Isis, Osiris, and Horus

To cite this source in a sentence, which comes from a book by Plutarch called Moralia, please follow the example in parentheses here (Plutarch Moralia 12), where the number refers to the chapter in the text. The Egyptians rarely wrote their own myths in surviving documents, so this account is recorded by a Greek, which shows in the text as he refers to “the Egyptians,” as if he is studying them.

Our story begins with the sun god Re learning that his wife, the sky goddess Nut, has slept with both Geb and Thoth and is pregnant with quintuplets.

12. They say that Re, when he became aware of Nut’s intercourse with Geb the earth god, invoked a curse upon her that she should not give birth to a child in any month or year; but Thoth god of divine words and magic, being enamored of the goddess, slept with her. Later, playing at a betting game with the moon, he won from her the seventieth part of each of her periods of illumination with each win, and from all the winnings he created five days, and added them as an addition to the three hundred and sixty days. This is why the calendar has three hundred and sixty-five days. The Egyptians even now call these five days intercalated and celebrate them as the birthdays of the gods. They relate that on the first of these days Osiris was born, and at the hour of his birth a voice issued forth saying, “The Lord of All advances to the light.” On the second of these days Horus the elder was born. On the third day Seth was born, but not in due season or manner. With a blow he broke through his mother’s side and leapt forth. On the fourth day Isis was born in the coastal regions of Egypt that are ever moist; and on the fifth day Nephthys was born, to whom they give the name of Finality, and some also the name of Victory. The Egyptians relate, moreover, that Nephthys became the wife of Seth; but Isis and Osiris were enamored of each other and slept together in the darkness of the womb before their birth. Some say that the elder Horus came from this union.

One he had grown up, Osiris became pharaoh, the king of Egypt.

13. One of the first acts related of Osiris in his reign was to deliver the Egyptians from their destitute and brutish manner of living. This he did by showing them how to grow crops, by giving them laws, and by teaching them to honor the gods. Later he travelled over the whole earth civilizing it without the slightest need of military might, but most of the peoples he won over to his way by the charm of his persuasive discourse combined with song and all manner of music.

During his absence the tradition is that Seth attempted nothing revolutionary because Isis, who was in control, was vigilant and alert; but when Osiris returned home Seth contrived a treacherous plot against him and formed a group of seventy-two conspirators. He had also the cooperation of a queen from Ethiopia who was there at the time and whose name was Aso. Seth, having secretly measured Osiris’s body and having made ready a beautiful ornamented chest of corresponding size, the first sarcophagus, caused it to be brought into the room where the festivity was in progress. The company was much pleased at the sight of it and admired it greatly, whereupon Seth jokingly promised to present it to the man who should find the chest to be exactly his length when he lay down in it. They all tried it in turn, but no one fitted it; then Osiris got into it and lay down, and those who were in the plot ran to it and slammed down the lid, which they fastened by nails from the outside and sealed shut with molten lead. Then they carried the chest to the river and sent it on its way to the sea through the Tanitic Mouth of the Nile River. Wherefore the Egyptians even to this day name this mouth of the river the hateful and execrable mouth. Such is the tradition. They say also that the date on which this deed was done was the seventeenth day of Athyr,  when the sun passes through the constellation Scorpion, and in the twenty-eighth year of the reign of Osiris; but some say that these are the years of his life and not of his reign.

14. The first to learn of the deed and to bring to men’s knowledge an account of what had been done were the Pans and Satyrs who lived in the region around Chemmis, and so, even to this day, the sudden confusion and consternation of a crowd is called a panic. Isis, when the tidings reached her, at once cut off one of her hair tresses and put on a garment of mourning in a place where the city still bears the name of Coptos (“Deprivation”). But Isis wandered everywhere at her wits’ end, seeking the coffin; no one whom she approached did she fail to address, and even when she met some little children she asked them about the location of the coffin. As it happened, the children had seen it, and they told her the coffin was launched by the mouth of the Nile River into the sea. Because of this the Egyptians think that little children possess the power of prophecy, and they try to divine the future from clues which they find in children’s words, especially when children are playing about in holy places and crying out whatever chances to come into their minds.

They relate also that Isis, learning that Osiris in his love for Isis had slept with her sister Nephthys mistaking her for his wife, and seeing the proof of this in the garland of sweet clover which Osiris had left with Nephthys who later gave birth to their offspring, sought to find the child; for Nephthys, immediately after its birth, had exposed it to die in the wild because of her fear of Seth. And when the child had been found, after great toil and trouble, with the help of dogs which led Isis to it, it was brought up and became her guardian and attendant, receiving the name of Anubis god of death, and it is said to protect the gods just as dogs protect men.

15. Thereafter Isis, as they relate, learned that the coffin had been cast up by the sea near the land of the city of Byblos in Syria, and that the waves had gently set it down in the center of a clump of heather. The heather in a short time ran up into a very beautiful and massive tree, which enfolded and embraced the sarcophagus with its growth and concealed it within its trunk. The king of the country admired the great size of the heather plant, cut off the portion that enfolded the coffin (which was now hidden from sight), and used it as a pillar to support the roof of his house. These facts, they say, Isis gathered from a divine rumor, and she came to the city of Byblos and sat down by a spring, all dejection and tears. She exchanged no word with anybody, save only that she welcomed the queen’s maidservants and treated them with great amiability, plaiting their hair for them and imparting to their persons a wondrous fragrance from her own body. But when the queen observed her maidservants, a longing came upon her for the unknown woman and for such hairdressing and for a body fragrant with ambrosia. So it happened that Isis was sent for and became so close with the queen that the queen made her the nurse of her baby. They say that the king’s name was Melqart, who became a god of Syria; the queen’s name some say was Astartê or Ashtoreth, who became a goddess of Syria.

16. They relate that Isis nursed the child by giving it her finger to suck instead of her breast, and in the night she would use fire to burn away the mortal portions of its body, to make the infant immortal. She herself would turn into a swallow and flit about the pillar which held her husband’s coffin with a wailing lament, until the queen who had been watching, when she saw her babe on fire, gave forth a loud cry and thus deprived it of immortality. Then the goddess disclosed herself and asked for the pillar which served to support the roof. She removed it with the greatest ease and cut away the wood of the heather which surrounded the chest; then, when she had wrapped up the heatherwood in a linen cloth and had poured perfume upon it, she entrusted it to the care of the kings; and even to this day the people of Byblos venerate this wood which is preserved in the shrine of Isis. Then the goddess threw herself down upon the coffin with such a dreadful wailing that the younger of the king’s sons died on the spot. The elder son she kept with her, and, having placed the coffin on board a boat, she put out from land. Since the Phaedrus River in early morning featured a rather boisterous wind, the goddess grew angry and dried up its stream.

17. In the first place where she found seclusion, when she was quite by herself, they relate that she opened the coffin and laid her face upon the face within and caressed it, making love to it and conceiving Horus the younger, and weeping. The elder son of Melqart came quietly up behind her and saw what was there, and when the goddess became aware of his presence, she turned about and gave him one awful look of anger. The child could not endure the fright, and died. Others will say differently, asserting that he fell overboard into the sea from the boat that was mentioned above. He also is the recipient of honors because of the goddess. Some say his name was Maneros or Pelusius, and that the city named Pelusium guarding the border of Egypt was founded by the goddess and named in his honor. They also recount that this Maneros who is the theme of their songs was the first to invent music. But some say that the word is not the name of any person, but an expression belonging to the vocabulary of drinking and feasting: “Good luck be ours in things like this!”, and that this is really the idea expressed by the exclamation “maneros” whenever the Egyptians use it. In the same way we may be sure that the likeness of a corpse which, as it is exhibited to them, is carried around in a sarcophagus, is not a reminder of what happened to Osiris, as some assume; but it is to urge them, as they contemplate it, to use and to enjoy the present, since all very soon must be what it is now and this is their purpose in introducing it into the midst of merry-making.

18. As they relate, Isis proceeded to her son Horus the younger, who was being reared in the city called Buto, and bestowed the coffin in a place well out of the way; but Seth, who was hunting by night in the light of the moon, happened upon it. Recognizing the body of Osiris he divided it into fourteen parts and scattered them, each in a different place. Isis learned of this and sought for them again, sailing through the swamps in a boat of papyrus. This is the reason why people sailing in such boats are not harmed by the crocodiles, since these creatures in their own way show either their fear or their reverence for the goddess.

The result of Osiris’s dismemberment is that there are many so‑called tombs of Osiris in Egypt; for Isis held a funeral for each part when she had found it. Others deny this and assert that she caused effigies of him to be made and these she distributed among the several cities, pretending that she was giving them his body, in order that he might receive divine honors in a greater number of cities, and also that, if Seth should succeed in overpowering Horus the younger, he might despair of ever finding the true tomb when so many were pointed out to him, all of them called the tomb of Osiris.

Of the parts of Osiris’s body the only one which Isis did not find was the male member, for the reason that this had been at once tossed into the river, and the lepidotus fish, the sea-bream fish, and the pike had fed upon it; and it is from these very fishes the Egyptians will not eat. But Isis made a replica of the member to take its place, and consecrated the phallus, in honor of which the Egyptians even at the present day celebrate a festival.

Gathering the remaining thirteen pieces, Isis put Osiris’s body back together, binding them with strips of cloth so that Osiris became the first mummy. He took on a greenish color, and retained this form and a sort of life in the underworld or “other world.”

While Isis was gone, searching for Osiris, Seth controlled Egypt.

19. Later, as they relate, Osiris came to Horus the younger from the other world and exercised and trained him for battle against Seth. After a time Osiris asked Horus the younger what he held to be the most noble of all things. When Horus his son replied, “To avenge one’s father and mother for evil done to them,” Osiris then asked him what animal he considered the most useful for them who go forth to battle; and when Horus said, “A horse,” Osiris was surprised and raised the question why it was that he had not rather said a lion than a horse. Horus the younger answered that a lion was a useful thing for a man in need of assistance, but that a horse served best for cutting off the flight of an enemy and annihilating him. When Osiris heard this he was much pleased, since he felt that Horus the younger had now an adequate preparation. As Horus matured, more and more Egyptians followed him as leader. It is said that, as many were continually transferring their allegiance to Horus, Seth’s concubine Thueris also came over to him; and a serpent which pursued her was cut to pieces by Horus the younger’s men, and now, in memory of this, the people throw down a rope in their midst and chop it up.

Now the battle between Horus the younger and Seth, as they relate, lasted many days and Horus prevailed against his father’s killer Seth. Horus then delivered Seth in chains to Isis to be punished. Isis, however, did not cause him to be put to death, but released him and let him go. Horus could not endure this, since it meant evil was being re-released to wander the world, and he laid hands upon his mother. Taking the royal diadem from her head, he severed her head from her neck; but Thoth saved her and put upon her the head and helmet of a cow.

Seth formally accused Horus the younger in court of being an illegitimate child and thus unfit to rule, but with the help of Thoth to plead his cause it was decided by the gods that he also was legitimate. Seth was then overcome in two other battles.

20. These are nearly all the important points of the legend…. The prosperous and influential men among the Egyptians are mostly buried in Abydos, since it is the object of their ambition to be buried in the same ground with the body of Osiris. In Memphis, however, they say, the Apis bull is kept, being the image of the soul of Osiris, whose body also lies there. The name of this city some interpret as “the haven of the good” and others as meaning properly the “tomb of Osiris.” They also say that the sacred island by Philae at all other times is untrodden by man and quite unapproachable, and even birds do not alight on it nor fishes approach it; yet, at one special time, the priests cross over to it, and perform the sacrificial rites for the dead, and lay wreaths upon the tomb, which lies in the encompassing shade of a persea-tree.

Later Isis Mythology: Worship Inscriptions to Isis

Isis worship in the late ancient world swept across the Mediterranean, with more temples to Isis in Rome in the first century AD than temples to Jupiter, the Roman king of the gods. Her legendary powers were continually added to, and inscriptions praising Isis have been discovered across the ancient Mediterranean, especially in the eastern, Greek-speaking half of the Roman Empire. The following inscription was an offering in return for what the author considered the goddess’s answer to a prayer.

Demetrius, the son of Artemidorus, who is also called Thraseas, a Magnesian from Magnesia on the Maeander, gave this as an offering in fulfilment of a vow to Isis. He transcribed what follows from the stele in Memphis which stands by the temple of Hephaestus:

I am Isis, the mistress of every land, and I was taught by Thoth and with Thoth I devised letters, both the sacred hieroglyphs and the common demotic script, that all things might not be written with the same letters.
I gave and ordained laws for men, which no one is able to change.

I am eldest daughter of Re.

I am wife and sister of King Osiris.
I am she who finds fruit for men.
I am mother of King Horus.
I am she that rises in the Dog Star.

I am she that is called goddess by women.

For me was the city of Bubastis built.
I divided the earth from the heaven.
I showed the paths of the stars.
I ordered the course of the sun and the moon.

I devised business in the sea.

I made strong what is right.
I brought together woman and man.
I appointed to women to bring their infants to birth in the tenth month.
I ordained that parents should be loved by children.

I laid punishment on those disposed without natural affection toward their parents.

I made with my brother Osiris an end to the eating of men.
I revealed mysteries unto men.
I taught men to honor images of the gods.
I consecrated the precincts of the gods.

I broke down the governments of tyrants.

I made an end to murders.
I compelled women to be loved by men.
I made what is right to be stronger than gold and silver.
I ordained that the true should be thought good.

I devised marriage contracts.

I assigned to Greeks and barbarians their languages.
I made the beautiful and the shameful to be distinguished by nature.
I ordained that nothing should be more feared than an oath.
I have delivered the plotter of evil against other men into the hands of the one he plotted against.

I established penalties for those who practice injustice.

I decreed mercy to suppliants.
I protect righteous guards.
With me what is right prevails.
I am the Queen of rivers and winds and sea.

No one is held in honor without my knowing it.

I am the Queen of war.
I am the Queen of the thunderbolt.
I stir up the sea and I calm it.
I am in the rays of the sun.

I inspect the courses of the sun.

Whatever I please, this too shall come to an end.
With me everything is reasonable.
I set free those in bonds.
I am the Queen of seamanship.

I make the navigable unnavigable when it pleases me.

I created walls of cities.
I am called the Lawgiver.
I brought up islands out of the depths into the light.
I am the Queen of rainstorms.

I overcome Fate.

Fate hearkens to me.
Hail, O Egypt, that nourished me!

To cite this reading, use the following format:

Greek and Egyptian Hymns to Isis. Attalus. http://www.attalus.org/poetry/isis_hymns.html