offered wine and bread as their flesh and blood.
And it all started with the fact that archaeologists found a prayer dated to the thousandth year BC. She repeated "Our Father" word for word. There are many parallels about the birth of both gods. The Virgin Mary learned about the blessed child from the archangel, and Nut from an unknown voice. Further, Isis hides with her son from the evil Seth, just like Mary and Jesus.
The ancient Egyptian god Osiris was specially invented for slaves who hoped for a different, better life after death. The essence of the Christian faith is interpreted in the same way.
Another relationship between Jesus and Osiris is death and resurrection.
Symbol - sarcophagus
Ushiro's name has been known to mankind for more than five thousand years. The word "Us-Iri" still does not have an exact translation, but most scholars believe that it means "one who goes his way."dear". It was one of the most popular cults of Egypt, so it is not surprising that his image is often found in art. It is not surprising that fetishes were devoted to him. The subject of Osiris was the djed.
The first paraphernalia for the cult are wooden poles with fixed wheat ties. For festivity, they were tied with a red ribbon - a belt. It was a symbol of new life and season. In different regions, the fetish was done in its own way. Sometimes they were bundles of cane.
After the popularization of the myth that Isis found a vertical coffin with her husband in Veres, the jed began to be perceived as the spine of God. The pillar played an important role in the change of kings. No coronation was held without this symbol.
Every spring the djed was placed upright. This meant the defeat of Set and the peace that Osiris brought. God received victory when the constellation of Orion was hiding behind the western horizon.
Small figurines were used as talismans.
