Composition on the theme of the Gods of Ancient Egypt
Osiris is the sun god, Isis is his sister and wife, and Horus is their son. About these gods, mythological legends, re-written to us by Greek writers, were formed, and these myths seem to be symbols of the struggle of the sun and darkness, light and darkness. The details of these legends, or, better to say, of Greek paraphrases, are already interesting in that they explain to us the many emblems and symbols commonly found on the monuments of Egyptian art.
Isis first gave people rye and barley, and Osiris, the inventor of agricultural tools, founded society and social life, giving people laws, he also taught them to harvest. Then, wishing to extend his benefits to all, he wanders around the world, subduing people not by brute force, but by the charms of music. In his absence, his brother, the cunning Typhon, or Seth, personifying the barrenness of the desert, wants to reign in his place, but all the plans of the villain are broken about Isida’s willpower and fortitude. Osiris
The Egyptians cared very much for their coffins and often even ordered luxurious coffins in their lifetime, which explains this legend about the cunning Typhon used. Typhon declares that he will give the coffin to one who is free to fit in it (the coffin was ordered by his brother’s measure). All present try to fit in it, but in vain. The turn of Osiris comes: he, without suspecting, lays down in him, and Typhon and his accomplices slam the lid, pour it with lead and throw the coffin to the Nile, from where it passes through one of the mouths of the river into the sea. Thus, Osiris died after the twenty-eight-year reign.
Only Osiris dies, the whole country is announced with mournful cries: before Isis comes the sad news about the death of her husband; she dresses in mourning clothes
The same legend had, and another religious, moral explanation: Osiris is the setting sun, killed or absorbed in darkness-darkness. Isis – The moon absorbs and stores as much as it can, the rays of the sun, and Horus – the rising sun – avenges his father, dispelling the darkness. But if the sun is the visible manifestation of Osiris, then good is his moral manifestation; When the setting sun dies, it reappears on the horizon in the image of Horus, the son and avenger of Osiris.
Likewise, good, dying under the blows of evil, appears again in the form of triumphant good, in the image of evil that overcomes evil. Osiris personifies the setting sun, the night sun, so he presides in the underground countries, judges the dead, and awards rewards to the righteous and punish sinful souls. On the ground, the Nile valley belonged to the good gods – Isis and Osiris, whereas the barren and burning desert, as well as the malicious swamps of Lower Egypt – the possession of the evil Typhon.
The agricultural tribes that inhabited the Nile Valley worshiped Apis, this embodiment of Osiris in the form of a bull – a symbol of agriculture, and the bull was dedicated to Osiris. And the nomadic tribes of the desert, always despised by sedentary townsmen, used the donkey for riding, and the donkey was an animal dedicated to Typhon. But since the destructive evaporation of the marshes is also the product of an evil spirit, they were embodied in a crocodile, an animal also dedicated to Typhon. Gore did not kill Typhon, therefore evil continues to exist on earth, but he weakened him, and thereby strengthened the victory of the divine law over the disorderly forces of nature. Osiris was often depicted as a mummy; its usual attributes are a hook or whip, a symbol of power, and the Nile emblem in the form of a cross with an eye at the top; this is however, a distinguishing feature of all Egyptian gods and is called by many scientists – researchers of mythology the key of the Nile. Sometimes Osiris is depicted with the head of a bull.
Isis was often confused in art with the more ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor, personifying the heavenly space along which the sun moves; the image of this goddess was preserved on the capitals of the temple in Dendera; It is a head with cow’s ears, on which a building rises – a symbol of the universe; it seems to be on a richly decorated bowl, a symbol of moisture, without which nothing could exist on earth.
The distinguishing features of Isis are a disk, a double crown, meaning dominion over the Upper and Lower Egypt, and horns on the head. When Horus, defeating Typhon, brought him to her in chains, Ishida for her kindness forgave him: then the angry Gore deprived her of the crown and replaced her with horns. The goddess was likewise portrayed very often with the head of a cow; which is why the Greeks identify it with the nymph Io, turned Hero into a crown. One of the oldest statues depicts Isis with the head of a cow, breast-feeding Horus. In honor of this goddess, festivals, known as the sacraments of Isis, were established, only priests and initiates took part in them. Since all the explanations of the Egyptian myths the Greeks base solely on the relationship with the Greek myths, it can be assumed that Typhon, temporarily defeating Osiris, is the same giant Typhon,
It was necessary to devise a myth explaining the origin and birth of the Egyptian gods; for the Greeks, rich in imagination, this was not an easy task. They came up with the following: Osiris and Isis are the children of the Sun God; This god, enraged at his wife for her betrayal, announced that she could not have children in any of the three hundred and sixty days of the year (then in the year was considered three hundred and sixty days). Hermes considered himself slightly guilty of betraying the goddess; he wanted to correct the evil that he had caused, but since no god can change what the other has decided, he, as usual, started on a trick: he offered Selene to play with him in dice, won her seventieth of her light and created from this part five additional days in a year. In these five additional days, five major Egyptian gods were born: Osiris, Isis, Typhon, Gore and Nephthys.
On the monuments of art, Osiris appears mainly in scenes depicting funeral ceremonies and trial of the dead. Isis and Gore feature mainly in all phenomena of everyday life and in all scenes that have anything to do with farming. On the day of the birth of Horus, coinciding with the shortest day of the year and with the flowering of the lotus, Horus is called Gore-paherd and then is portrayed as a weak child sitting on a lotus flower; he holds a finger at the mouth, and that’s why his statues have long been taken for the image of the god of silence.
One of the bas-reliefs of the temple in Hermopolis depicts Gore emerging from the lotus flower, the emblem of the Nile and eternal life; the hair of a young god is braided like a ram’s horns, in his hand he holds a whip – a symbol of power; Isis sitting stretches out his hand, as if helping him out of the flower; Behind the Mountain stands Nephthys, she touches his head with the key of the Nile. On many monuments of Isis, Hora, who has reached adolescence, is represented as a lactating breast. In the temple of the city of Phil was found a bas-relief, representing a priest who brings a sacrifice to Isis in the form of lotus flowers; the goddess is breastfeeding Horus, standing beside her; two goddesses sit behind Isis: one holds a serrated ruler – the emblem of the Nile flood (it seems to mark the rise of water), and the other holds a scepter ending in lotus and the key of the Nile. Another sculpture, found in the same temple, depicts a woman singing a sacred hymn before Isis and Horus; she accompanies herself on the harp, decorated with all the attributes of Isis; Gore holds Neal’s key in one hand, and brings the finger of the other hand to his mouth.
Osiris was the chief god of all of Egypt, and therefore almost all the myths and allegories of the Egyptian religion are grouped around his name. “All human life,” says Mariette, “was likened to the ancient Egyptians by the way the sun runs through the celestial vault, the setting sun disappearing beyond the horizon, it seemed to them the image of death.” Just before the solemn moment of death for some soul on earth, Osiris had to lead her to eternal life, he is identified with her, goes through with her together through all the trials assigned to this soul to purify her from sin, he softened the harsh gatekeepers of hell and fought against monsters, the usual companions of darkness and death.
Finally, he, having defeated the gloom with the help of the rising sun, Gore, sat in the terrible judgment seat of death and opened the gates of the eternal home to the purified soul, and the brilliant morning sun, appearing at dawn on the horizon, was the symbol of this second birth to eternal life, death. “Osiris, in the opinion of the Egyptians, wishing to give people a visible image of his presence among them, is incarnated in the bull of Apis.” When the calf with special sacred signs appeared in the holy barns of Memphis, the priests immediately announced When Apis died a natural death, he was buried with great splendor in the dungeons of the Temple of Serapeum, the ruins of which are now found, and if Apis reached the age of twenty-eight, the number of years of Osiris, he was killed. The head of Apis was supposed to be black with a white triangle on the forehead; The body is white, but with black spots of a certain shape.
The goddess Nephthyde, whom the Greeks identified with Aphrodite, was the wife and at the same time the sister of Typhon, but she preferred another brother, the soft and kind Osiris, and from the union with him at Nephthys the son Anubis, or Inpu, the god with the jackal head, the keeper of the mummies. When Osiris was killed by Typhon, Anubis embalmed him. On one of the Pharaoh’s tombs in Thebes is depicted Anubis, performing his sad duties. He stands beside the box on which lies the mummy. There are four vessels under the bed: the human head is replaced by the lid instead of the lid, the head of the monkey-baboon, the third with the jackal’s head and the fourth with the hawk’s head. These heads were the embodiment of secondary deities, on whose duties lay the preservation of the entrails of the dead placed in these vessels. This image is very often found on many tombstones. The Greeks had the duty to accompany the souls to the dwelling of death to the share of Hermes, and therefore the Greeks identified him with Anubis. That – the god with the head of the ibis, personifies the divine mind, which created the entire universe. He is primarily a god of letters, so he is also identified with Hermes. He is the organizer of the world, dispelling the primordial darkness, and he also dispels the darkness of the soul, that is, ignorance and bad thoughts – of these eternal enemies of mankind.
The ibis and the monkey – the cinephile, or the baboon – are dedicated to this god. The ibis is a bird that appears in Egypt before the flood of the Nile; consequently, she knows and foresees the future according to the Egyptian concepts. In addition, when this bird eats, its beak forms an equilateral triangle with its paws, therefore the ibis personifies geometry and all sciences based on it, and that’s why the ibis is dedicated to Thoth, the god of divine intelligence. It was the duty of this god to observe and determine the height to which the Nile was to rise in the name of spills, which affected fertility in Egypt and, at the same time, the existence of its inhabitants. On one of the bas-reliefs in the temple of the city of Phil is depicted a priest or an important person who asks the gods for the safe flood of the Nile. On this bas-relief, God Toth is depicted with the ibis head, he holds in one hand a serrated ruler – the symbol of the Nile flood, and in the other – a reed, which is going to note the rise of water. Sometimes He was portrayed in the image of a monkey Baboon, writing on the tablets.
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