was then "buried" in the hollow of the tree. Here, again, it is hard to imagine how the conception of a tree as tenanted by a personal being could be more plainly expressed. The image of Osiris thus made was kept for a year and then burned, exactly as was done with the image of Attis which was attached to the pine-tree. The ceremony of cutting the tree, as described by Firmicus Maternus, appears to be alluded to by Plutarch.1 It was probably the ritual counterpart of the mythical discovery of the body of Osiris enclosed in the erica-tree. We may conjecture that the erection of the Tatu pillar at the close of the annual festival of Osiris 2 was identical with the ceremony described by Firmicus; it is to be noted that in the myth the erica-tree formed a pillar in the king's house. Like the similar custom of cutting a pine-tree and fastening an image to it in the rites of Attis, the ceremony perhaps belonged to that class of customs of which the bringing in the May-pole is among the most familiar. As to the pine-tree in particular, at Denderah the tree of Osiris is a conifer, and the coffer containing the body of Osiris is here depicted as enclosed within the tree.3 A pine-cone often appears on the monuments as an offering presented to Osiris, and a manuscript of the Louvre speaks of the cedar as sprung from him.* The sycamore and the tamarisk are also his trees. In inscriptions he is spoken of as residing in them; and his mother Nut is frequently portrayed in a sycamore. In a sepulchre at How (Diospolis Parva) a tamarisk is depicted overshadowing the coffer of Osiris; and in the series of sculptures which illustrate the mystic history of Osiris in the great temple of Isis at Philae, a tamarisk is figured with two men pouring water on it. The inscription on this last monument leaves no doubt, says Brugsch, that the verdure of the earth was believed to be connected with the verdure of the tree, and that the sculpture 1 Isis et Osiris, 21, alvŵ dè Toμǹv ξύλου καὶ σχίσιν λίνου καὶ χοὰς χεομένας, διὰ τὸ πολλὰ τῶν μυστικῶν ἀναμεμίχθαι τούτοις. Again, ibid. 42, τὸ δὲ ξύλον ἐν ταῖς λεγομέναις Οσίριδος ταφαῖς τέμνοντες κατασκευάζουσι λάρνακα μηνοειδῆ. 2 See above, p. 140 sq. 3 Lefébure, Le mythe Osirien, pp. 194, 198, referring to Mariette, Denderah, iv. 66 and 72. 4 Lefébure, op. cit. pp. 195, 197. 5 Birch, in Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), iii. 84. 6 Wilkinson, op. cit. iii. 63 sq.; Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i. §§ 56, 60. refers to the grave of Osiris at Philae, of which Plutarch tells us that it was overshadowed by a methide plant, taller than any olive-tree. This sculpture, it may be observed, occurs in the same chamber in which the god is depicted as a corpse with ears of corn sprouting from him. In inscriptions he is referred to as "the one in the tree," " the solitary one in the acacia," and so forth. On the monuments he sometimes appears as a mummy covered with a tree or with plants. accords with the character of Osiris as a tree-spirit that his worshippers were forbidden to injure fruit-trees, and with his character as a god of vegetation in general that they were not allowed to stop up wells of water, which are so important for the irrigation of hot southern lands.* It The original meaning of the goddess Isis is still more difficult to determine than that of her brother and husband Osiris. Her attributes and epithets were so numerous that in the hieroglyphics she is called "the many-named," "the thousand-named,” and in Greek inscriptions "the myriadnamed."5 Professor Tiele confesses candidly that "it is now impossible to tell precisely to what natural phenomena the character of Isis at first referred." 6 There are at least some grounds for seeing in her a goddess of corn. If we may trust Diodorus, whose authority appears to have been the Egyptian historian Manetho, the discovery of wheat and barley was attributed to Isis, and at her festivals stalks of these grains were carried in procession to commemorate the boon she had conferred on men. Further, at harvest-time, when the Egyptian reapers had cut the first stalks, they laid them down and beat their breasts, lamenting and calling and lost one are said to have sat down, sad at heart and weary, on the edge of a well. Hence those who had been initiated at Eleusis were forbidden to sit on a well. See Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 15; Homer, Hymn to Demeter, 98 sq.; Pausanias, i. 39. 1; Apollodorus, i. 5. ; Nicander, Theriaca, 486; Clemens Alex., Protrept. ii. 20. 6 Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 645. 6 C. P. Tiele, History of Egyptian Religion, p. 57. L 3 upon Isis.1 Amongst the epithets by which she is designated in the inscriptions are "creatress of the green crop," "the green one, whose greenness is like the greenness of the earth," and "mistress of bread." 2 According to Brugsch she is "not only the creatress of the fresh verdure of vegetation which covers the earth, but is actually the green corn-field itself, which is personified as a goddess." This is confirmed by her epithet Sochit or Sochet, meaning "a corn-field," a sense which the word still retains in Coptic.* It is in this character of a corn-goddess that the Greeks conceived Isis, for they identified her with Demeter.5 In a Greek epigram she is described as "she who has given birth to the fruits of the earth," and "the mother of the ears of corn," and in a hymn composed in her honour she speaks of herself as queen of the wheat-field," and is described as "charged with the care of the fruitful furrow's wheat-rich path." " Osiris has been sometimes interpreted as the sun-god; and in modern times this view has been held by so many distinguished writers that it deserves a brief examination. If we inquire on,what evidence Osiris has been identified with the sun or the sun-god, it will be found on analysis to be minute in quantity and dubious, where it is not absolutely worthless, in quality. The diligent Jablonski, the first modern scholar to collect and sift the testimony of classical writers on Egyptian religion, says that it can be shown in many ways that Osiris is the sun, and that he could produce a cloud of witnesses to prove it, but that it is needless to do so, since no learned man is ignorant of the fact. Of the writers whom he condescends to quote, the only two who expressly identify Osiris with the sun are Diodorus and Macrobius. The passage in Diodorus runs 1 Diodorus, i. 14. Eusebius (Praeparat. Evang. iii. 3) quotes from Diodorus (i. 11-13) a long passage on the early religion of Egypt, prefacing the quotation (ch. 2) with the remark γράφει δὲ καὶ τὰ περὶ τούτων πλατύτερον μὲν ὁ Μανέθως, ἐπετετμημένως δὲ ὁ Jódwpos, which seems to imply that Diodorus epitomised Manetho. Brugsch, op. cit. p. 647. 3 Brugsch, op. cit. p. 649. Herodotus, ii. 59, 156; Diodorus, i. 13, 25, 96; Apollodorus, ii. 1. 3; Tzetzes, Schol. on Lycoṭhron. 212. Antholog. Planud. cclxiv. 1. Orphica, ed. Abel, p. 295 sqq. 8 Jablonski, Pantheon Aegyptiorum (Frankfort, 1750), i. 125 sq. thus: "It is said that the aboriginal inhabitants of Egypt, looking up to the sky, and smitten with awe and wonder at the nature of the universe, supposed that there were two gods, eternal and primeval, the sun and the moon, of whom they named the sun Osiris and the moon Isis." Even if Diodorus's authority for this statement is Manetho, as there is some ground for believing,2 little or no weight can be attached to it. For it is plainly a philosophical, and therefore a late, explanation of the first beginnings of Egyptian religion, reminding us of Kant's familiar saying about the starry heavens and the moral law rather than of the rude traditions of a primitive people. Jablonski's second authority, Macrobius, is no better but rather worse. For Macrobius was the father of that large family of mythologists who resolve all or most gods into the sun. According to him Mercury was the sun, Mars was the sun, Janus was the sun, Saturn was the sun, so was Jupiter, also Nemesis, likewise Pan, and so on through a great part of the pantheon." It was natural, therefore, that he should identify Osiris with the sun, but his reasons for doing so are exceedingly slight. He refers to the ceremonies of alternate lamentation and joy as if they reflected the vicissitudes of the great luminary in his course through the sky. Further, he argues that Osiris must be the sun because an eye was one of his symbols. The premise is correct, but what exactly it has to do with the conclusion is not clear. The opinion that Osiris was the sun is also mentioned, but not accepted, by Plutarch," and it is referred to by Firmicus Maternus. Amongst modern scholars, Lepsius, in identifying Osiris with the sun, appears to rely mainly on the passage of Diodorus already quoted. But the monuments, he adds, also show "that down to a late time Osiris was sometimes conceived as Ra. In this quality he is named Osiris-Ra even in the Book of the Dead,' and Isis is often called 'the royal consort of Ra.'"* That Ra was both the physical sun 1 Bibl. Hist. i. 11. 2 See p. 146, note 1. 3 See Macrobius, Saturnalia, bk. i. + Saturn. i. 21. II. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), iii. 353. Isis et Osiris, 52. De errore profan. religionum, 8. * Lepsius, 66 den ersten and the sun-god is undisputed; but with every deference for the authority of so great a scholar as Lepsius, it may be doubted whether the identification of Osiris with Ra can be accepted as proof that Osiris was originally the sun. For the religion of ancient Egypt1 may be described as a confederacy of local cults which, while maintaining against each other a certain measure of jealous and even hostile independence, were yet constantly subjected to the fusing and amalgamating influence of political centralisation and philosophic thought. The history of the religion appears to have largely consisted of a struggle between these opposite forces or tendencies. On the one side there was the conservative tendency to preserve the local cults with all their distinctive features, fresh, sharp, and crisp as they had been handed down from an immemorial past. On the other side there was the progressive tendency, favoured by the gradual fusion of the people under a powerful central government, first to dull the edge of these provincial distinctions, and finally to break them down completely and merge them in a single national religion. The conservative party probably mustered in its ranks the great bulk of the people, their prejudices and affections being warmly enlisted in favour of the local deity, with whose temple and rites they had been familiar from childhood; and the popular dislike of change, based on the endearing effect of old association, must have been strongly reinforced by the less disinterested opposition of the local clergy, whose material interests would necessarily suffer with any decay of their shrines. On the other hand the kings, whose power and glory rose with the political and ecclesiastical consolidation of the realm, were the natural champions of religious unity; and their efforts would be seconded by the refined and thoughtful minority, who could hardly fail to be shocked by the many barbarous and revolting elements in the local rites. As usually happens in such cases, the process of religious unification appears to have been largely effected aegyptischen Götterkreis und seine geschichtlich mythologische Entstehung," in Abhandlungen der könig lichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1851, p. 194 sq. 1 The view here taken of the history of Egyptian religion is based on the sketch in Ad. Erman's Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, p. 351 sqq. |