Don’t Know Much About® Mythology (12 page)

For centuries, the worship of Re had been based in Heliopolis, but gradually he was worshipped throughout Egypt. As a sun god, Re traveled in his boat through the sky and was reborn each day. In one story, man was said to be formed from Re’s tears. (The words for “tears” and “man” were very similar in Egyptian, just as in ancient Hebrew the words “earth” and “adam” found in the Genesis Creation story are also related.) Gradually, Re was fused with other Egyptian solar gods, and one way the Egyptians explained this was to identify Re with the sun at different times of the day. For instance, he was called Re-Horus as the morning sun and Re-Atum as the evening sun. In the Creation myth of Heliopolis that produced the Great Ennead, the god Atum was merged with Re into a single deity called Re-Atum. In this manifestation, he emerged as the creator god who fathered the first divine pair.

During the Middle and New Kingdoms, when Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power and wealth, Re and Amun—a powerful god worshipped in the cities of Thebes and Hermopolis—were also joined together to become Amun-Re and were viewed as an even more powerful national god. Amun-Re, king of the gods, creator of the universe, and father of the pharaohs, also became the lord of the battlefield. At the crucial Battle of Kadesh in 1286 BCE, when Ramses II defeated a Hittite army, legend has it that Amun-Re supposedly comforted the pharaoh when the battle was going against the Egyptians and promised, “Your father is with you! My powerful hand will slay a hundred thousand men.” Faced with defeat, Ramses II was saved by the seemingly miraculous arrival of reinforcements. After the battle, Ramses II apparently decided to make love, not war. He took the daughter of the Hittite leader as one of his seven wives, cementing a peace between the two ancient rivals.

If that notion of gods intervening in battle strikes modern readers as preposterous, primitive superstition, remember: there are many examples throughout history of similar divinely inspired victories. Various “war gods” have been credited with triumph in battles, especially against overwhelming odds. From the Greeks at Troy, to Joshua at Jericho, David and Goliath, and other biblical battles, the notion continued in the Christian era with Emperor Constantine, who converted to Christianity after a religious vision led him to victory in 312 CE, and Joan of Arc, whose religious visions enabled her to lead French armies. The notion of gods interceding in battle is an old and revered tradition, and more than a few twentieth-century American generals have credited God with victories in America’s wars. It’s one reason football coaches still make their players pray in the locker room.

Which god became Egypt’s lord of the dead?

After Re, no god was considered more important or greater in Egypt than Osiris, and no story was more important than the myth of his life, death, and rebirth. The son of Nut and Geb, Osiris had succeeded his father as the ruler of Egypt. With his sister Isis as his wife, this divine pair first civilized Egypt, and then Osiris decided to do the same for the rest of the world, leaving Isis in his place as ruler. After several years, he returned and found everything in order, as Isis had ruled wisely in his absence.

But his brother Seth was jealous of Osiris’s power and success, and plotted to kill him. In some versions of the myth, Seth’s jealousy was compounded when Osiris slept with Nephthys—their sister who was also Seth’s wife. In anger, Seth cursed their child, who became the jackal-headed god Anubis.

But Seth was not finished with Osiris. He invited his brother to a banquet attended by seventy-two of Seth’s accomplices. At the banquet, there was a beautifully carved wooden chest. In a Cinderella’s-slipper scenario, Seth offered the coffinlike box to whoever could fit inside it. All the guests tried to fit in but were unable, until finally, the trusting Osiris climbed into the box and fit perfectly. Quickly Seth had the lid nailed shut by his helpers, and sealed it with molten lead. Then they dropped the box into the river, and it was carried out to sea, coming to rest under a tamarisk tree in Byblos, the Phoenician port city (in modern Lebanon). As time went by, the tree grew around the box, eventually enclosing it—with Osiris’s dead body sealed inside. When the Phoenician king later had the tree cut down, it emitted a delicious fragrance and was soon famed throughout the world.

Mourning the loss of her beloved husband-brother, Isis was inconsolable, and her endless stream of tears was said to cause the flooding of the Nile. She began to search for Osiris, accompanied by the jackal-headed Anubis, the son of Osiris and his other sister, Nephthys. Hearing about the tree and its wonderful fragrance, Isis realized its significance. She retrieved the box and hid it in the swampy Nile Delta. When Isis finally opened the lid, she turned into a bird—either a sparrow or a hawk, depending on the version—and the flapping of her wings forced the breath back into Osiris’s lifeless body. Her beloved husband was alive briefly, just long enough for them to make love before Osiris died once again. Isis became pregnant and the child she conceived was
Horus
, the falcon-headed sky god. The dead Osiris was returned to his tomb, which Isis guarded.

After killing his brother, Seth had become pharaoh of Egypt. Learning that Osiris was lying in a tomb, Seth was unsatisfied. He discovered the box containing Osiris in the tomb, and, in a rage, cut Osiris’s remains into fourteen pieces, scattering the parts all over Egypt. In the myth, however, the distraught Isis searched for all the pieces with the assistance of her mother, Nut, the sky goddess, and the jackal-headed Anubis.

Although Isis was able to gather up almost all the pieces, she could not find Osiris’s phallus, which had been swallowed by three kinds of fish. (Eating these varieties of fish was considered taboo by some Egyptians.) In one version of this myth, Isis buried these thirteen parts of Osiris where she found them, and each of these became the site of a major Osiris temple. Temples to Osiris throughout Egypt staked a claim to being the burial site of these remnants of Osiris. They attracted devoted worshippers, just as certain Christian churches that claim to possess “relics,” such as a piece of the “true cross” or remains of saints, become pilgrimage destinations.

In the more significant version of the myth, Isis once again resurrected Osiris’s body. Alive, but unable to reproduce because his phallus had been lost, Osiris went to the other gods to discredit Seth. Now infertile, Osiris was made lord of the dead, given to rule over the land that existed beyond the western desert horizon. To prepare Osiris for his journey to the land of the dead, Isis invented embalming and mummification, which was carried out by her loyal assistant, the jackal-headed Anubis. The preservation of the body of the dead person was thought to be essential for survival after death. As lord of the dead, Osiris was the god who gave permission to enter the underground kingdom. This was the beginning of the elaborate rituals that formed the essence of Egyptian religion—the burial rites that ensured immortality. In many ways, while Osiris did not supplant Re in power, he became Egypt’s most popular deity, with a cult following that lasted over two thousand years.

Who was Egypt’s most significant goddess?

The family feud did not end there. This epic story continued with the conflict between Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, and his uncle Seth. With Osiris in the underworld, evil Seth remained the king. But when Horus reached manhood, he vowed to avenge his father and challenged his uncle for the throne. In one version of the myth, Isis disguised herself and convinced Seth that Horus deserved to be the king. But other versions detail a lengthy series of battles, in which Horus castrated and killed Seth—but not before Seth tore out one of Horus’s eyes. Judged the victor by the gods, Horus was given the throne of Egypt and Seth ascended into the heavens, to be the god of storms. Having overthrown Seth, Horus became the king and guide of dead souls, and, ultimately, the protector of pharaohs, who took as one of their several titles the name “the Living Horus.” When the pharaoh died, he was thought to become Osiris, the god of the underworld.

Based on the seemingly timeless, crucial, and annual pattern of the flooding of the Nile, this was an elemental myth in Egyptian history. Osiris represented growth and life, and Seth represented death. The forces of vegetation and creation—symbolized by Osiris, Isis, and Horus—triumphed over the evil forces of the desert, symbolized by Seth. But, more significant, with the help of Isis, Osiris had cheated death. The Egyptians believed that if Osiris could triumph over death, so could human beings.

Over the centuries, the beguiling Isis became the most significant goddess in the Egyptian pantheon—mother of god, healer, the powerful goddess with deep knowledge of magical arts and sexual power. In one legend, Isis tricked the aging Re into confiding his secret names to her. Using magic to create a snake that bit Re, Isis healed the god only after he revealed all of these names to her. With this knowledge, Isis acquired unmatched skills in magic and healing. In Egyptian, her name is related to the word for “throne,” and she is often depicted in Egyptian art as a throne for the king. In Greece, Isis would become identified with Demeter—the Mother Earth, or Grain Mother of Greek myth (see chapter 4)—and she became even more popular in Imperial Rome. Temples devoted to the worship of Isis were built in every corner of the Roman Empire, including one discovered beneath the streets of modern London. The image of Isis suckling the infant Horus, one of the most familiar themes in Egyptian art, was later adopted by early Christians to represent the Virgin Mary. The traditional blue dress of the Virgin Mary, the title Stella Maris (Star of the Sea), the reference to Mother of God, and the symbol of the crescent moon associated with Mary were all borrowed from the Roman cult of Isis.

While very ancient Egyptian papyruses and other works of art serve as sources for the Isis-Osiris myth, it was best known to the Greeks and Romans as it was recorded in a volume called
Concerning Isis and Osiris
by Plutarch (c. 40–120 CE), a Greek biographer and essayist best known for his work
Parallel Lives of Illustrious Greeks and Romans
. Born in Greece, Plutarch studied philosophy in Athens and later lectured on this subject in Rome. After travels through Greece, Italy, and Egypt, he returned to Greece as a priest of Apollo at Delphi, and it is believed that he wrote his great works there. Drawing on earlier sources, Plutarch retold the Isis story, giving Greek names to the Egyptian gods. In his version, Horus became the Greek Apollo and Seth became the Greek Typhon, a serpentlike monster who appears in Greek myth (and the source of the word “typhoon”).

What did Christians think of Isis?

The story of Isis and Osiris—which shares some features with the Mesopotamian myth of Inanna and Dumuzi (see chapter 3) and may even be historically related to it—eventually reached far beyond Egypt. First adopted by the Greeks and later the Romans, it evolved into a significant story of a resurrected deity who promised salvation, and Isis and Osiris became the central figures in the “mystery religions” that flourished in the first century before the rise of Christianity. In
A History of God
, Karen Armstrong describes how these “Oriental cults” found a ready audience in the international empire that Rome had become by the first century. “The old gods seem petty and inadequate,” Armstrong writes in a description that almost seems befitting modern times and fascination with so-called New Age religions of our times. “They were looking for new spiritual solutions, [and] deities like Isis…were worshipped alongside the traditional gods of Rome.”

To the Roman world, Isis was alluring, holding out the promise of magical secrets and even immortality. Married to one god and mother of another one, she contained all of the female creative power associated with great goddesses.

It was against that backdrop of fading interest in the old gods of Rome and growing fascination with attractive new gods, such as Isis and Osiris, that Christianity also began to take root in Rome. To many religious historians, that searching mood in ancient Rome, combined with myths of dying and rising gods, may have opened the way for Christianity. Early in the twentieth century, scholar Jane Harrison wrote: “Of all Egyptians, perhaps of all ancient deities, no god has lived so long or had so wide and deep an influence as Osiris. He stands as the prototype of the great class of resurrection gods who die that they may live again.”

The story raises another troubling question. The marriage of Isis and Osiris, like most other divine relationships in Egyptian mythology, was clearly incestuous. That was not unique to Egypt, as many myths feature such family couplings. There is a practical explanation for this, which is that if you are a god and there is nobody else around, sleeping with your sister is the only option. Did that mean incest was condoned in Egypt? In Egyptian history, it was clear that the ruling families condoned inter-marriage and incestuous marriages. Again, it was a practical matter, a means to keep power within the family. That raises the question: Did the pharaohs do it because the gods did? Or was it the other way around? That is, were myths of incestuous gods devised to justify incest? There is considerable scholarly disagreement over whether incest was widespread among average Egyptians. While other myths, including those of the Greeks, commonly feature incestuous doings, taboos against incestuous marriages developed in most societies. Under biblical law, most forms of incest were forbidden and were capital offenses, and by 295 CE they were forbidden in Rome as well—which is intriguing, since some of Rome’s emperors were notorious for their incestuous couplings.