Osiris Myth - Origins

Origins

As the Osiris myth first appears in the Pyramid Texts, most of its essential features must have taken shape sometime before the texts were written. The distinct segments of the story—Osiris' death and restoration, Horus' childhood, and Horus' conflict with Set—may originally have been independent mythic episodes. If so, they must have begun to coalesce into a single story by the time of the Pyramid Texts, which loosely connect those segments. In any case, the myth was inspired by a variety of influences. Much of the story is based in religious ideas and the general nature of Egyptian society: the divine nature of kingship, the succession from one king to another, the struggle to maintain maat, and the effort to overcome death. For instance, Isis and Nephthys' lamentations for their dead brother may represent an early tradition of ritualized mourning.

There are, however, important points of disagreement. The origins of Osiris are much debated, and the basis for the myth of his death is also somewhat uncertain. One influential hypothesis was given by the anthropologist James Frazer, who in 1906 said that Osiris, like other "dying and rising gods" across the ancient Near East, began as a personification of vegetation. His death and restoration, therefore, were based on the yearly death and re-growth of plants. Many Egyptologists adopted this explanation. But in the late 20th century, J. Gwyn Griffiths, who extensively studied Osiris and his mythology, argued that Osiris originated as a divine ruler of the dead, and his connection with vegetation was a secondary development. Meanwhile, scholars of comparative religion have increasingly criticized Frazer's overarching concept of "dying and rising gods". More recently, the Egyptologist Rosalie David maintains that Osiris originally "personified the annual rebirth of the trees and plants after the inundation."

Another continuing debate concerns the opposition of Horus and Set, which Egyptologists have often tried to connect with political events early in Egypt's history or prehistory. The cases in which the combatants divide the kingdom, and the frequent association of the paired Horus and Set with the union of Upper and Lower Egypt, suggest that the two deities represent some kind of division within the country. Egyptian tradition and archaeological evidence indicate that Egypt was united at the beginning of its history when an Upper Egyptian kingdom, in the south, conquered Lower Egypt in the north. The Upper Egyptian rulers called themselves "followers of Horus", and Horus became the patron god of the unified nation and its kings. Yet Horus and Set cannot be easily equated with the two halves of the country. Both deities had several cult centers in each region, and Horus is often associated with Lower Egypt and Set with Upper Egypt. One of the better-known explanations for these discrepancies was proposed by Kurt Sethe in 1930. He argued that Osiris was originally the human ruler of a unified Egypt in prehistoric times, before a rebellion of Upper Egyptian Set-worshippers. The Lower Egyptian followers of Horus then forcibly reunified the land, inspiring the myth of Horus' triumph, before Upper Egypt, now led by Horus worshippers, became prominent again at the start of the Early Dynastic Period.

In the late 20th century, Griffiths focused on the inconsistent portrayal of Horus and Set as brothers and as uncle and nephew. He argued that, in the early stages of Egyptian mythology, the struggle between Horus and Set as siblings and equals was originally separate from the murder of Osiris. The two stories were joined into the single Osiris myth sometime before the writing of the Pyramid Texts. With this merging, the genealogy of the deities involved and the characterization of the Horus–Set conflict were altered so that Horus is the son and heir avenging Osiris' death. Traces of the independent traditions remained, in the conflicting characterizations of the combatants' relationship and in texts unrelated to the Osiris myth, which make Horus the son of the goddess Nut or the goddess Hathor rather than of Isis and Osiris. Griffiths therefore rejected the possibility that Osiris' murder was rooted in historical events. This hypothesis has been accepted by more recent scholars such as Jan Assmann and George Hart.

Griffiths sought a historical origin for the Horus–Set rivalry, and he posited two distinct predynastic unifications of Egypt by Horus worshippers, similar to Sethe's theory, to account for it. Yet the issue remains unresolved, partly because other political associations for Horus and Set complicate the picture further. Before even Upper Egypt had a single ruler, two of its major cities were Nekhen, in the far south, and Naqada, many miles to the north. The rulers of Nekhen, where Horus was the patron deity, are generally believed to have unified Upper Egypt, including Naqada, under their sway. Set was associated with Naqada, so it is possible that the divine conflict dimly reflects an enmity between the cities in the distant past. Much later, at the end of the Second Dynasty (c. 2890–2686 BC), King Peribsen used the Set animal in writing his serekh-name, in place of the traditional falcon hieroglyph representing Horus. His successor Khasekhemwy used both Horus and Set in the writing of his serekh. This evidence has prompted conjecture that the Second Dynasty saw a clash between the followers of the Horus-king and the worshippers of Set led by Peribsen. Khasekhemwy's use of the two animal symbols would then represent the reconciliation of the two factions, as does the resolution of the myth.

Noting the uncertainties surrounding events so far back in time, Herman te Velde argues that the historical roots of the conflict are too obscure to be very useful in understanding the myth and are not as significant as its religious meaning. He says that "the origin of the myth of Horus and Seth is lost in the mists of the religious traditions of prehistory."