The New Reign Born Of Osiris Zip
Stephanie Dejoode
The traditional image of Osiris sitting, wearing his Atef crown, with the crook (heqa) and the flail (nekhakha) crossed on his chest, often surrounded by his sisters Isis and Nephthys, as seen on the funeral papyrus vignettes, a reminder that before reigning over "the west", meaning in the beyond, the god indeed governed, according to the legend, the world of the living. However, on examination of the multiple sources - classic or Egyptian, religious, magical or literary - relative to this terrestrial existence, it turns out that numerous convergences allow a coherent reconstruction, and probably a close enough narrative plot to the official biography" which a cultured Egyptian had to know. We are also able to, beyond doubt, to search for the political circumstances which, in Pharaonic history, conditioned this "historical" progress of the Osirian figure.
Osiris, eldest son of Geb, the god of the earth, and of Nut, the goddess of the sky, was the first of the five children (Osiris, Horus the ancient, Seth, Isis and Nephthys) born successively on each of the five additional so-called "epagomenal" days, which finishes the solar year of 360 days. "The first (epagomenal) day was born Osiris. At he moment the delivery was completed, a voice announced: 'The master of all things comes today'. Some tell that in Thebes a certain Pamylès, who was in the process of drawing water, heard, coming from the temple of Zeus (Amon), an order proclaiming that the Great King, Benefactor, Osiris, was born " (Isis et Osiris, 12) [1] .
This public proclamation of the birth of the hereditary prince is probably inspired by an authentic institutional reality. In the tales of the Papyrus Westcar, written to the Middle Kingdom, the arrival in the world of each of the first three kings of the Vth Dynasty, Userkaf, Sahure and Neferirkare-Kakai, is systematically accompanied by an official declaration from the goddess Meskhenet: "A king who will exercise royalty in this entire land !" (P. Westcar 10,13-14,21 and 11,1). The choice of the city of Thebes is not fortuitous: it is a question of making it sacred, by attributing to it a privileged place, a city in which royal power is already prominent, to this stage of the development of the myth, to the rank of dynastic capital.
The question arises, from then on, as to the exact moment where one officially fixes this detail in the biography of Osiris. Several texts from the Ptolemaic temple at Dendara make allusion to this [2] . In Karnak, the temple of Opet, built on the supposed place of the birth of Osiris, does not fail to celebrate the event [3] . But the tradition is more ancient. Already by the time of Saite -XVIth Dynasty-, an inscription engraved on a statuette of the Osiris-king indicates that Thebes was the god's city (Cairo CG 38368).
In actual fact, one would be tempted to return to the great times of glory of Thebes back in this legendary period, that is to say in the beginning of the XVIIIth Dynasty, after the expulsion of the Hyksos by the brothers Kamosis and Ahmoses, or even to the beginning of the XIIth Dynasty, after the reunification of the Two-lands by Montuhotep II. Some arguments, as we will see, could support this last hypothesis.
According to the biographical note at Dendara, Osiris, crowned in Herakleopolis, chose the god Thoth as vizier and appointed two generals, Hu (language) for Upper Egypt, and Sia (intellect) for Lower Egypt (Dend. II, 101,6-7). Diodore echoes a similar tradition:Osiris chooses Hermes (Thoth) as counsellor, Heracles (Horus ?) as strategist of the whole country, Bousiris as governor of the Delta and the East, and Antee as governor of Upper Egypt and the West, but nothing is said of the enthronement place (I, 17,3). The nome of Upper Egypt, goes back to at least the Middle Kingdom. Thus, in formula 313 of the Coffin Texts, the deceased, assimilated in Osiris, declares: "I have been crowned sovereign of the sky and king of the land, and my adversaries fell from fear while seeing me exalted with my great atef crowns, coming from Heracleopolis " (CT IV, 87m-88a).
Perhaps it may be objected that a divergent and former tradition, makes of Heliopolis the city where Osiris received the the sekhem sceptre or the heqa (t) crook: "Execute the orders, you who hate sleep, weakened him (Osiris), arise, you who are in Nedit: prepare your perfect bread in Pe (Buto), take your sekhem sceptre to Heliopolis !". No contradiction yet, between these two traditions. Because, while mentioning Nedit, a neighbouring place of Abydos, where Seth perpetrated his attempt against Osiris, this passage of the Pyramid Texts (TP 247, 260a-c), resumed on stelae of the Middle Kingdom (Louvre C 30, l. 5-6) or, later again, in the Chapter 181 of the Book of the Dead, prove that what is question here is not of the first reign of Osiris, but that of the second enthronement of the god, the one which dedicates his sovereignty over the world of the dead. Promoted king of the living in Heracleopolis, Osiris was crowned lord of the beyond in Heliopolis.
Become king, Osiris had to establish the five constituent names of his official protocol: the Horus name, the Nebty name, the Gold Horus name, the name of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt (coronation name, or prenomen) and the name of the son of Re (birth name, or nomen).
Several versions of the Osirian titulature have been passed on to us, without these variants, besides, it doesn't really affect the fundamental will of the scribes - theologians to produce an effect of credibility: Egyptian history abounds with fluctuating titulature or those deliberately modified during the reign.
The same Tentyrite text which gives the size of Osiris presents a complete version of his titulature: "Horus, The one with the powerful strength, Nebty, The one with the powerful vigour, Gold Horus of Osiris, King of Upper and Lower Egypt Osiris, Son of Re triumphant Wennefer" (Dend. II, 100,13 - 101,2).
One notes that the birth name of the god is Wennefer, "The Perfect one", Osiris being only his coronation name, as stipulated already, which means the one surrounded by a cartouche, on a stela of the XIIIth Dynasty (British Museum 236 [1367]).
The temple at Dendara repeatedly gives, as a variant of the Horus name, "The one who stopped the massacre in the Two-lands". So, in a chapel on the roof of the temple, one invokes Osiris as the "Lord of Egypt, who governed the inhabitants of the desert, who governed the foreign regions as Horus, The one who stopped the massacre in the Two-lands" (Dend. X, 240,2-3) [10] .
Several centuries previously, the statuettes the Osiris-king from Ethiopian times or Saite (XXVth -XXVIth Dynasty) assign to the god this same Horus name [11] . But one can also go back in time, since this name is represented on at least two stelae of the Middle Kingdom, of which one is preserved to the Cairo museum (CG 20242), and the other, dated precisely from year 8 of Sesostris I, in the Louvre museum (C 2).
Formula 148 of the Coffin Texts, on the other hand, already reveals "Osiris who put an end to the massacre in the Two-lands" (CT II, 211c). The "massacre" in question would be the cannibalism to which Osiris would have put a end to, according to Diodore (I, 14) or, better still, the civil war which necessarily precedes all reunification ?
Be that as it may, the high dating of these documents, as will be seen, is of a great interest.
One will note, from the passage, that a similar historicisation process, by recourse to the creation of an embryo of protocol, also affects the god Geb, father of Osiris, on two sarcophaguses of the Middle Kingdom; formula 131, to which one wanted to give the outer form of a royal decree, starts with a serekh in which appears the Horus name of Geb: "The Great, the eldest, the Lord of the Field of Reeds" (CT II, 151b).
Our knowledge of the Osirian protocol admittedly does not stop there. Toward the end of the famous tale of Horus and Seth, composed maybe under Ramesses IV, the solar god of Heliopolis, Re-Horakhty, decides to send a message to Osiris, king of the beyond, to solicit his opinion on the litigation opposing the two rivals.
Diligently, Thoth, the scribe of the gods, starts his letter with the complete statement of the titulature of the sovereign of the dead: "The Bull Lion who hunts for himself, the Nebty The one who protected the gods and subjugated the Two-lands, the Gold Horus The one who invented men for the first time, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt the Bull who resides in Heliopolis, the Son of Ptah Beneficiant of the Two Banks, crowned father of his Ennead, feeding on gold and on any sacred earthenware" (P. Chester Beatty I, recto 14,7-9) [12] .
This sequence, as can be seen, is radically different from the previous. His chronological antecedence in relation to the titulature given at Dendara doesn't necessarily impose it as more authentic: the archive documents used by the Tentyrite scribes could have been inspired by more ancient sources. But nothing says, especially, that the protocol of the king of the dead must be identical to the one of the terrestrial reign. Just as the places of coronation are distinct, Heracleopolis for the terrestrial reign and Heliopolis for the reign in the underworld, it is perfectly logical that the titulature each correspond to a specific expertise, also differentiating themselves. Some suggest 433 years, but the Manethon sources, and their interpretations, don't agree.
The twenty-eight years mentioned by Plutarch (Isis and Osiris, 42), seem very modest for one divine reign, more derisory still if it concerns his time of life, but have nevertheless the merit to evoke a lunar cycle, perfectly suitable to the god's personality.
The nature of the reign of Osiris is more interesting. According to Diodore, "Osiris, who wanted to serve humanity and to acquire glory, gathered a great army and formed the project to traverse the whole inhabited land and to teach to human kind the art of planting the grapevine and sowing wheat and barley. Indeed, he thought that while removing men from the wild state, while making them adopt a regime of civilised life, he would be made, by the importance of these good deeds, worthy of immortal honours. And it is indeed what happened" (I, 17,1-2) [13] .
The text of Plutarch is similar: "During his reign, Osiris started by delivering the Egyptians from destitution and savagery, made them understand agriculture, gave them some laws and taught them to honour the gods, then he left by the whole world to bring civilisation, without having, only rarely, to resort to the weapons, almost always achieving the will of his intentions by the charm of his persuasive word and by the resources of song and music" (Isis and Osiris, 13).
These accounts, touching the invention of agriculture, are confirmed by a great number of Egyptian sources, to start with the personal declaration of Osiris in the Ramesside tale of Horus and Seth: "It is I who created the barley and wheat to make the gods live and, after the gods, the herd of man !" (P. Chester Beatty I, recto 14,12). in the same way, a stela of the XVIIIth Dynasty, previous to the time of Amarna, particularly instructive on Osirian theology, names the god: "The one who established ma'at on the Two Banks" (Louvre C 256, line 9) [14] .
We possess here, without doubt, the Egyptian counterpart of the Hellenic concept of civilisation. The secondary theme of the sovereign charming humanity with his melodious voice, a priori, is a surprise. The commentators saw in the work, justifiably, the interpretatio graeca which tempts to bring back a very exotic Osiris in the lap of the Dionysian tradition. But for the egyptologist, this music evokes the prosody of royal speeches and official eulogies much more than the one of drinking songs. Because, let's emphasise it, it is about persuasion, and, therefore, about political propaganda. However the motive of speech as a rhetoric weapon brings us back to the Middle Kingdom. To Sesostris I "possessor of charm, great gentleness, who conquered by love", as he is described in the tale of Sinuhe, or to Sesostris III whose "language embraced the Nubians, and whose speeches made the Asians flee" (P. Kahoun), or better yet to this instruction of the future king Merykare, in a fictitious Teaching assigned to his father Khety, Pharaoh of the Xth Dynasty, but whose writing is not prior to the Middle Kingdom: "Become a craftsman of language and you will triumphant, because his language is the king's sword! Words are worth more than all fighting".