In writing this treatise my object has been to give a clear exposition
of the most important shape which the doctrine of immortality assumed
in Egypt. This particular form of the doctrine was only one of many
different ones that were held. The latter, however, were but occasional
manifestations, whereas the system here treated of was the popular
belief among all classes of the Egyptian people, from early to Coptic
times. By far the greater part of the religious papyri and tomb texts
and of the inscriptions of funerary stelæ are devoted to it; the
symbolism of nearly all the amulets is connected with it; it was bound
up with the practice of mummifying the dead; and it centred in the
person of Osiris, the most popular of all the gods of Egypt.
Even in Pyramid times Osiris had already attained pre-eminence; he
maintained this position throughout the whole duration of Egyptian
national life, and even survived its fall. From the fourth century B.C.
he, together with his companion deities, entered into the religious
life of the Greeks; and homage was paid to him by imperial Rome.
Throughout the length and breadth of the Roman Empire, even to the
remotest provinces of the Danube and the Rhine, altars were raised to
him, to his wife Isis, and to his son Harpocrates; and wherever his
worship spread, it carried with it that doctrine of immortality which
was associated with his name. This Osirian doctrine influenced the
systems of Greek philosophers; it made itself felt in the teachings
of the Gnostics; we find traces of it in the writings of Christian
apologists and the older fathers of the Church, and through their
agency it has affected the thoughts and opinions of our own time.
The cause of this far-reaching influence lies both in the doctrine
itself, which was at once the most profound and the most attractive of
all the teachings of the Egyptian religion; and also in the comfort
and consolation to be derived from the pathetically human story of its
founder, Osiris. He, the son of the gods, had sojourned upon earth and
bestowed upon men the blessings of civilisation. At length he fell a
prey to the devices of the Wicked One, and was slain. But the triumph
of evil and of death was only apparent: the work of Osiris endured, and
his son followed in his footsteps and broke the power of evil. Neither
had his being ended with death, for on dying he had passed into the
world to come, henceforth to reign over the dead as “The Good Being.”
Even as Osiris, so must each man die, no matter how noble and how godly
his life; nevertheless his deeds should be established for ever, his
name should endure, and the life which is eternal awaited him beyond
the tomb. To the Egyptian, nature on every hand presented images of
the life of Osiris. To him that life was reflected in the struggle
between good and evil, in the contest between the fertilising Nile and
the encroaching desert, no less than in the daily and yearly courses
of the sun. In earlier times Osiris was occasionally confounded with
the Sun god; later, the two deities were habitually merged in one
another. The death and resurrection of Osiris occurred at the end of
the month Khoiak−-that is to say, at the winter solstice, concurrently
with the dying of the Sun of the Old Year and the rising of the Sun of
the New. The new phoenix was supposed to make his appearance in March;
and this bird, although usually associated with the Sun, was often
representative of Osiris. And the epithets and titles of the Sun god
were similarly bestowed upon Osiris.
All the Osirian doctrines were readily apprehended in spite of their
deep import, and they steadily tended towards the evolution of a high
form of monotheistic belief. To no close student of these doctrines can
the fact seem strange that Egypt should have been the first country in
which Christianity permeated the whole body of the people. The Egyptian
could recognise his old beliefs in many a Christian theme, and so much
did the figure of Christ remind him of Osiris and his son Horus, that
to him Christ became a hero who traversed the Nile valley even as Horus
had done, overcoming His enemies, the evil demons and the wicked. In
Egypt the Osirian faith and dogma were the precursors of Christianity,
the foundations upon which it was able to build; and, altogether apart
from their intrinsic worth and far-reaching influence, it is this which
constitutes their significance in the history of the world.
For the choice of the illustrations, as well as for the English
version, I am gratefully indebted to my translator.