Page:Frazer (1890) The Golden Bough (IA goldenboughstudy01fraz).djvu/334

312 little or no weight can be attached to it. For it is plainly a philosophical, and therefore a late, explanation of the first beginnings of Egyptian religion, reminding us of Kant’s familiar saying about the starry heavens and the moral law rather than of the rude traditions of a primitive people. Jablonski’s second authority, Macrobius, is no better but rather worse. For Macrobius was the father of that large family of mythologists who resolve all or most gods into the sun. According to him Mercury was the sun, Mars was the sun, Janus was the sun, Saturn was the sun, so was Jupiter, also Nemesis, likewise Pan, etc. It was, therefore, nearly a matter of course that he should identify Osiris with the sun. But apart from the general principle, so frankly enunciated by Professor Maspero, that all the gods are the sun (“Comme tous les dieux, Osiris est le solei”), Macrobius has not much cause to show for identifying Osiris in particular with the sun. He argues that Osiris must be the sun because an eye was one of his symbols. The premise is correct, but what exactly it has to do with the conclusion is not clear. The opinion that Osiris was the sun is also mentioned, but not accepted, by Plutarch, and it is referred to by Firmicus Maternus.

Amongst modern Egyptologists, Lepsius, in identifying Osiris with the sun, appears to rely mainly on the passage of Diodorus already quoted. But the monuments, he adds, also show “that down to a late time Osiris was sometimes conceived as Ra. In this quality he is named Osiris-Ra even in the ‘Book of the Dead,’