| Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden
Bough. 1922. |
§ 4. Osiris a
God of the Dead |
| |
| WE have seen that in one of his aspects
Osiris was the ruler and judge of the dead. 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 un-equivocal testimony. 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 lofty hopes on the same slender foundation. |
1 |
| 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. |
2 |
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