§ 1. Osiris a Corn-God.
(M81) The foregoing survey of the myth and ritual of Osiris may suffice to
prove that in one of his aspects the god was a personification of the
corn, which may be said to die and come to life again every year. Through
all the pomp and glamour with which in later times the priests had
invested his worship, the conception of him as the corn-god comes clearly
out in the festival of his death and resurrection, which was celebrated in
the month of Khoiak and at a later period in the month of Athyr. That
festival appears to have been essentially a festival of sowing, which
properly fell at the time when the husbandman actually committed the seed
to the earth. On that occasion an effigy of the corn-god, moulded of earth
and corn, was buried with funeral rites in the ground in order that, dying
there, he might come to life again with the new crops. The ceremony was,
in fact, a charm to ensure the growth of the corn by sympathetic magic,
and we may conjecture that as such it was practised in a simple form by
every Egyptian farmer on his fields long before it was adopted and
transfigured by the priests in the stately ritual of the temple. In the
modern, but doubtless ancient, Arab custom of burying “the Old Man,”
namely, a sheaf of wheat, in the harvest-field and praying that he may
return from the dead,(205) we see the germ out of which the worship of the
corn-god Osiris was probably developed. Earth.(206) What more appropriate
parentage could be invented for the corn which springs from the ground
that has been fertilized by the water of heaven? It is true that the land
of Egypt owed its fertility directly to the Nile and not to showers; but
the inhabitants must have known or guessed that the great river in its
turn was fed by the rains which fell in the far interior. Again, the
legend that Osiris was the first to teach men the use of corn(207) would
be most naturally told of the corn-god himself. Further, the story that
his mangled remains were scattered up and down the land and buried in
different places may be a mythical way of expressing either the sowing or
the winnowing of the grain. The latter interpretation is supported by the
tale that Isis placed the severed limbs of Osiris on a corn-sieve.(208) Or
more probably the legend may be a reminiscence of a custom of slaying a
human victim, perhaps a representative of the corn-spirit, and
distributing his flesh or scattering his ashes over the fields to
fertilize them. In modern Europe the figure of Death is sometimes torn in
pieces, and the fragments are then buried in the ground to make the crops
grow well,(209) and in other parts of the world human victims are treated
in the same way.(210) With regard to the ancient Egyptians we have it on
the authority of Manetho that they used to burn red-haired men and scatter
their ashes with winnowing fans,(211) and it is highly significant that
this barbarous sacrifice was offered by the kings at the grave of
Osiris.(212) We may conjecture that the victims represented Osiris
himself, who was annually slain, dismembered, and buried in their persons
that he might quicken the seed in the earth.
(M82) Possibly in prehistoric times the kings themselves played the part
of the god and were slain and dismembered in that character. Set as well
as Osiris is said to have been torn in pieces after a reign of eighteen
days, which was commemorated by an annual festival of the same
length.(213) According to one story Romulus, the first king of Rome, was
cut in pieces by the senators, who buried the fragments of him in the
ground;(214) and the traditional day of his death, the seventh of July,
was celebrated with certain curious rites, which were apparently connected
with the artificial fertilization of the fig.(215) Again, Greek legend
told how Pentheus, king of Thebes, and Lycurgus, king of the Thracian
Edonians, opposed the vine-god Dionysus, and how the impious monarchs were
rent in pieces, the one by the frenzied Bacchanals, the other by
horses.(216) These Greek traditions may well be distorted reminiscences of
a custom of sacrificing human beings, and especially divine kings, in the
character of Dionysus, a god who resembled Osiris in many points and was
said like him to have been torn limb from limb.(217) We are told that in
Chios men were rent in pieces as a sacrifice to Dionysus;(218) and since
they died the same death as their god, it is reasonable to suppose that
they personated him. The story that the Thracian Orpheus was similarly
torn limb from limb by the Bacchanals seems to indicate that he too
perished in the character of the god whose death he died.(219) It is
significant that the Thracian Lycurgus, king of the Edonians, is said to
have been put to death in order that the ground, which had ceased to be
fruitful, might regain its fertility.(220) In some Thracian villages at
Carnival time a custom is still annually observed, which may well be a
mitigation of an ancient practice of putting a man, perhaps a king, to
death in the character of Dionysus for the sake of the crops. A man
disguised in goatskins and fawnskins, the livery of Dionysus, is shot at
and falls down as dead. A pretence is made of flaying his body and of
mourning over him, but afterwards he comes to life again. Further, a
plough is dragged about the village and seed is scattered, while prayers
are said that the wheat, rye, and barley may be plentiful. One town
(Viza), where these customs are observed, was the capital of the old
Thracian kings. In another town (Kosti, near the Black Sea) the principal
masker is called the king. He wears goatskins or sheepskins, and is
attended by a boy who dispenses wine to the people. The king himself
carries seed, which he casts on the ground before the church, after being
invited to throw it on two bands of married and unmarried men
respectively. Finally, he is stripped of the skins and thrown into the
river.(221)
(M83) Further, we read of a Norwegian king, Halfdan the Black, whose body
was cut up and buried in different parts of his kingdom for the sake of
ensuring the fruitfulness of the earth. He is said to have been drowned at
the age of forty through the breaking of the ice in spring. What followed
his death is thus related by the old Norse historian Snorri Sturluson: “He
had been the most prosperous (literally, blessed with abundance) of all
kings. So greatly did men value him that when the news came that he was
dead and his body removed to Hringariki and intended for burial there, the
chief men from Raumariki and Westfold and Heithmörk came and all requested
that they might take his body with them and bury it in their various
provinces; they thought that it would bring abundance to those who
obtained it. Eventually it was settled that the body was distributed in
four places. The head was laid in a barrow at Steinn in Hringariki, and
each party took away their own share and buried it. All these barrows are
called Halfdan’s barrows.”(222) It should be remembered that this Halfdan
belonged to the family of the Ynglings, who traced their descent from
Frey, the great Scandinavian god of fertility.(223) Frey himself is said
to have reigned as king of Sweden at Upsala. The years of his reign were
plenteous, and the people laid the plenty to his account. So when he died,
they would not burn him, as it had been customary to do with the dead
before his time; but they resolved to preserve his body, believing that,
so long as it remained in Sweden, the land would have abundance and peace.
Therefore they reared a great mound, and put him in it, and sacrificed to
him for plenty and peace ever afterwards. And for three years after his
death they poured the tribute to him into the mound, as if he were alive;
the gold they poured in by one window, the silver by a second, and the
copper by a third.(224)
(M84) The natives of Kiwai, an island lying off the mouth of the Fly River
in British New Guinea, tell of a certain magician named Segera, who had
sago for his totem. When his son died, the death was set down to the magic
of an enemy, and the bereaved father was so angry that by his spells he
caused the whole crop of sago in the country to fail; only in his own
garden the sago grew as luxuriantly as ever. When many had died of famine,
the people went to him and begged him to remove the spells which he had
cast on the sago palms, so that they might eat food and live. The
magician, touched with remorse and pity, went round planting a sago shoot
in every garden, and the shoots flourished, sago was plentiful once more,
and the famine came to an end. When Segera was old and ill, he told the
people that he would soon die, but that, nevertheless, he would cause
their gardens to thrive. Accordingly, he instructed them that when he was
dead they should cut him up and place pieces of his flesh in their
gardens, but his head was to be buried in his own garden. Of him it is
said that he outlived the ordinary age, and that no man knew his father,
but that he made the sago good and no one was hungry any more. Old men who
were alive a few years ago affirmed that they had known Segera in their
youth, and the general opinion of the Kiwai people seems to be that Segera
died not more than two generations ago.(225)
(M85) Taken all together, these legends point to a widespread practice of
dismembering the body of a king or magician and burying the pieces in
different parts of the country in order to ensure the fertility of the
ground and probably also the fecundity of man and beast. Whether regarded
as the descendant of a god, as himself divine, or simply as a mighty
enchanter, the king was believed to radiate magical virtue for the good of
his subjects, quickening the seed in the earth and in the womb. This
radiation of reproductive energy did not cease with his life; hence the
people deemed it essential to preserve his body as a pledge of the
continued prosperity of the country. It would be natural to imagine that
the spot where the dead king was buried would enjoy a more than ordinary
share of his blessed influence, and accordingly disputes would almost
inevitably arise between different districts for the exclusive possession
of so powerful a talisman. These disputes could be settled and local
jealousies appeased by dividing the precious body between the rival
claimants, in order that all should benefit in equal measure by its
life-giving properties. This was certainly done in Norway with the body of
Halfdan the Black, the descendant of the harvest-god Frey; it appears to
have been done with the body of Segera, the sago-magician of Kiwai; and we
may conjecture that in prehistoric times it was done with the bodies of
Egyptian kings, who personated Osiris, the god of fertility in general and
of the corn in particular. At least such a practice would account for the
legend of the mangling of the god’s body and the distribution of the
pieces throughout Egypt.
(M86) In this connexion the story that the genital member of Osiris was
missing when Isis pieced together his mutilated body,(226) may not be
without significance. When a Zulu medicine-man wishes to make the crops
grow well, he will take the body of a man who has died in full vigour and
cut minute portions of tissue from the foot, the leg, the arm, the face,
and the nail of a single finger in order to compound a fertilizing
medicine out of them. But the most important part of the medicine consists
of the dead man’s generative organs, which are removed entire. All these
pieces of the corpse are fried with herbs on a slow fire, then ground to
powder, and sown over the fields.(227) We have seen that similarly the
Egyptians scattered the ashes of human victims by means of
winnowing-fans;(228) and if my explanation of the practice is correct, it
may well have been that they, like the Zulus, attributed a special power
of reproduction to the genital organs, and therefore carefully excised
them from the body of the victim in order to impart their virtue to the
fields. I have conjectured that a similar use was made of the severed
portions of the priests of Attis.(229)
(M87) To an ancient Egyptian, with his firm belief in a personal
immortality dependent on the integrity of the body, the prospect of
mutilation after death must have been very repugnant; and we may suppose
that the kings offered a strenuous resistance to the custom and finally
succeeded in abolishing it. They may have represented to the people that
they would attain their object better by keeping the royal corpse intact
than by frittering it away in small pieces. Their subjects apparently
acquiesced in the argument, or at all events in the conclusion; yet the
mountains of masonry beneath which the old Egyptian kings lay buried may
have been intended to guard them from the superstitious devotion of their
friends quite as much as from the hostile designs of their enemies, since
both alike must have been under a strong temptation to violate the
sanctity of the grave in order to possess themselves of bodies which were
believed to be endowed with magical virtue of the most tremendous potency.
In antiquity the safety of the state was often believed to depend on the
possession of a talisman, which sometimes consisted of the bones of a king
or hero. Hence the graves of such persons were sometimes kept secret.(230)
The violation of royal tombs by a conqueror was not a mere insult: it was
a deadly blow struck at the prosperity of the kingdom. Hence Ashurbanipal
carried off to Assyria the bones of the kings of Elam, believing that thus
he gave their shades no repose and deprived them of food and drink.(231)
The Moabites burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime.(232)
Lysimachus is said to have opened the graves of the kings of Epirus and
scattered the bones of the dead.(233)
(M88) With savage and barbarous tribes in like manner it is not unusual to
violate the sanctity of the tomb either for the purpose of wreaking
vengeance on the dead or more commonly perhaps for the sake of gaining
possession of the bones and converting them to magical uses. Hence the
Mpongwe kings of the Gaboon region in West Africa are buried secretly lest
their heads should fall into the hands of men of another tribe, who would
make a powerful fetish out of the brains.(234) Again, in Togoland, West
Africa, the kings of the Ho tribe are buried with great secrecy in the
forest, and a false grave is made ostentatiously in the king’s house. None
but his personal retainers and a single daughter know where the king’s
real grave is. The intention of this secret burial is to prevent enemies
from digging up the corpse and cutting off the head.(235) “The heads of
important chiefs in the Calabar districts are usually cut off from the
body on burial and kept secretly for fear the head, and thereby the
spirit, of the dead chief, should be stolen from the town. If it were
stolen it would be not only a great advantage to its new possessor, but a
great danger to the chief’s old town, because he would know all the
peculiar ju-ju relating to it. For each town has a peculiar one, kept
exceedingly secret, in addition to the general ju-jus, and this secret one
would then be in the hands of the new owners of the spirit.”(236) The
graves of Basuto chiefs are kept secret lest certain more or less
imaginary witches and wizards called _Baloi_, who haunt tombs, should get
possession of the bones and work evil magic with them.(237) In the Thonga
tribe of South Africa, when a chief dies, he is buried secretly by night
in a sacred wood, and few people know the place of the grave. With some
clans of the tribe it is customary to level the mound over the grave so
that no sign whatever remains to show where the body has been buried. This
is said to be done lest enemies should exhume the corpse and cut off the
ears, the diaphragm, and other parts in order to make powerful war-charms
out of them.(238) By many tribes in Fiji “the burial-place of their chief
is kept a profound secret, lest those whom he injured during his lifetime
should revenge themselves by digging up and insulting or even eating his
body. In some places the dead chief is buried in his own house, and armed
warriors of his mother’s kin keep watch night and day over his grave.
After a time his bones are taken up and carried by night to some far-away
inaccessible cave in the mountains, whose position is known only to a few
trustworthy men. Ladders are constructed to enable them to reach the cave,
and are taken down when the bones have been deposited there. Many
frightful stories are told in connection with this custom, and it is
certain that not even decomposition itself avails to baulk the last
revenge of cannibals if they can find the grave. The very bones of the
dead chief are not secure from the revenge of those whose friends he
killed during his lifetime, or whom he otherwise so exasperated by the
tyrannous exercise of his power as to fill their hearts with a deadly
hate. In one instance within my own knowledge, when the hiding-place was
discovered, the bones were taken away, scraped, and stewed down into a
horrible hell-broth.”(239) When a Melanesian dies who enjoyed a reputation
for magical powers in his lifetime, his friends will sometimes hold a sham
burial and keep the real grave secret for fear that men might come and dig
up the skull and bones to make charms with them.(240)
(M89) Beliefs and practices of this sort are by no means confined to
agricultural peoples. Among the Koniags of Alaska “in ancient times the
pursuit of the whale was accompanied by numerous superstitious observances
kept a secret by the hunters. Lieutenant Davidof states that the whalers
preserved the bodies of brave or distinguished men in secluded caves, and
before proceeding upon a whale-hunt would carry these dead bodies into a
stream and then drink of the water thus tainted. One famous whaler of
Kadiak who desired to flatter Baranof, the first chief manager of the
Russian colonies, said to him, ‘When you die I shall try to steal your
body,’ intending thus to express his great respect for Baranof. On the
occasion of the death of a whaler his fellows would cut the body into
pieces, each man taking one of them for the purpose of rubbing his
spear-heads therewith. These pieces were dried or otherwise preserved, and
were frequently taken into the canoes as talismans.”(241)
(M90) To return to the human victims whose ashes the Egyptians scattered
with winnowing-fans,(242) the red hair of these unfortunates was probably
significant. If I am right, the custom of sacrificing such persons was not
a mere way of wreaking a national spite on fair-haired foreigners, whom
the black-haired Egyptians of old, like the black-haired Chinese of modern
times, may have regarded as red-haired devils. For in Egypt the oxen which
were sacrificed had also to be red; a single black or white hair found on
the beast would have disqualified it for the sacrifice.(243) If, as I
conjecture, these human sacrifices were intended to promote the growth of
the crops—and the winnowing of their ashes seems to support this
view—red-haired victims were perhaps selected as best fitted to personate
the spirit of the ruddy grain. For when a god is represented by a living
person, it is natural that the human representative should be chosen on
the ground of his supposed resemblance to the divine original. Hence the
ancient Mexicans, conceiving the maize as a personal being who went
through the whole course of life between seed-time and harvest, sacrificed
new-born babes when the maize was sown, older children when it had
sprouted, and so on till it was fully ripe, when they sacrificed old
men.(244) A name for Osiris was the “crop” or “harvest”;(245) and the
ancients sometimes explained him as a personification of the corn.(246)
§ 2. Osiris a Tree-Spirit.
(M91) But Osiris was more than a spirit of the corn; he was also a
tree-spirit, and this may perhaps have been his primitive character, since
the worship of trees is naturally older in the history of religion than
the worship of the cereals. However that may have been, to an agricultural
people like the Egyptians, who depended almost wholly on their crops, the
corn-god was naturally a far more important personage than the tree-god,
and attracted a larger share of their devotion. The character of Osiris as
a tree-spirit was represented very graphically in a ceremony described by
Firmicus Maternus.(247) A pine-tree having been cut down, the centre was
hollowed out, and with the wood thus excavated an image of Osiris was
made, which was then buried like a corpse in the hollow of the tree. 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.(248) The ceremony of cutting
the tree, as described by Firmicus Maternus, appears to be alluded to by
Plutarch.(249) It was probably the ritual counterpart of the mythical
discovery of the body of Osiris enclosed in the _erica_-tree.(250)
(M92) Now we know from the monuments that at Busiris, Memphis, and
elsewhere the great festival of Osiris closed on the thirtieth of Khoiak
with the setting up of a remarkable pillar known as the _tatu_, _tat_,
_tet_, _dad_, or _ded_. This was a column with four or five cross-bars,
like superposed capitals, at the top. The whole roughly resembled a
telegraph-post with the cross-pieces which support the wires. Sometimes on
the monuments a human form is given to the pillar by carving a grotesque
face on it, robing the lower part, crowning the top with the symbols of
Osiris, and adding two arms which hold two other characteristic emblems of
the god, the crook and the scourge or flail. On a Theban tomb the king
himself, assisted by his relations and a priest, is represented hauling at
the ropes by which the pillar is being raised, while the queen looks on
and her sixteen daughters accompany the ceremony with the music of rattles
and sistrums. Again, in the hall of the Osirian mysteries at Abydos the
King Sety I. and the goddess Isis are depicted raising the column between
them. In Egyptian theology the pillar was interpreted as the backbone of
Osiris, and whatever its meaning may have been, it was one of the holiest
symbols of the national religion. It might very well be a conventional way
of representing a tree stripped of its leaves; and if Osiris was a
tree-spirit, the bare trunk and branches might naturally be described as
his backbone. The setting up of the column would thus, as several modern
scholars believe, shadow forth the resurrection of the god, and the
importance of the occasion would explain and justify the prominent part
which the king appears to have taken in the ceremony.(251) It is to be
noted that in the myth of Osiris the _erica_-tree which shot up and
enclosed his dead body, was cut down by a king and turned by him into a
pillar of his house.(252) We can hardly doubt, therefore, that this
incident of the legend was supposed to be dramatically set forth in the
erection of the _ded_ column by the king. Like the similar custom of
cutting a pine-tree and fastening an image to it in the rites of Attis,
the ceremony may have belonged to that class of customs of which the
bringing in of the May-pole is among the most familiar. The association of
the king and queen of Egypt with the _ded_ pillar reminds us of the
association of a King and Queen of May with the May-pole.(253) The
resemblance may be more than superficial.
(M93) In the hall of Osiris at Denderah the coffin containing the
hawk-headed mummy of the god is clearly depicted as enclosed within a
tree, apparently a conifer, the trunk and branches of which are seen above
and below the coffin.(254) The scene thus corresponds closely both to the
myth and to the ceremony described by Firmicus Maternus. In another scene
at Denderah a tree of the same sort is represented growing between the
dead and the reviving Osiris, as if on purpose to indicate that the tree
was the symbol of the divine resurrection.(255) 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.(256) The sycamore and
the tamarisk were also his trees. In inscriptions he is spoken of as
residing in them;(257) and in tombs his mother Nut is often portrayed
standing in the midst of a sycamore-tree and pouring a libation for the
benefit of the dead.(258) In one of the Pyramid Texts we read, “Hail to
thee, Sycamore, which enclosest the god”;(259) and in certain temples the
statue of Osiris used to be placed for seven days upon branches of
sycamores. The explanation appended in the sacred texts declares that the
placing of the image on the tree was intended to recall the seven months
passed by Osiris in the womb of his mother Nut, the goddess of the
sycamore.(260) The rite recalls the story that Adonis was born after ten
months’ gestation from a myrrh-tree.(261) Further, in a sepulchre at How
(Diospolis Parva) a tamarisk is depicted overshadowing the tomb of Osiris,
while a bird is perched among the branches with the significant legend
“the soul of Osiris,”(262) showing that the spirit of the dead god was
believed to haunt his sacred tree.(263) Again, 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
accompanying inscription 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 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 represented as a corpse with ears of corn
springing from him.(264) In inscriptions he is referred to as “the one in
the tree,” “the solitary one in the acacia,” and so forth.(265) On the
monuments he sometimes appears as a mummy covered with a tree or with
plants;(266) and trees are represented growing from his grave.(267)
(M94) It 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.(268) According to one legend, he taught men to train the vine to
poles, to prune its superfluous foliage, and to extract the juice of the
grape.(269) In the papyrus of Nebseni, written about 1550 B.C., Osiris is
depicted sitting in a shrine, from the roof of which hang clusters of
grapes;(270) and in the papyrus of the royal scribe Nekht we see the god
enthroned in front of a pool, from the banks of which a luxuriant vine,
with many bunches of grapes, grows towards the green face of the seated
deity.(271) The ivy was sacred to him, and was called his plant because it
is always green.(272)
§ 3. Osiris a God of Fertility.
(M95) As a god of vegetation Osiris was naturally conceived as a god of
creative energy in general, since men at a certain stage of evolution fail
to distinguish between the reproductive powers of animals and of plants.
Hence a striking feature in his worship was the coarse but expressive
symbolism by which this aspect of his nature was presented to the eye not
merely of the initiated but of the multitude. At his festival women used
to go about the villages singing songs in his praise and carrying obscene
images of him which they set in motion by means of strings.(273) The
custom was probably a charm to ensure the growth of the crops. A similar
image of him, decked with all the fruits of the earth, is said to have
stood in a temple before a figure of Isis,(274) and in the chambers
dedicated to him at Philae the dead god is portrayed lying on his bier in
an attitude which indicates in the plainest way that even in death his
generative virtue was not extinct but only suspended, ready to prove a
source of life and fertility to the world when the opportunity should
offer.(275) Hymns addressed to Osiris contain allusions to this important
side of his nature. In one of them it is said that the world waxes green
in triumph through him; and another declares, “Thou art the father and
mother of mankind, they live on thy breath, they subsist on the flesh of
thy body.”(276) We may conjecture that in this paternal aspect he was
supposed, like other gods of fertility, to bless men and women with
offspring, and that the processions at his festival were intended to
promote this object as well as to quicken the seed in the ground. It would
be to misjudge ancient religion to denounce as lewd and profligate the
emblems and the ceremonies which the Egyptians employed for the purpose of
giving effect to this conception of the divine power. The ends which they
proposed to themselves in these rites were natural and laudable; only the
means they adopted to compass them were mistaken. A similar fallacy
induced the Greeks to adopt a like symbolism in their Dionysiac festivals,
and the superficial but striking resemblance thus produced between the two
religions has perhaps more than anything else misled inquirers, both
ancient and modern, into identifying worships which, though certainly akin
in nature, are perfectly distinct and independent in origin.(277)
§ 4. Osiris a God of the Dead.
(M96) We have seen that in one of his aspects Osiris was the ruler and
judge of the dead.(278) To a people like the Egyptians, who not only
believed in a life beyond the grave but actually spent much of their time,
labour, and money in preparing for it, this office of the god must have
appeared hardly, if at all, less important than his function of making the
earth to bring forth its fruits in due season. We may assume that in the
faith of his worshippers the two provinces of the god were intimately
connected. In laying their dead in the grave they committed them to his
keeping who could raise them from the dust to life eternal, even as he
caused the seed to spring from the ground. Of that faith the corn-stuffed
effigies of Osiris found in Egyptian tombs furnish an eloquent and
unequivocal testimony.(279) They were at once an emblem and an instrument
of resurrection. Thus from the sprouting of the grain the ancient
Egyptians drew an augury of human immortality. They are not the only
people who have built the same far-reaching hopes on the same slender
foundation. “Thou fool, that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body
that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other
grain: but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed
his own body. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in
corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in weakness; it is
raised in power: it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual
body.”(280)
(M97) A god who thus fed his people with his own broken body in this life,
and who held out to them a promise of a blissful eternity in a better
world hereafter, naturally reigned supreme in their affections. We need
not wonder, therefore, that in Egypt the worship of the other gods was
overshadowed by that of Osiris, and that while they were revered each in
his own district, he and his divine partner Isis were adored in all.(281)