Why is osiris connected to the land of the dead

He was also god of vegetation and the annual Nile flood and was closely associated with death, resurrection and fertility. The ancient Egyptians believed him to be a dead king, a former ruler who had been miraculously restored to life after being murdered by his brother Seth.

For this reason he came to symbolise the hope for eternal life that every Egyptian held. Once the journey through the underworld is complete, the deceased reach the Hall of Final Judgment. Judgment involved a two-part process:. Here they stood before 42 divine judges and pleaded their innocence of any wrongdoing during their lifetime.

The Book of the Dead provided them with the correct words to use for each of the judges, ensuring that they would pass this part of the judgement process even if they had not been completely innocent. This feather was the symbol for truth and justice and helped determine whether the deceased person had indeed been virtuous. Then, in the name of the sun, he exorcised the poison from Horus's body and cured the child. The sun god travels through the darkness of night in his solar bark.

Drawing: Nancy Ruddell. The people of the marshland rejoiced with Isis at the recovery of her son. Horus became the archetype of the pharaohs, the sun god's representative on earth. It was now the duty of the people to protect the pharaohs from harm, to love and respect them. If they did not, world order would collapse and the people would perish. Isis kept her young son hidden until he became an adolescent and could face Seth to claim his rightful inheritance, the throne of Egypt.

While Horus was growing up, the sun god, Re, grew old and started drooling. Isis took the saliva that fell to the ground and modelled it into a serpent. She placed the serpent across Re's daily path in the sky, and it bit the sun.

Since the sun had not made the serpent, he could not cure himself. He turned to Isis for help. She said she could do nothing unless he revealed his secret name to her. By learning his name, she would gain knowledge of his power. Re realized this was the only way he could be cured. He hid from the other gods and allowed his secret name to be passed from his bosom directly to hers. Isis was forbidden from revealing it to anyone except her son Horus. It then became known as the Eye of Horus.

When Horus was a young man, he and his uncle Seth quarrelled over who was the legitimate divinely appointed ruler of Egypt. During the fierce battle that ensued, Horus castrated Seth, and Seth tore out Horus's weak eye, the moon. A tribunal of the gods was held to settle the dispute.

This was later considered unworkable, so Horus was made king of the Two Lands of Egypt, and Seth took on the role of defender of Re by standing at the prow of the solar bark. In particular, those spells that both distinguish the deceased from Osiris and identify them with the god become more comprehensible.

If what a spell says is not always a reliable guide to what it is supposed to do, then how can we determine its function?

If spells that identify the deceased with Osiris or say that they will become Osiris were not intended to transform them into that deity, what were they supposed to do? What were the expectations of those who used them or those for whose benefit they were recited? What did they hope would happen to them as a result?

Beyond the words of the spell and the ritual context in which they were recited, the Egyptians believed there was a wider reality, a world beyond the spell. How can we determine what impact the recitation of the spell was supposed to have in this world? Although relatively rare in the Pyramid Texts, such notices are valuable since they are less ambiguous than the spells themselves.

They comment upon the function of these without being embedded in their ritual context. Of particular interest are the colophons of Pyramid Text Spells and B. According to the first, whoever knows and recites that spell will be an intimate of the sun god and join his following. According to the second, whoever worships Osiris and recites the spell for him will live for ever. Thus the colophons state explicitly what the spells to which they are attached are supposed to achieve.

The desired result in both cases is that the deceased be subordinate to a deity, a member of his following or a worshipper, not identified with or transformed into him.

Thus those spells can provide us with reliable information about Egyptian aspirations for the afterlife, provided that they are used judiciously. In the lecture, the following approach to analysing them was advocated. If a specific statement about the fate of the deceased in a Pyramid Text spell is paralleled either in a remark like those in the colophons of Spells and B, or in another less ambiguous Old Kingdom source or sources outside the corpus of the Pyramid Texts, then we are justified in accepting this statement as evidence of something that the Egyptians of that time actually hoped or expected would happen to them after they died.

But if that statement is contradicted by such paratextual evidence, then it was probably valid within the context of the ritual, but had no reality beyond the world of the spell. In other words, paratextual evidence is a more reliable guide to Egyptian aspirations for the afterlife than the Pyramid Text spells themselves are and should be given more weight accordingly.

The most important are the wishes in offering formulas in private tombs, since they give us a good idea of the sort of things to which the deceased aspired during that period. We can find direct parallels for all of these in both the paratextual evidence we have identified within the Pyramid Text corpus and in actual Pyramid Text spells.

Not only are the same hopes and aspirations found in private offering formulas reflected in those spells as well, they cluster together in the same groups in the Pyramid Texts as they do in the private offering formulas, indicating that both drew upon a common source. This suggests that the aspirations of kings for the afterlife were fundamentally the same as those of their subjects.

Moreover, the evidence of contemporary private tomb inscriptions shows that the latter sought to fulfil these aspirations in the same way as their rulers, by means of spells and ritual utterances. The spells in question were called sakhu or glorifications, and in fact these are attested for non-royal individuals well before they are known to have been used by kings. The deceased, whether royal or non-royal, are distinct from the god and subordinate to him.

Statements in some Pyramid Text spells that the deceased is Osiris or will become Osiris, like those identifying them with other deities, are valid in the specific context of the ritual during which they are uttered, but not beyond this.

At its most basic, a reading is simply a translation, in other words, it is concerned with what a text says. On another level, it involves interpretation, what a text is about.

Finally, a reading can be concerned with purpose or function : what a text is for and what it is supposed to do.

The unreading of the Pyramid Texts offered in this lecture identified certain problems with previous readings of that corpus. In particular, it focused upon the type of reading that assumes Pyramid Text spells are a sort of menu or blueprint setting out what the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom wanted to happen to them after they died, where every statement can be taken at face value.

But in fact, the Pyramid Texts are composed of ritual utterances and should be read and interpreted as such. So who is Osiris? We cannot say much about his origins, but from his earliest appearance in the historical record he is already a deity closely associated with the dead.

Who can be Osiris? In the ritual moment, everyone can be Osiris, but in the world beyond the ritual there is only one god, with whom every deceased person hoped to enjoy the same relationship.

This examined whether the relationship between the deceased and Osiris was influenced by developments in solar religion during the New Kingdom and, if so, how. The lecture was divided into two parts.

In the first part the status of Osiris as god of the dead during the Amarna Period was investigated. According to one widely held view, there was no place for Osiris or the Osirian afterlife in the religion of Akhenaten. As a result, the elaborate belief system that had grown up around the deity was replaced by a much simpler one.

The deceased were buried in their tombs, they slept in them at night, and awakened at dawn. Each day their bas would leave these resting places in order to participate in the cult performed in the temples in Akhetaten. The one who provided the deceased with the means to do this was Akhenaten himself, who was the only guarantor of the afterlife.

We even know of cases where his name and image were left intact but those of Amun erased. The lecture surveyed a number of examples. So evidently belief in the god and his relationship with the dead was preserved.

Some think that this was only a marginal phenomenon surviving alongside the dominant official cult of the Aten or solar disk. Specifically, Akhenaten identified himself with Osiris as the son of the Aten. Several of these were presented and analysed in the lecture.

It was argued that in cases where an unambiguous representation of Akhenaten is involved, it is not actually in the form of Osiris, while in cases where we have an unambiguous representation of Osiris, there is no obvious connection with Akhenaten. Other problems with their theory were identified as well, not least the fact that the dating of many of the objects that they cite in support of it to the Amarna Period is questionable, and it was concluded that there is no basis for thinking Akhenaten ever identified himself with Osiris.

References in contemporary texts, some in inscriptions from tombs of high-ranking officials at Amarna itself, show that the underworld as a distinct realm of the dead remained an important concept.

The evidence for continued belief in Osiris as a god of the dead during this time is more abundant than one might have expected. Was he aware of this survival and, if so, was it a matter of concern to him? The Egyptians imagined that the sun god Re entered the western horizon and passed through the underworld each night. This union had a positive effect on both participants.

As a result, Re emerged newly born from the eastern horizon while Osiris, who remained behind in the underworld, was revivified. The conception of this nightly union becomes especially prominent in the New Kingdom, when it figures in both guides to the underworld and the Book of the Dead, although some would trace its existence as far back as the Old Kingdom.

According to this view, the nocturnal union of Re and Osiris ceased to be regarded as a temporary merger of the two gods, and was seen instead as something more substantial and permanent, resulting in a completely new type of composite deity, the giant, cosmos-spanning figure of Re-Osiris, described in texts as the great god. It was this new divinity who emerged from the eastern horizon at dawn, and it was with this figure that the dead were now associated.

Thus the traditional relationship between Osiris and the deceased changed dramatically as a result of this new conception. In particular, the idea that a group of compositions preserved in the tombs of Tutankhamun, Ramesses VI, and Ramesses IX illustrates the new doctrine of the solar-Osirian unity did not stand up to close scrutiny. Joachim Quack has demonstrated convincingly that the main theme of these compositions is not the union of Re and Osiris.

Rather, they are concerned with the beings the solar deity encounters in the underworld and how he interacts with them. The sun god is all-important, and Osiris much less so. The texts never speak of the union of the two divinities. A number of passages that have been interpreted as references to this union are simply references to the sun god.

It has been claimed that the end of this text describes how Osiris leaves the underworld merged with Re in the form of the great god. In fact, this does not happen. Re and Osiris are clearly distinguished throughout the Book of Caverns.

The former is said to perform various services for the latter. Osiris is in the following of Re and adores him. At the conclusion of the text, Osiris requests and is given a place in the bark of the sun god, just as the deceased hoped they would be given one. But his position is clearly that of a dependent. Those who tow the bark acknowledge only Re as their passenger. They make no reference to Osiris or to any composite form involving him and the solar deity.

He is very much the dominant figure, the main actor, and features in every scene. Osiris is important but he is only one of a number of beings that the sun god encounters in the underworld. Osiris continues to exercise his traditional functions in relation to the dead in these texts, but the solar deity seems to act in a supervisory capacity, with Osiris subordinate to him.

It is this emphasis upon the primacy of Re, rather than any new conception of the nightly union between him and Osiris, that characterises the underworld guides and other sources of the New Kingdom.

As a result, he is not just the ruler of the underworld and judge of the dead, but a deity on whose continued well-being and daily rejuvenation the entire cosmos is dependent. Is this concept an innovation of the New Kingdom? We are unable to say, mainly owing to uncertainty over the original date of composition of the underworld guides. What does seem innovatory is the fact that they begin to be inscribed in tombs at this time, and references to the concept start to appear in other sources like the Book of the Dead.

So perhaps what is new is that these texts begin to be linked with the deceased more regularly. How do they benefit from the link between Osiris and the sun god? In the lecture, four benefits were identified. First, the fact that the cosmos continues to function is obviously a precondition for the continuity of the afterlife. Second, the relationship between Re and Osiris provides a model for that between the ba and the body of the deceased.

The ba alights upon the body and regenerates it each night just as Re meets with Osiris. Fourth and finally, knowledge of what happens in the underworld is important.

What is beneficial for the deceased is not just that this cycle takes place, but that they know about it as well, since such knowledge is a means of gaining admittance to the entourage of Osiris. But the connection between Osiris and the sun god does not affect the basic relationship between Osiris and the deceased. What happens instead is that this relationship, like every other aspect of life in the underworld, is placed under the supervision of the sun god. This focused upon the consequences of the establishment of the Ptolemaic dynasty at the end of the fourth century BC.

Two questions were investigated : did the change from native Egyptian rule to Greek rule have an impact on Egyptian ideas about the afterlife, and did it have an impact on the way in which the Egyptians conceived of Osiris and his relationship with the deceased? In connection with the second question, particular attention was devoted to the introduction of a new god, Sarapis, who was sometimes identified with Osiris.

Did this influence ideas about Osiris and the dead and, if so, how?