Egypt: Gods - Worship of Osiris

Worship of Osiris

Up to the present no evidence has been deduced from the hierglyphic texts which enables us to say specfically when Osiris began to be worshipped, or in what town or city his cult was first established, but the general information which we possess on this subject indicates that this god was adored as the great god of the dead by the dynastic Egyptians from first to last, and that the earliest dynastic centers of his worship were situated at Abydos in the South at Tettu {Mendes in the North ; in proof of these statements the following considerations are submitted. In a Rubric to one of the versions of the lxivth Chapter of the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead it is said that the Chapter was "found" during the reign of Semti, that is to say, the Chapter was revised, or edited. or rewritten, or received some kind of literary treatment, during the reign of the fifth king of the 1st Dynasty. If we look at the version of the Chapter to which this Rubric is appended we find this sentence :----"I am Yesterday, "and I am Today ; and I have the power to be born a second time. I the hidden Soul create the gods, and I give sepulchral meals to "the divine beings in Amenti and in heaven." Osiris is mentioned by name in connection with "his city,' and Tem, Kheppera, Shu, the Urti goddess, i.e., Isis and Nephthys, the goddess Aukert, the Chief of Re-stau, Hehi, the Bennu, and the 4,601,200 spirits, who are twelve cubits high, are refered to, and we see that the whole of the religious and mythological systems of the Egyptians as made known to us by texts of later periods were in the Ist Dynasty.