Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/125

 Osiris and his Family.

The myth of Osiris, though much more elaborate, has the same meaning. Osiris is the eldest of the five children of Seb and Nut. "He is greater than his father, and more powerful than his mother." He wedded his sister Isis whilst they were yet in their mother's womb, and their offspring was the elder Horus. Set and Nephthys, another wedded pair, are their brother and sister. In this myth the antagonist of Osiris is Set, by whom he is slain, but he is avenged by his son Horus, and he reigns in the nether world, like the Indian Yama, and judges the dead from his throne in the hall of the Two-fold Eight. And this he does daily.

The explanation of this myth exercised the imaginations of the ancients. The priests and poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties already identified Osiris with the highest of all Powers. In later times, as we see from the treatise ascribed to Plutarch, he was identified with various abstract "principles." By the help of the light which comparative mythology supplies, we are enabled to arrive at a truer sense of the myth.

The parents of Osiris are Seb and Nut, and about these there can be no mistake. Seb is the Earth, and Nut is Heaven. Seb is identified with the earth in the older texts, and in the later ones "the back of