What was osiris the god of

Osiris, god of the deceased, was the son and oldest child of Geb, the Earth deity and Nut, the sky goddess. His wife and sister was Isis, goddess of motherhood, magic, fertility, death, healing, and rebirth. It was said that Osiris and Isis were deeply in love with each other, even in the womb. In the New Kingdom, Osiris was considered the master of the underground world, the next world — the Afterlife.

A ccording to Egyptian mythology, Osiris was murdered by his brother Seth then brought back to life by the love of his sister and wife, Isis. This myth describes the forces of destruction that initiated the process of mummification.

The love of Isis is symbolic of regeneration and the promise of eternal life. The cycle of destruction, death and rebirth was repeated each year in the annual flood of the Nile , the river that provided the essential ingredients needed to sustain life, giving birth to one of the first civilizations. The djed, a type of pillar, was usually understood as the backbone of Osiris, since the Egyptians had associated death, and the dead, as symbolic of stability. As Banebdjed, Osiris was given epithets such as Lord of the Sky and Life of the sun god Ra , since Ra, when he had become identified with Atum, was considered Osiris' ancestor, from whom his regal authority was inherited.

Ba does not, however, quite mean soul in the western sense, and also has a lot to do with power, reputation, force of character, especially in the case of a god. Since the ba was associated with power, and also happened to be a word for ram in Egyptian, Banebdjed was depicted as a ram, or as Ram-headed.

A living, sacred ram, was even kept at Mendes and worshipped as the incarnation of the god, and upon death, the rams were mummified and buried in a ram-specific necropolis. Later, when Horus became identified as the child of Osiris in this form Horus is known as Harpocrates in greek and Har-pa-khered in Egyptian , Banebdjed was consequently said to be Horus' father, as Banebdjed is an aspect of Osiris.

In occult writings , Banebdjed is often called the goat of Mendes , and identified with Baphomet; the fact that Banebdjed was a ram sheep , not a goat, is apparently overlooked.

Mystery religion The Cult of Osiris The cult of Osiris had a particularly strong interest towards the concept of immortality. According to the myth surrounding the cult, Set Osiris's evil brother fooled Osiris into getting into a coffin, which he then shut, had sealed with lead and threw into the Nile. Osiris's wife, Isis, searched for his remains until she finally found him embedded in a tree trunk, which was holding up the roof of a palace.

She managed to remove the coffin and open it, but Osiris was already dead. She used a spell she had learned from her father and brought him back to life so he could impregnate her.

After they finished, he died again, so she hid his body in the desert. Months later, she gave birth to Horus. While she was off raising him, Set had been out hunting one night and he came across the body of Osiris. Enraged, he tore the body into 14 pieces and again threw them into the Nile. Isis gathered up all the parts of the body and bandaged them together for a proper burial. The Gods were impressed by the devotion of Isis and thus restored Osiris to life in the form of a different kind of existence as the god of the underworld.

Because of his death and resurrection, Osiris is associated with the flooding and retreating of the Nile and thus with the crops along the Nile valley. The resurrection of the god symbolized the rebirth of the grain. This was all presented by skilled actors as a literary history, and was the main method of recruiting cult membership. When they pretend that the mutilated remains of the god have been found and rejoined…they turn from mourning to rejoicing.

The Passion of Osiris was re-enacted at all of his temples during his annual festivals. In the first scene, Osiris is slain, no one knowing what happened to his body, and the onlookers weep and mourn, rend their hair and beat their breasts. Isis and Nepthys then recover the remnants and return to the temple.

In the second scene, Thoth, Horus and Isis revive Osiris in the sanctuary, not witnessed by the populace. Then Osiris emerges, to much rejoicing. Wheat and clay rituals Differing from the public portion above, an esoteric phase consisted of ceremonials performed inside the temples by priests witnessed only by initiates. Then they knead some fertile soil with the water…and fashion therefrom a crescent-shaped figure, which they cloth and adorn, this indicating that they regard these gods as the substance of Earth and Water.

In the Osirian temple at Denderah, an inscription translated by Budge, Chapter XV, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection describes in detail the making of wheat paste models of each dismembered piece of Osiris to be sent out to the town where each piece was discovered by Isis. At the temple of Mendes, figures of Osiris are made from wheat and paste placed in a trough on the day of the murder, then water added for several days, when finally the mixture was kneaded into a mold of Osiris and taken to the temple and buried the sacred grain for these cakes only grown in the temple fields.

Molds are made from wood of a red tree in the forms of the sixteen dismembered parts of Osiris, cakes of divine bread made from each mold, placed in a silver chest and set near the head of the god, the inward parts of Osiris as described in the Book of the Dead XVII. On the first day of the Festival of Ploughing, where the goddess Isis appears in her shrine where she is stripped naked, Paste made from the grain is placed in her bed and moistened with water, representing the fecund earth.

All of these sacred rituals were climaxed by the eating of sacramental god, the eucharist by which the celebrants were transformed, in their persuasion, into replicas of their god-man Larson The Osirian Sacrament Although there were ethical and ceremonial considerations none of these could compare to the power of the divine eucharist, since it was literally believed to be the body bread and blood ale of the god. Since the ancient Nilotics believed that humans were whatever they eat, this sacrament was, by extension, able to make them celestial and immortal.