The Girls' Book of Famous Queens. Farmer Lydia Hoyt

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СКАЧАТЬ of Osiris was the rising of the sun after the darkness of the night had been overcome and dispelled. Nepthys was the “sunset”; Anubis, the “twilight” or “dusk.” Neith corresponded to the Greek Athêné, and was supposed to be a personification of the wisdom or intellect of God, – which is a significant thought, Neith being a goddess, not a god. She was the Egyptian goddess of Saïs. Originally the worship of Ammon was distinct from that of Ra, god of the sun; but after the eighteenth dynasty a union took place, and he was worshipped as Ammon-Ra. Thoth, the god of letters, had various characters, according to the functions he was supposed to fulfil. In one of his characters he corresponded to the moon; in the other, to Mercury. “In the former, he was the beneficent property of that luminary, the regulator and dispenser of time, who presided over the fate of man and the events of his life; in the latter, the god of letters and the patron of learning and the means of communication between the gods and mankind.”

      The Egyptians related many allegories concerning their various deities, but we have space only to narrate the story regarding Osiris and Isis, god of the sun and the goddess of dawn. As their gods were supposed to assume many different characters and attributes, this story represents Osiris as the river Nile, Isis as the land of Egypt, and Typho as the sea.

      The allegory is thus given: —

      “Osiris, having become king of Egypt, applied himself towards civilizing his countrymen by turning them from their former barbarous course of life, teaching them, moreover, to cultivate and improve the fruits of the earth. With the same good disposition he afterwards travelled over the rest of the world, inducing the people everywhere to submit to his discipline, by the mildest persuasion. During his absence from his kingdom, Typho had no opportunity of making any innovations in the state, Isis being extremely vigilant in the government and always on her guard. After the return of Osiris, however, Typho, having persuaded seventy-two other persons to join him in the conspiracy, together with a certain queen of Æthiopia, named Aso, who chanced to be in Egypt at the time, contrived a proper stratagem to execute his base designs. For, having privately taken a measure of Osiris’s body, he caused a chest to be made exactly of that size, as beautiful as possible, and set off with all the ornaments of art. This chest he brought into the banqueting-room, where, after it had been much admired by all present, Typho, as if in jest, promised to give it to any one of them whose body upon trial it might be found to fit. Upon this the whole company, one after the other, got into it; but as it did not fit any of them, last of all Osiris laid himself down in it, upon which the conspirators immediately ran together, clapped on the cover, and then, fastening it on the outside with nails, poured melted lead over it.

      “After this, having carried it away to the riverside, they conveyed it to the sea by the Tanaïtic mouth of the Nile, which for this reason is still held in the utmost abhorrence by the Egyptians, and never named by them but with proper marks of detestation.

      “These things happened on the 17th day of the month Athor, when the sun was in Scorpio, in the 28th year of Osiris’s reign, though others say he was no more than twenty-eight years old at the time.

      “The first who knew the accident that had befallen their king were the Pans and Satyrs, who lived about Chemmis; and they, immediately acquainting the people with the news, gave the first occasion to the name of Panic terrors… Isis, as soon as the report reached her, cut off one of the locks of her hair and put on mourning.

      “At length she received more particular news of the chest. It had been carried by the waves of the sea to the coast of Byblos, and there gently lodged in the branches of a tamarisk bush, which in a short time had shot up into a large tree, growing round the chest and enclosing it on every side, so that it could not be seen; and the king of the country, having cut down the tree, had made the part of the trunk wherein the chest was concealed a pillar to support the roof of his house. Isis, having gone to Byblos, obtained possession of this pillar, and then set sail with the chest for Egypt. But intending a visit to her son Horus, who was brought up at Butus, she deposited the chest in the meantime in a remote and unfrequented place. Typho, however, as he was one night hunting by the light of the moon, accidentally met with it; and knowing the body enclosed in it, tore it into fourteen pieces, disposing them up and down in different parts of the country.

      “Being acquainted with this event, Isis set out once more in search of the scattered members of her husband’s body, using a boat made of the papyrus rush in order the more easily to pass through the lower and fenny parts of the country. And one reason assigned for the many different sepulchres of Osiris shown in Egypt is, that wherever any one of his scattered limbs was discovered, she buried it in that spot; though others suppose that it was owing to an artifice of the queen, who presented each of those cities with an image of her husband, in order that, if Typho should overcome Horus in the approaching conquest, he might be unable to find the real sepulchre. Isis succeeded in recovering all the different members, with the exception of one, which had been devoured by the lepidotus, the phagrus, and the oxyrhinchus; for which reason these fish are held in abhorrence by the Egyptians. To make amends, therefore, for this loss, she consecrated the phallus, and instituted a solemn festival to its memory.

      “A battle at length took place between Horus and Typho, in which the latter was taken prisoner. Isis, however, to whose custody he was committed, so far from putting him to death, set him at liberty; which so incensed Horus that he tore off the royal diadem she wore; but Hermes substituted in its stead a helmet made in the shape of an ox’s head. At length two other battles were fought, in which Typho was defeated.”

      This allegory is thus explained: —

      “Osiris means the inundation of the Nile.

      “Isis, the irrigated portion of the land of Egypt.

      “Horus, their offspring, the vapors and exhalations reproducing rain.

      “Butus, the marshy lands of Lower Egypt, where those vapors were nourished.

      “Typho, the sea which swallowed up the Nile water.

      “The conspirators, the drought overcoming the moisture, from which the increase of the Nile proceeds.

      “The chest in which Osiris’s body was confined, the banks of the river, within which it retired after the inundation.

      “The Tanaïtic mouth, the lake and barren lands about it, which were held in abhorrence from their being overflowed by the river without producing any benefit to the country.

      “The twenty-eight years of his life, the twenty-eight cubits to which the Nile rises at Elephantina, its greatest height.

      “The 17th of Athor, the period when the river retires within its banks.

      “The queen of Æthiopia, the southern winds preventing the clouds being carried southward.

      “The different members of Osiris’s body, the main channels and canals by which the inundation passed into the interior of the country, where each was said to be afterwards buried. That one which could not be recovered was the generative power of the Nile, which still continued in the stream itself.

      “The victory of Horus, the power possessed by the clouds in causing the successive inundations of the Nile.”

      Many animals, insects, and plants were considered sacred by the Egyptians: among them were the cynocephalus ape, sacred to Thoth; shrew-mouse, sacred to Mant; dog, sacred to Anubis; cat, sacred to Pashtor Bubastis; lion, sacred to Gom, or Hercules; hippopotamus, sacred to Mars; pig and ass, emblems of Typho; goat, sacred to Mendes; cow, sacred to Athor.

      The sacred oxen were Apis, Mnevis, and Basis, sacred to Osiris, Apollo, and Onuphis.

      The sacred birds of Egypt were the vulture, eagle, hawk, white and saffron-colored СКАЧАТЬ