Isis and Osiris (30-34)

Now Osiris and Isis changed from good minor deities into gods.[*] But the power of Typhon, weakened and crushed, but still fighting and strugglingagainst extinction, they try to console and mollify by certain sacrifices; but again there are times when, at certain festivals, they humiliate and insult him by assailing red-headed men with jeering, and by throwing an ass over the edge of a precipice, as the people of Kopto do, because Typhon had red hair and in colour resembled an ass.[*] The people of Busiris[*] and Lycopolis do not use trumpets at all, because these make a sound like an ass[*]; and altogether they

regard the ass as an unclean animal dominated by some higher power because of its resemblance to Typhon,[*] and when they make cakes at their sacrifices in the month of Paÿni and of Phaophi they imprint upon them the device of an ass tied by a rope.[*] Moreover, in the sacrifice to the Sun they enjoin upon the worshippers not to wear any golden ornaments nor to give fodder to an ass. It is plain that the adherents of Pythagoras hold Typhon to be a daemonic power; for they say that he was born in an even factor of fifty-six; and the dominion of the triangle belongs to Hades, Dionysus, and Ares, that of the quadrilateral to Rhea, Aphroditê, Demeter, Hestia, and Hera, that of the dodecagon to Zeus,[*] and that of a polygon of fifty-six sides to Typhon, as Eudoxus has recorded.

The Egyptians, because of their belief that Typhon was of a red complexion,[*] also dedicate to sacrifice such of their neat cattle as are of a red colour,[*] but they conduct the examination of these so scrupulously that, if an animal has but one hair black or white, they think it wrong to sacrifice it[*]; for they regard as suitable for sacrifice not what is dear to the gods but the reverse, namely, such animals as have incarnate in them souls of unholy and unrighteous men who have been transformed into other bodies. For this reason they invoke curses on the head of the victim and cut it off, and in earlier times they used to

throw it into the river, but now they sell it to aliens.[*] Upon the neat animal intended for sacrifice those of the priests who were called Sealers [*] used to put a mark; and their seal, as Castor records, bore an engraving of a man with his knee on the ground and his hands tied behind his back, and with a sword at his throat.[*] They think, as has been said,[*] that the ass reaps the consequences of his resemblance because of his stupidity and his lascivious behaviour no less than because of his colour. This is also the reason why, since they hated Ochus[*] most of all the Persian kings because he was a detested and abominable ruler, they nicknamed him the Ass; and he remarked, But this Ass will feast upon your Bull, and slaughtered Apis, as Deinon has recorded. But those who relate that Typhon’s flight from the battle was made on the back of an ass and lasted for seven days, and that after he had made his escape, he became the father of sons, Hierosolymus and Judaeus, are manifestly, as the very names show, attempting to drag Jewish traditions[*] into the legend.

Such, then, are the possible interpretations which these facts suggest. But now let us begin over again, and consider first the most perspicuous of those who have a reputation for expounding matters more philosophically. These men are like the Greeks who say that Cronus is but a figurative name for Chronus[*] (Time), Hera for Air, and that the birth of Hephaestus symbolizes the change of Air into Fire.[*] And thus among the Egyptians such men say that Osiris is the

Nile consorting with the Earth, which is Isis, and that the sea is Typhon into which the Nile discharges its waters and is lost to view and dissipated, save for that part which the earth takes up and absorbs and thereby becomes fertilized.[*]

There is also a religious lament sung over Cronus.[*] The lament is for him that is born in the regions on the left, and suffers dissolution in the regions on the right; for the Egyptians believe that the eastern regions are the face of the world, the northern the right, and the southern the left.[*] The Nile, therefore, which runs from the south and is swallowed up by the sea in the north, is naturally said to have its birth on the left and its dissolution on the right. For this reason the priests religiously keep themselves aloof from the sea, and call salt the spume of Typhon; and one of the things forbidden them is to set salt upon a table[*]; also they do not speak to pilots,[*] because these men make use of the sea, and gain their livelihood from the sea. This is also not the least of the reasons why they eschew fish,[*] and they portray hatred by drawing the picture of a fish. At Saïs in the vestibule of the temple of Athena was carved a babe and an aged man, and after this a hawk, and next a fish, and finally an hippopotamus. The symbolic meaning of this was[*]: O ye that are coming into the world

and departing from it, God hateth shamelessness. The babe is the symbol of coming into the world and the aged man the symbol of departing from it, and by a hawk they indicate God,[*] by the fish hatred, as has already been said,[*] because of the sea, and by the hippopotamus shamelessness; for it is said that he kills his sire[*] and forces his mother to mate with him. That saying of the adherents of Pythagoras, that the sea is a tear of Cronus,[*] may seem to hint at its impure and extraneous nature.

Let this, then, be stated incidentally, as a matter of record that is common knowledge.

But the wiser of the priests call not only the Nile Osiris and the sea Typhon, but they simply give the name of Osiris to the whole source and faculty creative of moisture,[*] believing this to be the cause of generation and the substance of life-producing seed; and the name of Typhon they give to all that is dry, fiery, and arid,[*] in general, and antagonistic to moisture. Therefore, because they believe that he was personally of a reddish sallow colour,[*] they are not eager to meet men of such complexion, nor do they like to associate with them.

Osiris, on the other hand, according to their legendary tradition, was dark,[*] because water darkens everything, earth and clothes and clouds, when it comes into contact with them.[*] In young people the presence of moisture renders their hair black, while greyness, like a paleness as it were, is induced by

dryness in those who are passing their prime.[*] Also the spring-time is vigorous, prolific, and agreeable; but the autumn, since it lacks moisture, is inimical to plants and unhealthful for living creatures.

The bull kept at Heliopolis which they call Mneuis,[*] and which is sacred to Osiris (some hold it to be the sire of Apis), is black and has honours second only to Apis. Egypt, moreover, which has the blackest of soils,[*] they call by the same name as the black portion of the eye, Chemia, and compare it to a heart[*]; for it is warm and moist and is enclosed by the southern portions of the inhabited world and adjoins them, like the heart in a man’s left side.

They say that the sun and moon do not use chariots, but boats[*] in which to sail round in their courses; and by this they intimate that the nourishment and origin of these heavenly bodies is from moisture. They think also that Homer,[*] like Thales, had gained his knowledge from the Egyptians, when he postulated water as the source and origin of all things; for, according to them, Oceanus is Osiris, and Tethys is Isis, since she is the kindly nurse and provider for all things. In fact, the Greeks call emission apousia [*] and coition synousia, and the son (hyios) from water (hydor) and rain (hysai); Dionysus also they call Hyes[*] since he is lord of the nature of moisture; and he is no other than Osiris.[*] In fact, Hellanicus seems

to have heard Osiris pronounced Hysiris by the priests, for he regularly spells the name in this way, deriving it, in all probability, from the nature of Osiris and the ceremony of finding him.[*]