Of Isis and Osiris, or of the Ancient Religion and Philosophy of Egypt. (21-25)

But Eudoxus saith that, though there be in Egypt many tombs reported to be his, yet his true body lies at Busiris, for that was the place of his birth; neither can there be any room for dispute about Taphosiris, for that its very name bespeaks it, Osiris’s tomb. I pass by their cleaving of wood, their peeling of flax, and the wine libations then made by them, because many of their secret mysteries are therein contained. And it is not of this God only, but of all others also that are not ungotten and incorruptible, that the priests pretend that their bodies lie buried with them and are by them served, but their souls are stars shining in heaven; and they say that the soul of Isis is by the Greeks called the Dog, but by the Egyptians, Sothis; and that of Horus, Orion; and that of Typhon, the Bear. They also tell us, that towards the support of the animals honored by them all others pay the proportion assigned them by the laws, but that those that inhabit the country of Thebais are the only men that refuse to contribute any thing, because they believe in no mortal God, but in him only whom they call Cneph, who is ungotten and immortal.

They therefore who suppose that, because many things of this sort are both related and shown unto travellers, they are but so many commemorations of the actions and disasters of mighty kings and tyrants who, by reason of their eminent valor or puissance, wrote the title of divinity upon their fame, and afterwards fell into great

But I fear this would be to stir things that are not to be stirred, and to declare war not only (as Simonides speaks) against length of time, but also against many nations and families of mankind, whom a religious reverence towards these Gods holds fast bound like men astonished and amazed. And this would be no other than going about to remove so great and venerable names from heaven to earth, thereby shaking and dissolving that worship and persuasion that hath entered into almost all men’s constitutions from their very birth, and opening vast doors to the Atheists’ faction, who convert all divine matters into human, giving also a large license to the impostures of Euhemerus the Messenian, who out of his own brain contrived certain memoirs of a most incredible and imaginary mythology, and thereby spread all manner of Atheism throughout the world. This he did by describing all the received Gods under the style of generals, sea-captains, and kings, whom he makes to have lived in the more remote and ancient times, and to be recorded in golden characters in a certain

And although the actions of Semiramis are sung among the Assyrians as very great, and likewise those of Sesostris in Egypt, and the Phrygians to this very day style all illustrious and strange actions manic, because Manis, one of their ancient kings (whom some call Masdes) was a brave and mighty person; and although Cyrus enlarged the empire of the Persians, and Alexander that of the Macedonians, within a little matter of the world’s end; yet have they still retained the names and memorials of gallant princes. And if some, puffed up with excessive vain-glory (as Plato speaks), having their minds enflamed at once with both youthful blood and folly, have with an unruly extravagancy taken upon them the style of Gods and had temples erected in their honor, yet this opinion of them flourished but for a short season, and they afterwards underwent the blame of great vanity and arrogancy, conjoined with the highest impiety and wickedness; and so,

Like smoke they flew away with swift-paced Fate;[*]

Therefore they maintain the wiser opinion, who hold that the things here storied of Typhon, Osiris, and Isis were not the events of Gods, nor yet of men, but of certain grand Daemons, whom Plato, Pythagoras, Xenocrates, and Chrysippus (following herein the opinion of the most ancient theologists) affirm to be of greater strength than men, and to transcend our nature by much in power, but not to have a divine part pure and unmixed, but such as participates of both the soul’s nature and the body’s sensation, capable of receiving both pleasure and pain, and all the passions that attend these mutations, which disorder some of them more and others of them less. For there are divers degrees both of virtue and vice, as among men, so also among Daemons. For what they sing about among the Greeks, concerning the Giants and the Titans, and of certain horrible actions of Saturn, as also of Python’s combats with Apollo, of the flights of Bacchus, and the ramblings of Ceres, come nothing short of the relations about Osiris and Typhon and others such, which everybody may lawfully and freely hear as they are told in the mythology. The like may be also said of those things that, being veiled over in the mystic rites and sacred ceremonies of initiation, are therefore kept private from the sight and hearing of the common sort.