(M123) In the foregoing discussion we found reason to believe that the
Semitic Adonis and the Phrygian Attis were at one time personated in the
flesh by kings, princes, or priests who played the part of the god for a
time and then either died a violent death in the divine character or had
to redeem their life in one way or another, whether by performing a
make-believe sacrifice at some expense of pain and danger to themselves,
or by delegating the duty to a substitute.(408) Further, we conjectured
that in Egypt the part of Osiris may have been played by the king
himself.(409) It remains to adduce some positive evidence of this
personation.
(M124) A great festival called the Sed was celebrated by the Egyptians
with much solemnity at intervals of thirty years. Various portions of the
ritual are represented on the ancient monuments of Hieraconpolis and
Abydos and in the oldest decorated temple of Egypt known to us, that of
Usirniri at Busiris, which dates from the fifth dynasty. It appears that
the ceremonies were as old as the Egyptian civilization, and that they
continued to be observed till the end of the Roman period.(410) The reason
for holding them at intervals of thirty years is uncertain, but we can
hardly doubt that the period was determined by astronomical
considerations. According to one view, it was based on the observation of
Saturn’s period of revolution round the sun, which is, roughly speaking,
thirty years, or, more exactly, twenty-nine years and one hundred and
seventy-four days.(411) According to another view, the thirty years’
period had reference to Sirius, the star of Isis. We have seen that on
account of the vague character of the old Egyptian year the heliacal
rising of Sirius shifted its place gradually through every month of the
calendar.(412) In one hundred and twenty years the star thus passed
through one whole month of thirty days. To speak more precisely, it rose
on the first of the month during the first four years of the period: it
rose on the second of the month in the second four years, on the third of
the month in the third four years; and so on successively, till in the
last four years of the hundred and twenty years it rose on the last day of
the month. As the Egyptians watched the annual summer rising of the star
with attention and associated it with the most popular of their goddesses,
it would be natural that its passage from one month to another, at
intervals of one hundred and twenty years, should be the occasion of a
great festival, and that the long period of one hundred and twenty years
should be divided into four minor periods of thirty years respectively,
each celebrated by a minor festival.(413) If this theory of the Sed
festivals is correct, we should expect to find that every fourth
celebration was distinguished from the rest by a higher degree of
solemnity, since it marked the completion of a twelfth part of the star’s
journey through the twelve months. Now it appears that in point of fact
every fourth Sed festival was marked off from its fellows by the adjective
_tep_ or “chief,” and that these “chief” celebrations fell as a rule in
the years when Sirius rose on the first of the month.(414) These facts
confirm the view that the Sed festival was closely connected with the star
Sirius, and through it with Isis.
(M125) However, we are here concerned rather with the meaning and the
rites of the festival than with the reasons for holding it once every
thirty years. The intention of the festival seems to have been to procure
for the king a new lease of life, a renovation of his divine energies, a
rejuvenescence. In the inscriptions of Abydos we read, after an account of
the rites, the following address to the king: “Thou dost recommence thy
renewal, thou art granted to flourish again like the infant god Moon, thou
dost grow young again, and that from season to season, like Nun at the
beginning of time, thou art born again in renewing the Sed festivals. All
life comes to thy nostril, and thou art king of the whole earth for
ever.”(415) In short, on these occasions it appears to have been supposed
that the king was in a manner born again.
(M126) But how was the new birth effected? Apparently the essence of the
rites consisted in identifying the king with Osiris; for just as Osiris
had died and risen again from the dead, so the king might be thought to
die and to live again with the god whom he personated. The ceremony would
thus be for the king a death as well as a rebirth. Accordingly in pictures
of the Sed festival on the monuments we see the king posing as the dead
Osiris. He sits in a shrine like a god, holding in his hands the crook and
flail of Osiris: he is wrapped in tight bandages like the mummified
Osiris; indeed, there is nothing but his name to prove that he is not
Osiris himself. This enthronement of the king in the attitude of the dead
god seems to have been the principal event of the festival.(416) Further,
the queen and the king’s daughters figured prominently in the
ceremonies.(417) A discharge of arrows formed part of the rites;(418) and
in some sculptures at Carnac the queen is portrayed shooting arrows
towards the four quarters of the world, while the king does the same with
rings.(419) The oldest illustration of the festival is on the mace of
Narmer, which is believed to date from 5500 B.C. Here we see the king
seated as Osiris in a shrine at the top of nine steps. Beside the shrine
stand fan-bearers, and in front of it is a figure in a palanquin, which,
according to an inscription in another representation of the scene,
appears to be the royal child. An enclosure of curtains hung on poles
surrounds the dancing-ground, where three men are performing a sacred
dance. A procession of standards is depicted beside the enclosure; it is
headed by the standard of the jackal-god Up-uat, the “opener of ways” for
the dead.(420) Similarly on a seal of King Zer, or rather Khent, one of
the early kings of the first dynasty, the monarch appears as Osiris with
the standard of the jackal-god before him. In front of him, too, is the
ostrich feather on which “the dead king was supposed to ascend into
heaven. Here, then, the king, identified with Osiris, king of the dead,
has before him the jackal-god, who leads the dead, and the ostrich
feather, which symbolizes his reception into the sky.”(421) There are even
grounds for thinking that in order to complete the mimic death of the king
at the Sed festival an effigy of him, clad in the costume of Osiris, was
solemnly buried in a cenotaph.(422)
(M127) According to Professor Flinders Petrie, “the conclusion may be
drawn thus. In the savage age of prehistoric times, the Egyptians, like
many other African and Indian peoples, killed their priest-king at stated
intervals, in order that the ruler should, with unimpaired life and
health, be enabled to maintain the kingdom in its highest condition. The
royal daughters were present in order that they might be married to his
successor. The jackal-god went before him, to open the way to the unseen
world; and the ostrich feather received and bore away the king’s soul in
the breeze that blew it out of sight. This was the celebration of the
‘end,’ the _sed_ feast. The king thus became the dead king, patron of all
those who had died in his reign, who were his subjects here and hereafter.
He was thus one with Osiris, the king of the dead. This fierce custom
became changed, as in other lands, by appointing a deputy king to die in
his stead; which idea survived in the Coptic Abu Nerūs, with his tall
crown of Upper Egypt, false beard, and sceptre. After the death of the
deputy, the real king renewed his life and reign. Henceforward this became
the greatest of the royal festivals, the apotheosis of the king during his
life, after which he became Osiris upon earth and the patron of the dead
in the underworld.”(423)
(M128) A similar theory of the Sed festival is maintained by another
eminent Egyptologist, M. Alexandre Moret. He says: “In most of the temples
of Egypt, of all periods, pictures set forth for us the principal scenes
of a solemn festival called ‘festival of the tail,’ the Sed festival. It
consisted essentially in a representation of the ritual death of the king
followed by his rebirth. In this case the king is identified with Osiris,
the god who in historical times is the hero of the sacred drama of
humanity, he who guides us through the three stages of life, death, and
rebirth in the other world. Hence, clad in the funeral costume of Osiris,
with the tight-fitting garment clinging to him like a shroud, Pharaoh is
conducted to the tomb; and from it he returns rejuvenated and reborn like
Osiris emerging from the dead. How was this fiction carried out? how was
this miracle performed? By the sacrifice of human or animal victims. On
behalf of the king a priest lay down in the skin of the animal victim: he
assumed the posture characteristic of an embryo in its mother’s womb: when
he came forth from the skin he was deemed to be reborn; and Pharaoh, for
whom this rite was celebrated, was himself reborn, or to adopt the
Egyptian expression, ‘he renewed his births.’ And in testimony of the due
performance of the rites the king girt his loins with the tail, a
compendious representative of the skin of the sacrificed beast, whence the
name of ‘the festival of the tail.’
“How are we to explain the rule that at a certain point of his reign every
Pharaoh must undergo this ritual death followed by fictitious rebirth? Is
it simply a renewal of the initiation into the Osirian mysteries? or does
the festival present some more special features? The ill-defined part
played by the royal children in these rites seems to me to indicate that
the Sed festival represents other episodes which refer to the transmission
of the regal office. At the dawn of civilization in Egypt the people were
perhaps familiar with the alternative either of putting their king to
death in his full vigour in order that his power should be transmitted
intact to his successor, or of attempting to rejuvenate him and to ‘renew
his life.’ The latter measure was an invention of the Pharaohs. How could
it be carried out more effectively than by identifying themselves with
Osiris, by applying to themselves the process of resurrection, the funeral
rites by which Isis, according to the priests, had magically saved her
husband from death? Perhaps the fictitious death of the king may be
regarded as a mitigation of the primitive murder of the divine king, a
transition from a barbarous reality to symbolism.”(424)
(M129) Whether this interpretation of the Sed festival be accepted in all
its details or not, one thing seems quite certain: on these solemn
occasions the god Osiris was personated by the king of Egypt himself. That
is the point with which we are here chiefly concerned.