View of a room in the temple of Abu Simbel, Egypt, decorated with columns representing the god Osiris • ISTOCKPHOTO Osiris is certainly the god who enjoyed the greatest popularity in ancient Egypt. However, it appeared relatively late. Indeed, it is only in the middle of the V th dynasty (about 2400 BC) that it began to spread throughout Egypt, imposing itself in the formulas engraved on funerary monuments. "He who presides over the Westerners" He replaces ancient deities like Ândjty in Bousiris, or merges by syncretism with others in composite forms, such as Ptah-Sokar-Osiris in Memphis, and especially Osiris-Khenty-Imentyou. Khenty-Imentyou, whose name means "He who presides over the Westerners [the dead]", was venerated in Abydos, a place which, since protodynastic times, the Egyptians considered eminently sacred because its particular topography seemed to connect it to the world. deaths. The temple and the cult of Osiris knew in this city a pan-Egyptian fame, especially in the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom. Sesostris III dug an immense funerary monument into the mountain, and Seti I st built a complex comprising a temple and a cenotaph with sophisticated architectural symbolism. Individuals, for their part, ardently wished to come there on pilgrimage, attend the eulogies of the "great god" and establish funerary monuments there as cenotaphs. They believed that participating in the sanctity of the place would benefit their funeral destiny. Admittedly, in later times, the attraction for Abydos diminished somewhat in favor of Philae. But Osiris could console himself by noting the preeminent place that his cults now held throughout Egypt. Greek and Roman writers considered him to be universally worshiped there. And it was true. Each region, each city had its own Osirian cult with holy places, sanctuaries, relics of the god, rites, festivals, mounds, sacred trees, good spirits, taboos and specific officiants! A good example is the temple of Dendera:if Hathor – mistress of the place since time immemorial – retained control, on its roof were built no less than six chapels dedicated to Osiris and functionally independent of the rest of the building. /P> Murdered and dismembered What is this extraordinary popularity due to? To the beliefs implied by what is called “the Osirian myth”. To tell the truth, of this myth, the Egyptians left no continuous narration. We will have to wait for the Greek thinker and biographer Plutarch (46-125 AD) to have a coherent account, even if it cannot be considered canonical, far from it. Previously, a multitude of episodes and allusions, often contradictory, made it possible to trace the main lines. Osiris belongs to the fourth generation of the Ennead, the nine primordial Egyptian gods. At its head, the creator god Atum, who breaks his solitude by drawing from his own substance the first couple, Shu and Tefnut, which produces a second, Geb (the Earth) and Nut (the Sky). From their union four children were born:two brothers, Osiris and Seth, and two sisters, Isis and Nephthys. As often, the family is a source of conflict. Osiris, good king protector of vegetation and discoverer of nourishing cereals, is jealous of his brother Seth. A devouring jealousy, which will push this one to murder to take the place of that one. In fact, he slaughters Osiris on the shore of Nedit (or Gehesty), dismembers his corpse and throws the pieces into the river. Isis, loving wife of Osiris, is not resigned to the loss of a loved one. At the end of a relentless quest, she manages to collect the remains of her husband and put them together to recompose the body. According to a tradition, only the phallus would have been devoured by an oxyrhynchus, a variety of pike. However, Isis manages to revive her martyred husband enough to unite with him and conceive a son, Horus. By hiding in the swamps, she manages to save the young child from the murderous hatred of Seth, who has sensed danger in him. Not without reason:Horus, having become a young man full of vigor, punishes his father's assassin and takes over. Hope in the resurrection In this complex myth, susceptible to various readings, we distinguish three major themes, which will develop relatively independently while intersecting and overlapping with each other:the theme of the woman, devoted wife and good mother, who knows how to use subterfuge in the face of difficulties, embodied by Isis; that, crystallized around Horus, of the child god exposed to hostility and persecution, but destined to triumph despite his weakness and to make the succession from father to son prevail over the succession between brothers; finally, and above all, that of the possible rebirth after death, symbolized by Osiris. Basically, Osiris indeed symbolizes this very human hope that death, far from bringing about total and inevitable annihilation, is just the phase of a cycle where it precedes rebirth. The very name of Osiris remains enigmatic. We related it to the root user (“to be powerful”), but the spellings leave the door open to other speculative interpretations. Some hold, for example, that it means “principle of creation”. Either way, it represents the regenerative power that animates nature. Also read:Mummification, a passport to eternity The vegetable cycle, where the return to the earth prepares a new germination, provides an excellent example. It is illustrated in particular by the image of ears of corn growing thickly on the mummified body of Osiris. It was concretely implemented in the ritual of the month of Khoiak, the name of the fourth month of the flood season in the Egyptian calendar, when the flood reached its maximum, from the second half of September to the first half of October. . During these ceremonies celebrated from the 21st to the 30th of Khoiak, one put to germinate in a tank in the shape of the god of the grain in an earthy mixture. Such objects, called "vegetative Osiris", were also part of funerary furniture, as their significant symbolism seemed to promise efficiency. Osiris was also identified with the Nile:the fluids dripping from his decaying corpse were believed to cause the annual flood, whereby plants and crops grew again after a period of dormancy. The west of the Valley, where the dead were buried, gave access to the underground world of the Douat, a fertile countryside, criss-crossed by rivers and where cereals grew abundantly. This world had its king, Osiris in human form, wearing a miter surrounded by ostrich feathers and sometimes placed on ram's horns. His flesh is black (symbol of the earth) or green (symbol of growth). In this kingdom, each deceased, of course, intends to immigrate. Password for the afterlife To do this, he must pass an admissibility test:the judgment of the dead. He appears before a court presided over by Osiris. Her heart is placed on one of the two scales (the "psychostasis", or weighing of the heart), the other being charged with an effigy of Maat, goddess of Justice. Then he denies having committed a host of faults in the “negative confession”. It is not a question of purifying oneself of one's sins by confessing them, but of being accepted in the circle of the gods by ensuring that one has not violated any taboo, any prohibition. In fact, the success of this test, far from resting on the scrupulous observance of moral laws during life, is simply due to the knowledge of the names and formulas which make it possible to neutralize the balance, the court and Osiris! Above all, Osiris embodied the principle of survival contained in earth and water. But he quickly came to extend his domain. It was also to him that the reappearance of the new moon in the sky and the rising of the star Sirius, coinciding with the flooding of the Nile, were attributed. Even more:there had long been a belief that rebirth was possible by participating in the solar cycle, either by identifying with the sun god Ra or by sailing with him in his boat. This “solar” survival entered into competition with the Osirian survival, called “chthonic” (that is to say underground). Very early on, theologians undertook to reconcile them through syntheses where one was transposed into the system of the other and vice versa. Evidenced by a famous scene from the tomb of Nefertari in which it is said of a ram carrying the solar disk and mummified - thus combining the attributes of one and the other god -:"Osiris finding himself at rest under the form of Ra is Ra at rest in the form of Osiris”. Find out more Rites and Beliefs of Eternity, I. Franco, Pygmalion, 1993.Death and Beyond in Ancient Egypt, J. Assmann, Editions du Rocher, 2003. Timeline 2407-2384 BC. First mention of Osiris on a lintel from the mastaba of Ptahshepses, a dignitary of the V th dynasty.2350-2321 BC. AD The texts inscribed in the pyramid of Unas (VI th dynasty) evoke episodes from the Osirian myth.1150-1145 BC. AD A papyrus from Deir el-Medina, dated Ramses V, preserves a literary version of the conflict between Horus and Seth.85 AD. AD After having perhaps visited Egypt, the writer Plutarch writes, around 85 AD. J.-C., the treatise Isis and Osiris . Respecting rituals The Justice of the King of the Dead Very tempting was a new life in the kingdom of Osiris, where the land was so fertile that it gave whoever plowed it magnificent harvests. But, to access it, the deceased had to show himself worthy of it by overcoming the ordeal of the judgment of the dead. It had two main parts. On the one hand, the applicant denied having perpetrated a series of prohibitions, thus attesting in the negative to his strict respect for morality. On the other hand, her heart (for the Egyptians the seat of conscience) was weighed in relation to Justice, symbolized by an effigy of the goddess Maât, a seated woman with an ostrich feather on her head. The penalty for failure was severe:to be handed over to an abominable monster, the Great Devourer. Fortunately, the deceased had books at his disposal, such as the Book of the Dead . In these compilations, chapter 125 provided him with the names of judges and authorities, as well as magic formulas that would allow him – he hoped – to bewitch all these beautiful people and force the judgment in his favor. A codified image A god wrapped in a white shroud Osiris is almost always represented sheathed in a white shroud, tightened by a double red belt and which wraps his feet, but which leaves the two forearms folded over the chest. He holds in his right hand the scepter heka and in the left hand the flail, both symbols of power. He is wearing a white miter, which, moreover, is the crown of Upper Egypt. It is lined with two ostrich feathers. He also wears a fake beard. Its flesh is green, suggesting the regenerative force of vegetation. It stands on a plinth, the front of which is bevelled and which means "to be just" as a hieroglyphic sign. On either side of Osiris is represented an emblem, in Egyptian imy-out (the “nebride” for Egyptologists). It is a mast to which is attached the remains of an animal just skinned, with a vase intended to collect the blood which flows from it. This remains was reinterpreted as the envelope surrounding the body parts of Osiris during his consolidation.
