April 2, 2024 • 39 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the Ancient Egyptian deity Osiris, an underworld fertility god and judge of the dead.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
And in this episode, we're going to be diving into
ancient Egyptian mythology once more to discuss an important deity
connected to the topic of resurrection, which I think was
probably on my mind over the weekend due to, first
of all, it was the Easter holiday. Also on Weird
House Cinema, which is of our Friday episode and the
(00:39):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed, we talked about
Doctor Five's Rises again. I did not think about this
in terms of the holiday at all. I didn't think, oh,
this is our Easter selection. But then I noticed our
social media posts about it on Easter Sunday and it's like,
you know, talking about the rise of Doctor Five's He's
Rising again, and I was like, oh, wow, we sort
(01:01):
of accidentally nailed it there.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
It's a movie that has so many resurrections. It has
Doctor Fibes himself coming out of a sort of a
chemically induced slumber where at the end of the first
movie he replaces his blood with embalming fluid and then
goes to sleep in a giant glass contraption under the floor.
At the beginning of this movie, he wakes up again,
So that's one sense of rising, though I guess it's
(01:25):
questionable whether he technically died or not there, so he
rises at the beginning of the movie. There the rest
of the movie is about him trying to literally resurrect
his wife Victoria played by Carolyn Monroe from the dead.
She sort of spins the whole movie in a glass
display case, and he is going to take her to
a temple in ancient Egypt under which lies the secret
(01:46):
to resurrection and eternal life. And he departs the end
of the movie on a barge singing somewhere over the
rainbow to take Carolyn Monroe down there and bring her
back to life. And I would mention a third resurrection
in the film, which is that the character Vulnavia, which
is melted like sort of a robot clockwork organism. We're
(02:06):
not exactly sure. From the first movie, it's doctor Phibes's
hinchwoman who helps him commit his quote amazing murders. She
is melted by acid at the end of the first
movie and then just inexplicably comes back in the second movie. Also,
they resurrect Terry Thomas. Remember, yeah, he bites it in
the first movie, and then he just comes back playing
a totally separate character in the second movie. And I
(02:29):
think that motif of coming back in bodily form but
playing a different character, maybe maybe it may have some
thematic resonance. That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
So what we're gonna We're gonna be talking about Osirius.
I don't think Osyrus came up in Doctor fivee rises again,
maybe they made passing reference to him. I think I
made passing reference to Osirius when we were talking about
the film. But this is a deity best known for
his connections to fertility, to the ancient Egyptian underworld, and
(03:04):
to rights of mummification.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
So, you know, I've seen lots of depictions of the
god o Cyrus before I was familiar with the imagery
associated with him. But something I had never noticed until
I was reading up in preparation for this episode is
that while on the top half of his body, he
is often depicted, you know, looking kind of like a
like a king or a pharaoh, you know, very stately,
with a beard, with his with his face exposed under
(03:29):
the crown and all that. If you look down at
the lower part of his body, apparently his legs are
depicted wrapped together in the in the wrappings of mummification,
so it's like the bottom half of his body is
already mummified.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
That's right. Yeah, And I invite listeners who are in
a position to do so safely, to go ahead and
look up some images of historical depictions of Osiris from
ancient Egypt. Yeah, he's generally depicted as a mummified king,
you know, bound as in is in the wrappings of mummification.
His skin, as is exposed, you know, in his face
(04:05):
and neck and hands, is apparently either black or green.
I tend to find more images of green color choices
though that may have at one point signified putrification and death,
but came to symbolize his connection to the cycle of
death and life, of resurrection and rebirth, particularly resurrection and
rebirth linked to that of plant life. On top of this,
(04:29):
he is generally depicted as wearing a crown, and he
brandishes a crook and a flail, so strong agricultural vibes already.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
But also with power and authority, you know, it's the
crook and the flail and the autaf crown, the crown
I think of Upper Egypt. This is the imagery of
a king.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, absolutely so he is. He is very much like
an embodimentum of a mummified king. So let's get a
little bit into the myth of Osiris. Now, standard caveat
with mythology. You know, as usually is the case, we're
not dealing with a singular idea from a singular time
and place, but rather a figure and associated narratives that
(05:07):
stirred in the minds of ancient peoples for thousands of years.
We have various accounts of Osiris to go off of,
but our understanding of Osiris is also incomplete, and indeed,
we don't know with one hundred percent certainty what his
name even means. It might well mean the Mighty One,
but I think there are some other ideas out there.
(05:27):
There's plenty that experts have had to piece together about
Osiris that is not explicitly obvious in the source material. Now,
one of the books that I turned to for this
episode is the two thousand and two book Egyptian Mythology
by Geraldine Pinch. Pinch also points out that we don't
(05:47):
know when, how, and where Osiris was first worshiped. He
might have kicked things off as kind of a deified
pre dynastic king. He might have been an old vegetation spirit,
a god, or even a mother goddess. And I'm also
assuming based on this that you know, there might have
been some interplay between these concepts, you know, various varied
(06:10):
possible origins, gods that are combined into new gods and
so forth. Now, Pinch summarizes the sort of the what
you might think of as the canonical rise and fall
and resurrection of Osiris, pointing out that first of all,
he's generally thought to have been born with a crown
(06:30):
on his head. So taking that concept of born a king,
that is theay referenced in Christian hymns, sometimes referring to Jesus,
but taking it to a literal degree.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Ah, So, whereas a lot of kings, say, might be
born with a right to the throne that has then
recognized in a coronation by placing the crown upon their head,
that this king is born with the crown already there, like,
it doesn't need to be recognized.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Exactly king at his birth literally because he's look, he's
wearing a little crown. I guess maybe the crown grows
with him. I mean, he's a god. He can do
these things. And fortunately his mother was also a god,
so he was the eldest son. It is that of
the earth god Geb and the sky god as Newt.
So in many respects, he is the place where earth
(07:16):
and sky converge. He's the very horizon. Now. Pinch shares
that some accounts allude to him overcoming his father in
a vicious dynastic struggle for rule, and one late text
claims that he died for the first time during this struggle. However,
she stresses that no accounts of Osiris's rule and his
(07:37):
death survive from before the Greco Roman period concerning this issue,
so but one way or another, he comes to reign
over Egypt with his sister consort Isis at his side.
But of course this rule does not last according to
the pyramid texts of the Late Old Kingdom, so these
are for more than four thousand years ago. Osiris was
(07:57):
murdered by his brother Seth or Seth, who we've talked
about on the show before, in part because there is
some mystery and disagreement on what the set animal or
Seth animal is that his iconography is based upon. But anyway,
we have this this brother Seth strikes his brother down
and tramples him and or drowns him in the Nile River,
(08:20):
and Pinch writes that a double death may have been
deemed necessary to kill a god.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Okay, So, one way or another, either drowned in the
water or trampled or both, Osiris is dead.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
That's right, He's overthrown, He's been murdered. And one way
or another, Osiris's dead body becomes fragmented, either via a
deliberate chopping up of his corpse by Seth or possibly
due to decomposition. In either event, the dead body of
Osiris becomes divided into in some cases fourteen pieces, though
sometimes it's like forty two pieces. A certain number of
(08:55):
pieces of the dead god come into circulation here. And
I think this varies from something that happens right away again,
like I've killed you and now I'm going to chop
you up, to something that Seth does later, like comes
and despoils the corpse of Osiris, or something that happens
(09:16):
naturally later on. In any case, the pieces are either
scattered or become scattered.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Okay, so yeah, that's something I don't know if I
ever understood before. Do the pieces come apart as something
that his enemy does to him? Is it kind of
a William Wallace situation or is it more kind of
a some kind of magical principle at work.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, based on my understanding of the different accounts that
are looking at here, it looks like it does vary,
and it also seems to vary whether those pieces stays
to some degree scattered or are truly brought together again.
It kind of I guess it kind of depends on
what sort of concepts are important to the story. That
(09:58):
may make more sense when I start talking about specifics
here in a minute. But in any event, it falls
to Isis to gather the pieces of the fallen Osiris
and seek his resurrection via powerful magic, with the aid
of Annibus, an underworld deity and thought a god of
magic who've also talked about on the show before. Now,
Isis herself was the mother and throne goddess, so each
(10:22):
Egyptian king is her child. It falls to her to
find and gather the pieces of slain Osiris to assemble
him and hold a long vigil over the corpse along
with their sister Nephthus, and they use a spoken magic,
Pinch says, to drive away Seth the disturber. So I
guess there's this idea that even as they are trying
to bring him back, Seth is trying to disrupt their attempt.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Almost like a scavenger or predatory animal circling. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Now, during this reassembly, Osiris is He's described by Pinch
as the inert one. So all of the pieces of
Osiris are either in hair together or assembled into a
hole except for his fallas. And remember again that Osiris
is also a god of fertility, and by this Fallus
(11:10):
or depending on the story, by a flash of divine fire,
whatever the case Isis becomes pregnant with the son by
the deceased god. And this son is going to be Horace,
the son destined to overcome Seth. So she raises Horace
in the marshes. She has to raise him in safety
and secrecy until he is old enough to challenge his
(11:33):
father's usurper, which he does. He defeats Seth and he
becomes the new ruler.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Now I think you're going to get into this in
a minute. But that part of the myth is important
because this will come to have a great significance for
the succession in the real world of divine kingship as
a concept in Egypt.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Right now. Another interesting part here is that despite Osiris's
connection with the concept of resurrection by many definitions or
in certainly sort of modern interpretations, and I guess like
dungeons and dragons to interpretations, he is not truly resurrected
at this point. He does not become living flesh again.
(12:12):
He is not resurrected into this world.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Right and this will be an important point of contention
for a question that I think we're going to get
into in part two of this series about the concept
of resurrection in ancient religions. But yeah, Osiris is not
thought to be raised back to the form and the
place where he originally lived. There is a instead, he
(12:36):
goes on living, but it is in a new form
in a new world. There is in a sense a
new Osiris.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
That's right. So basically, the higher powers and other powers
of note here decide that okay, Osiris, you were just,
but your death was not just. So therefore he's permitted
to leave his now mummified body and become the Lord
of the dead in the afterlife, the judge and ruler
of the kingdom of the dead. And it seems like
a pretty cool gig to have a Pinch points out that.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
At all periods. There are a few texts that describe
Osiris as a terrifying figure who dispatches demon messengers to
drag the living into the gloomy realm of the dead.
So inert but not powerless by any means, and he
is just he is an appropriate judge. He said to
rule over the dead as when enifer, which either means
(13:27):
the one whose body did not decay, and we see
that again his connection to mummification and rights of mummification.
Though I think it's also, according to Pinch, sometimes translated
as the beneficent One. This was also apparently the title
for the high priest of Osiris in religious traditions. These
(13:55):
are the basic core myths concerning Osiris to consider, but
you know, we always go deeper than that, like what
are we to make of these myths? What do people
think they meant? What did they signify? Why did they
have such you know, cultural significance, And again we have
to realize that understandings and interpretations change over time. Middle
(14:17):
Kingdom rituals seem to associate the body of Osiris with
barley and the trampling seth. Again, remember the trampling being
part of the murder of Osiris. There seems to be
a strong case for associating that trampling with the donkeys
that would thresh the grain via trampling, thus linking his
(14:38):
death and resurrection in this earliest known example to the
cyclical reaping and sowing of crops.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yes, and again asterisk on the word resurrection there. But
you know, it's an interesting thing how people often do
associate religious ideas of resurrection with the cycles of life,
in the cycles of plant life in the seasons. But
when you were talking about donkeys threshing grain, you know,
I made another kind of association there, which is that
(15:06):
the grain begins as something that is from the living plant,
but then when it is is put through agricultural processing,
it is in a way reborn, and it doesn't go
on to live again as a plant, but instead it
goes on to live in a different way. It becomes
something else, which is grain and ultimately food.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah, these different sort of phase changes occur. It has
also pointed out that you would have these ethyphallic figures
of Osiris that would be planted with crops, so they
would have like a representation of the god planted with
the grains, planted with the seeds that you know, that
would that would help enable everything to grow into its
(15:48):
next form.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
If if phallic, does that mean that's a representation of
the god with an erection?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yes, that's the literal, different definition though. I was looking
at an image of one of these figures in the
British Museum's website and and I'm not sure that that's
really as pronounced in this image, but but that is
that is all. That's how it's classified.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Oh wait, I see it.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Well, it's well compared to it's not as it's not
as as obvious as one might expect.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Yeah, it's certainly not as obvious as you might see.
And like some other statuary from the ancient world.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Well, I assume the thing is Ocyrus is wrapped in bandages,
so it's like it's he's not naked.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Now.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
There were also New Kingdom period traditions that linked o
Cyrus to water, with all the liquids of his putrefying
body being linked to the annual inundation of the Nile,
and not necessarily just putrefying liquids like you know, just
the various liquids of the body, but also like putrification
liquids thrown in there. So I don't want to make
it sound like it's all gross or anything. And at
(16:57):
least one tradition holding that his body parts are bare.
It's scattered sites throughout Egypt and the tomb of the
left leg on the Nile island of Baiga. I've also
seen this place referred to simply as the tomb of
Osiris Uh. Anyway, different traditions hold that this is the
source of the inundation. Now I'm thinking about the underworld
and the cosmos of the ancient Egyptians, which I think,
(17:18):
on one hand, it's easy to think of that, Okay,
this is these are the worlds beyond our world, but
also they're kind of tied to to what is seen
and what is not seen, but kind of implied. Basically.
The one area I want to touch on here is
the idea of the sun bargs the manget, the boat
of millions of years that travels through the sky with
(17:42):
the sun and then down each night over the horizon
and then through the underworld to emerge once more on
the other side. And of course there's there's fighting that
takes place. It is like a kind of a it's
a perilous journey for the Sun through the underworld to
come back again when the sun rises.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Yeah, it's a whole quest. It's a whole quest line.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah, which is which is at once again very epic
and otherworldly, but also tied directly to what we observe
occurring with the sun. Like, okay, the sun goes here
and then it goes under seemingly and comes back. What's
going on there? And then we have this mythic extrapolation
of that. But according to Pinch.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
It's singing somewhere over the rainbow.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
According to Pinch, the New Kingdom under and the New
Kingdom Underworld books specify that during the darkest hour of
the night, the god that is that is driving the
sun barge ray or raw passes through the underworld chamber
where the body of Osiris rests, and in this moment
(18:43):
they become one soul and this allows Osyrus and all
the dead to live again. M So, now that we've
established some of the basics about this underworld fertility god.
I wanted to get into the cult of Osiris a
bit more. Again, we don't know exactly when or how
Osiris was first worshiped, or indeed the earliest form or
(19:04):
forms that he took in these ancient Egyptian belief systems,
but over time he becomes vitally linked with the cycle
of life and death, with crops, with the inundation, with mummification,
and the promise of resurrection.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
And just a note on terminology. When we talk about
things like the cult of Osiris, cult in that sense
does not have the negative connotations that cult has in
the modern world. That's just the term you use for
like any any group in the ancient world that is
devoted to the care and worship of a god.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Right now, one topic that I was really taken with
was discussion of the popularity of Osiris, and to a
certain extent, the overall popularity of the ancient Egyptian religion, because,
on one hand, I don't remember where I read this,
but I know I've read commentary that the ancient Egyptian
religion was something very much all of the desert of
(19:56):
this nile nourished region and something that just did not
travel and was not picked up by other cultures in
a meaningful deeper way. But on the other hand, the
trappings of ancient Egypt clearly have fascinated other cultures for
an exceedingly long period of time, often in these waves
of Egyptomania, as it's sometimes termed. So I really wanted
(20:19):
to get into this latter idea a bit more so
I turned to various sections dealing with Osiris in the
excellent twenty sixteen book Egyptomania, A History of Fascination, Obsession,
and Fantasy by Ronald H.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Fritz.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Okay, so Fritz mentions that the aforementioned pyramid texts from
more than four thousand years ago refer to differing ideas
about life and death, but also they bring up the
rising popularity of Osiris within the pantheon. And I was
thinking about this as well. I think this is something
interesting to observe in religion, that it's mostly within these
(20:55):
polytheistic traditions that you really get to see or in
the and or magic and this idea of the rise
and fall of particular gods and goddesses, as well as
the more like straightforward adoption of foreign originating gods into
a given pantheon. You know, we've discussed examples of this before,
but there's not there's either no room for this or
(21:17):
not as much room for this in monotheistic traditions.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on the specific
monotheistic religion, but yes, like growing up a lot of people,
this is another one of the many ways that if
you grow up in a certain religious context, you might
just assume that all religions are similar to your religion.
So like growing up in a Christian context, I think
a lot of people think that all religions have a
(21:41):
quote jealous God, like the like the Abrahamic faiths. Do
you know a God who says you shall worship me
and me alone? And there's basically one right way to
have a religion, and it's it's the one you've got,
whereas with a lot of polytheistic religions, it's it's much
more free form. You know that you can add God
on to the list of gods that you worship, you
(22:02):
can remove gods, you can sort of like just shift
your focus wherever you think it is best. And that
doesn't compute Like a lot of Christians look back on
the pagan context of the Roman Empire, say, and they
don't realize that. Like when you would be preaching about
Jesus to Roman pagans, to a lot of them, they
(22:23):
just be hearing about this is well, this is another god.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
You know.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
I've got Apollo, and I've got Jupiter and these other
gods that I worship, and here somebody's talking about a
new one. Oh, except this is weird. They're telling me
that if I worship this new one, if I worship Christ,
I can't worship any of the others anymore. That would
be weird and different.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, it's like downloading apps for your phone, right, Like,
what's this one do? This is a new one. Sounds useful.
I'll get it too. Whoa this one says, I can't
use any other apps. I've just I've got to use
this one universal app for everything. Yeah, does it work?
Is what it sounds like. If it's promises to do everything,
it probably doesn't do them as well as these specialized
apps that I already had.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
But to come back to your original example, yes, sort
of the rise and fall in the popularity of various
gods within these polytheistic pantheons where you can believe in
multiple gods and devote whatever time and care you think
is appropriate to each one of them. I guess. You know,
the institution of a monotheistic faith like Christianity would be
an outlier there where it's like suddenly you pick that,
(23:25):
you pick the new God, the Christ, and you can't
believe in any of the others anymore. That one goes
right to the top. But with the others, yeah, you
do get to see these fluctuations over time.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, like some of the Christian examples we've looked at
in the past, it's like, oh, your God, actually it
can be part of this religion. But I'm sorry, they're
a demon now, Yeah, the demons were rebel angels that
our God defeated, so but yeah, we can work them
in as that. But then again, I was thinking about this,
it's like, well, well, we've also looked at examples where,
(23:54):
you know, in various Greek myths where something that was
one a deity for a particular time and place then
later on becomes more of a supporting character or a
monster or something.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
To that effect.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
So it's something that takes place just in general, I guess,
and is not particular to monotheistic or polytheistic.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
One way I.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Kept thinking of it those kind of like if you
had like a stock ticker for belief. You know, it's
like polytheism, you have a lot of different stocks that
are going up and down. But under monotheism, like you're
supposed to just have the one stock. Yeah, and you're
either all invested in that or people are falling out
of interest of that. I don't know. It's not a
perfect way of thinking about it, but it does seem like,
(24:39):
certainly with the polytheistic religions of the Greeks and the Romans,
there is a lot more openness to hey, there's a
new god this other country has, let's take a look
at it. Let's see what worshiping this god is, Like,
what's going to this cult?
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Like?
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of just absorption of other figures.
One example that I I was just reading about earlier today. Again,
I think we're going to talk about this more in
the second episode is there's a Greek figure sometimes referred
to as a god. He was like a mortal lover
of Aphrodite named Adonis, who is very much thought to
have been derived from other deities other ancient Near Eastern
(25:17):
deities like Mesopotamian agriculture gods such as Tamuz or DEMUSI.
So it's just here's a cult figure from one part
of the world is absorbed into the number of gods
believed in in a different part of the world.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
I just want to add a quick note since we
are talking at least briefly here about monotheism and polytheism,
and in an episode that deals with ancient Egyptian religion,
where we're not going to have time to get into
discussion of and Autanism here. But of course that has
been like a discussion I think we've touched on in
the past, where as some experts agree or disagree on
whether Autanism is truly a monotheistic religion or should be
(25:58):
thought of as such. So that's a whole different subject
for another time.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
The short version is one ancient Egyptian king tried to
elevate a particular deity from the Egyptian pantheon above all
others and make that the exclusive focus of state worship.
But yeah, you can read more about that if you
go look up Autum.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah, and basically after that king's death, everyone's like, well,
let's go back to the other thing. We were doing
where maybe not as into the sun disc as we
were pretending to be anyway, back to a cyrus here. So,
(26:40):
Fritz writes that the Old Kingdom, so this is roughly
twenty seven hundred to twenty two hundred BC, was more rigid,
was more formal, but that the Middle Kingdom to follow,
also known as the Period of Reunification from twenty forty
to seventeen eighty two BC, it was more balance, more sympathetic.
There's great literacy, there is more of a melding of
(27:02):
sort of high mythology and the folklore of the people,
and the rulers of this period promoted the worship of
Osiris and the cult symphasis on resurrection and the afterlife. Now,
I think it's easy to take this last bit for granted,
because if you adhere to a religion, or you're closely
aligned with one or one or more religions via your culture,
(27:23):
your upbringing, or just your general interests, then the continuation
of the soul is not a radical concept. It's like
it's hard to put yourself in a mindset where someone
is coming at you with some radically new concept of
religious continuation of the soul of some sort of immortality
of the soul, someone saying, hey, guess what, you know
(27:44):
that part of you that feels special inside your consciousness
and heart and all of that. What if that doesn't
have to be annihilated when you die? And I have
to stress. I say this as someone who was raised
in a Protestant church that even now sometimes for me
it's more challenging to exercise or entertain a worldview in
which there is no continuation of the human soul after death.
(28:08):
And that's regardless of logic or reason. It's just such
a huge part of not only the Christian worldview view
but also the mainstream worldview that of course what we
have is special, and that somehow it continues on in
one form or another, either directly aligned with some sort
of belief system or just you know, in sort of
the general pop culture sense of like spirits and angels
(28:29):
and like, there's just something that must live on after
we die in our physical bodies. And there's nothing wrong
with that concept, I think, at least just when it's
employed in a way that gives us hope and peace,
though of course it can also be used for opposite aims.
But to bring us back to this period, in which
like the Cult of Osiris is rising and it's becoming
more and more popular. Imagine a religious world and a
(28:52):
worldview in which the afterlife is largely unavailable. It exists,
but it's not for the common people, not for most people.
It is for a very small percentage of people. It
is like the equivalent of like extreme opulent wealth in
our world, you know, like it is the SuperMansion with
(29:14):
the apocalypse bunker. You know it is. This is only
for a very small, very slender portion of society. It
is not for you. But during the Middle Kingdom you
have this ongoing democratization of the afterlife, fritz It describes,
and this was enhanced by the cult of Osiris. So
I want to read a passage from Fritzer where he
(29:36):
goes through an example of this quote. Prior to the
Middle Kingdom, Egyptians believed that all people possessed a ka,
or a soul or life force, but only rulers possessed
a ba, which was the individual uniqueness that constitutes a personality.
It required the ka and the Ba to be kept
united or at least in close proximity for immortality in
(30:00):
the afterlife. When the people of the Middle kingdom came
to believe that all humans had a ba. They were
conceding that everyone could enjoy the after life if the
proper burial rituals were followed. Yeah, so suddenly it's available
to everyone who at least can undergo the proper rituals.
And so you saw certain rituals become more popular and
(30:22):
are more present in the archaeological record, such as the
use of shabti statues. They begin to appear in more tombs.
These would have been like little representations of servants, servants
that would work for the deceased in the afterlife, like
this will be buried with you, and now you will
have a servant to help you in the afterlife. This
(30:43):
sort of general idea we see in various other religions
as well. Okay, and so osiris becomes very popular within Egypt.
But then eventually the ancient Greeks and then the ancient
Romans they also get a whiff of osiris and they're like, oh,
we would like some of that as well. He points
out that the ancient Greeks and Romans were some of
(31:05):
the initial egyptomaniacs, and while the Greeks found on the
whole that the religion of the Egyptians was profoundly different
from their own. They were intrigued by its systems of
magic and by it, you know, its deities, just as
we are intrigued by these things today. And they did
recognize some fundamental similarities. He writes that the Greeks frequently
(31:27):
attempted to synchronize the gods of other cultures with their own,
and they certainly did this with the Egyptians. And actually,
for some Greek writers, these fundamental similarities were incredibly important.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Right, So they might say, actually, we're talking about the
same god when we say this God and they say
that God. But we just have different names for the
same one here.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Right, And they seem to take it even a step
beyond that, because it's one thing to say, well, you know,
I have my concept of God and you have yours
on the same you know where else, really on the
same wavelength. But it's another to say your yours came first.
I'm pretty sure mine's just a knockoff of yours, you know.
And we kind of see this. According to Fritz So,
(32:13):
fifth century BC Greek historian Herodotus concluded that knowledge of
the gods spread from Egyptian origins to the Greeks. So
it's like, well, the Egyptians discovered the gods first, and
we just followed. We learned of this from them, And anyway,
he ends up drawing numerous lines between Greek gods and
possible Egyptian origins, though Fritz points out that there are
(32:35):
there are clear exceptions to this line of thinking, such
as Poseidon, who was apparently brought to Greece more from
the direction of Libya. Still, others made these connections. To
Plutarch made these connections, so there seems to have been
at the very least like a recognized heritage in all
of this. Now that and certainly the Greeks and the
(32:56):
Romans were particularly taken by not only a Cyrus, but
also isis Here's another bit from Fritz that I want
to read. Quote. Although in the modern stereotype the Egyptian
religion is depicted as mystical, mysterious and magical, Greek and
Roman visitors did not see it in this way. Plutarch's
staunchly defended Egyptian religion as rational and ethical rather than
(33:19):
merely superstitious. Herodotus went so far as to credit the
Egyptians with the invention of the common practices of ancient religion,
such as altars, statues, and temples dedicated to the various gods.
The cult of Isis became so populated that it spread
throughout the lands of the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Roman Empire.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
I mean, first of all, ancient Egypt was simply so ancient,
like there were these remnants of great civilizations that had
been around for so long. We've mentioned this on the
show before, but the astounding fact that to the Romans,
like Plutarch, you know, the old King of Egypt, the
(34:00):
pyramids were older to them than the Roman Empire is
to us. The distance of history there is is crazy
to believe. So so there's there. On one hand, ancient
Egypt was just so evidently ancient as a great civilization,
you could imagine things, many things you had might have
(34:21):
come from it. But then also, as you're saying, there's
just this clear spread of say, the cult of Isis.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, and at the same time, yes, sometimes attributing things
to the Egyptians that that they probably didn't invent, Like
Fritz mentions that that Diodorus credited of Cyrus with the
invention of great cultivation and ultimately wine making, though there
does not seem to be evidence of this, you know
(34:48):
that they're that wine and great cultivation has an Egyptian
origin now, but eventually we do see more of a
full on appropriation and recreation of Egyptian concepts. And in
one of the strong examples of this, and one of
the concerns of Cyrus is the god so rapists, this
would have been a Greco Egyptian syncretic deity. So it's
(35:12):
it's like an amalgam of both Cyrus and in Oppus,
as well as aspects of various Greek deities, like I
think there's a little Zeus and Hades in there. This
would have been a being that would have that would
have become popular on under the Ptolemaic rule. But still
that doesn't mean that, for instance, that doesn't really seem
(35:34):
to impact Isis. Based on what I've read, the worship
of Isis may have spread even more in Roman culture.
Worship of Isis would travel along trade routes through the
Mediterranean world into Spain and even to the British Isles,
so I think there I've read articles about archaeological evidence
of Isis worship, like ancient Isis worship in London. So
(35:56):
I'm not talking about like later periods of Egyptomania where
you had occultists and so forth bringing in the concept
of isis, but kind of like original Isis worship, if
you will. But then again to the point, and I
don't want to go through all the examples of egypt Domania.
I do recommend everyone check out that book, because this
(36:16):
is a book that deals not only with like ancient
Egyptian religion and culture in its origin, but also these
various levels of egypt Domania from like you know, dealing
with examples from say the Victorian world and the Renaissance
on up through like trashy be movies if like you know,
brief breakdowns of some really bad Mummy movies. But they
(36:39):
are examples of at least the reverberations of international and
multicultural interest in ancient Egypt. And it may in many
cases it might not be that deep. You know, it
might be just like, oh, I kind of like how
this looks and this sounds weird to me, so I'm
gonna make a horror movie. But it's still you know,
reverberations are the same energy. But we'll mention one really
(37:02):
quickly so during Renaissance Egypt Doomania, there was still a
fair amount of pull toward Osiris. There's a character that
was an Italian who was originally named Giovanni Nani who
lived fourteen thirty two through fifteen oh two, went by
the name Viterbo, and he made various connections between Etruscan
(37:24):
traditions and the Egyptians. But he even went so far
as to claim that the Boreses were the descendants of Osiris.
I'm not sure what sort of supporting material he made
for that, but in anyway, Osiris would continue to serve
as a central figure in various waves of Egyptomania moving forward.
(37:45):
So Osiris is invoked in various occultist movements. In Osiris
is definitely invoked by various ancient astronaut writers, and you
also see the use of Osiris in the movements of
Afrocentrists and also afro Futurists. It's just, I mean, he
is a powerful figure mythologically, and of course he's going
(38:07):
to We're going to keep coming back to him and
finding new ways to sort of think about him and
new ways to invoke him.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Okay, well, I think maybe that will do it for
part one of our series on Osiris, but we've got
more to talk about next time. That's right.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
We shall return in a part two and that will
be on Thursday. In the meantime, certainly write in if
you have feedback on this episode of other examples of osiris,
or isisigyptomania that you want to bring up. Everything is
fair game, but just a reminder. Stuff Blow your Mind
is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we do listener mail.
(38:45):
On Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on
Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
And in this episode, we're going to be diving into
ancient Egyptian mythology once more to discuss an important deity
connected to the topic of resurrection, which I think was
probably on my mind over the weekend due to, first
of all, it was the Easter holiday. Also on Weird
House Cinema, which is of our Friday episode and the
(00:39):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed, we talked about
Doctor Five's Rises again. I did not think about this
in terms of the holiday at all. I didn't think, oh,
this is our Easter selection. But then I noticed our
social media posts about it on Easter Sunday and it's like,
you know, talking about the rise of Doctor Five's He's
Rising again, and I was like, oh, wow, we sort
(01:01):
of accidentally nailed it there.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
It's a movie that has so many resurrections. It has
Doctor Fibes himself coming out of a sort of a
chemically induced slumber where at the end of the first
movie he replaces his blood with embalming fluid and then
goes to sleep in a giant glass contraption under the floor.
At the beginning of this movie, he wakes up again,
So that's one sense of rising, though I guess it's
(01:25):
questionable whether he technically died or not there, so he
rises at the beginning of the movie. There the rest
of the movie is about him trying to literally resurrect
his wife Victoria played by Carolyn Monroe from the dead.
She sort of spins the whole movie in a glass
display case, and he is going to take her to
a temple in ancient Egypt under which lies the secret
(01:46):
to resurrection and eternal life. And he departs the end
of the movie on a barge singing somewhere over the
rainbow to take Carolyn Monroe down there and bring her
back to life. And I would mention a third resurrection
in the film, which is that the character Vulnavia, which
is melted like sort of a robot clockwork organism. We're
(02:06):
not exactly sure. From the first movie, it's doctor Phibes's
hinchwoman who helps him commit his quote amazing murders. She
is melted by acid at the end of the first
movie and then just inexplicably comes back in the second movie. Also,
they resurrect Terry Thomas. Remember, yeah, he bites it in
the first movie, and then he just comes back playing
a totally separate character in the second movie. And I
(02:29):
think that motif of coming back in bodily form but
playing a different character, maybe maybe it may have some
thematic resonance. That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
So what we're gonna We're gonna be talking about Osirius.
I don't think Osyrus came up in Doctor fivee rises again,
maybe they made passing reference to him. I think I
made passing reference to Osirius when we were talking about
the film. But this is a deity best known for
his connections to fertility, to the ancient Egyptian underworld, and
(03:04):
to rights of mummification.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
So, you know, I've seen lots of depictions of the
god o Cyrus before I was familiar with the imagery
associated with him. But something I had never noticed until
I was reading up in preparation for this episode is
that while on the top half of his body, he
is often depicted, you know, looking kind of like a
like a king or a pharaoh, you know, very stately,
with a beard, with his with his face exposed under
(03:29):
the crown and all that. If you look down at
the lower part of his body, apparently his legs are
depicted wrapped together in the in the wrappings of mummification,
so it's like the bottom half of his body is
already mummified.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
That's right. Yeah, And I invite listeners who are in
a position to do so safely, to go ahead and
look up some images of historical depictions of Osiris from
ancient Egypt. Yeah, he's generally depicted as a mummified king,
you know, bound as in is in the wrappings of mummification.
His skin, as is exposed, you know, in his face
(04:05):
and neck and hands, is apparently either black or green.
I tend to find more images of green color choices
though that may have at one point signified putrification and death,
but came to symbolize his connection to the cycle of
death and life, of resurrection and rebirth, particularly resurrection and
rebirth linked to that of plant life. On top of this,
(04:29):
he is generally depicted as wearing a crown, and he
brandishes a crook and a flail, so strong agricultural vibes already.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
But also with power and authority, you know, it's the
crook and the flail and the autaf crown, the crown
I think of Upper Egypt. This is the imagery of
a king.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, absolutely so he is. He is very much like
an embodimentum of a mummified king. So let's get a
little bit into the myth of Osiris. Now, standard caveat
with mythology. You know, as usually is the case, we're
not dealing with a singular idea from a singular time
and place, but rather a figure and associated narratives that
(05:07):
stirred in the minds of ancient peoples for thousands of years.
We have various accounts of Osiris to go off of,
but our understanding of Osiris is also incomplete, and indeed,
we don't know with one hundred percent certainty what his
name even means. It might well mean the Mighty One,
but I think there are some other ideas out there.
(05:27):
There's plenty that experts have had to piece together about
Osiris that is not explicitly obvious in the source material. Now,
one of the books that I turned to for this
episode is the two thousand and two book Egyptian Mythology
by Geraldine Pinch. Pinch also points out that we don't
(05:47):
know when, how, and where Osiris was first worshiped. He
might have kicked things off as kind of a deified
pre dynastic king. He might have been an old vegetation spirit,
a god, or even a mother goddess. And I'm also
assuming based on this that you know, there might have
been some interplay between these concepts, you know, various varied
(06:10):
possible origins, gods that are combined into new gods and
so forth. Now, Pinch summarizes the sort of the what
you might think of as the canonical rise and fall
and resurrection of Osiris, pointing out that first of all,
he's generally thought to have been born with a crown
(06:30):
on his head. So taking that concept of born a king,
that is theay referenced in Christian hymns, sometimes referring to Jesus,
but taking it to a literal degree.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Ah, So, whereas a lot of kings, say, might be
born with a right to the throne that has then
recognized in a coronation by placing the crown upon their head,
that this king is born with the crown already there, like,
it doesn't need to be recognized.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Exactly king at his birth literally because he's look, he's
wearing a little crown. I guess maybe the crown grows
with him. I mean, he's a god. He can do
these things. And fortunately his mother was also a god,
so he was the eldest son. It is that of
the earth god Geb and the sky god as Newt.
So in many respects, he is the place where earth
(07:16):
and sky converge. He's the very horizon. Now. Pinch shares
that some accounts allude to him overcoming his father in
a vicious dynastic struggle for rule, and one late text
claims that he died for the first time during this struggle. However,
she stresses that no accounts of Osiris's rule and his
(07:37):
death survive from before the Greco Roman period concerning this issue,
so but one way or another, he comes to reign
over Egypt with his sister consort Isis at his side.
But of course this rule does not last according to
the pyramid texts of the Late Old Kingdom, so these
are for more than four thousand years ago. Osiris was
(07:57):
murdered by his brother Seth or Seth, who we've talked
about on the show before, in part because there is
some mystery and disagreement on what the set animal or
Seth animal is that his iconography is based upon. But anyway,
we have this this brother Seth strikes his brother down
and tramples him and or drowns him in the Nile River,
(08:20):
and Pinch writes that a double death may have been
deemed necessary to kill a god.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Okay, So, one way or another, either drowned in the
water or trampled or both, Osiris is dead.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
That's right, He's overthrown, He's been murdered. And one way
or another, Osiris's dead body becomes fragmented, either via a
deliberate chopping up of his corpse by Seth or possibly
due to decomposition. In either event, the dead body of
Osiris becomes divided into in some cases fourteen pieces, though
sometimes it's like forty two pieces. A certain number of
(08:55):
pieces of the dead god come into circulation here. And
I think this varies from something that happens right away again,
like I've killed you and now I'm going to chop
you up, to something that Seth does later, like comes
and despoils the corpse of Osiris, or something that happens
(09:16):
naturally later on. In any case, the pieces are either
scattered or become scattered.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Okay, so yeah, that's something I don't know if I
ever understood before. Do the pieces come apart as something
that his enemy does to him? Is it kind of
a William Wallace situation or is it more kind of
a some kind of magical principle at work.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, based on my understanding of the different accounts that
are looking at here, it looks like it does vary,
and it also seems to vary whether those pieces stays
to some degree scattered or are truly brought together again.
It kind of I guess it kind of depends on
what sort of concepts are important to the story. That
(09:58):
may make more sense when I start talking about specifics
here in a minute. But in any event, it falls
to Isis to gather the pieces of the fallen Osiris
and seek his resurrection via powerful magic, with the aid
of Annibus, an underworld deity and thought a god of
magic who've also talked about on the show before. Now,
Isis herself was the mother and throne goddess, so each
(10:22):
Egyptian king is her child. It falls to her to
find and gather the pieces of slain Osiris to assemble
him and hold a long vigil over the corpse along
with their sister Nephthus, and they use a spoken magic,
Pinch says, to drive away Seth the disturber. So I
guess there's this idea that even as they are trying
to bring him back, Seth is trying to disrupt their attempt.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Almost like a scavenger or predatory animal circling. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Now, during this reassembly, Osiris is He's described by Pinch
as the inert one. So all of the pieces of
Osiris are either in hair together or assembled into a
hole except for his fallas. And remember again that Osiris
is also a god of fertility, and by this Fallus
(11:10):
or depending on the story, by a flash of divine fire,
whatever the case Isis becomes pregnant with the son by
the deceased god. And this son is going to be Horace,
the son destined to overcome Seth. So she raises Horace
in the marshes. She has to raise him in safety
and secrecy until he is old enough to challenge his
(11:33):
father's usurper, which he does. He defeats Seth and he
becomes the new ruler.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Now I think you're going to get into this in
a minute. But that part of the myth is important
because this will come to have a great significance for
the succession in the real world of divine kingship as
a concept in Egypt.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Right now. Another interesting part here is that despite Osiris's
connection with the concept of resurrection by many definitions or
in certainly sort of modern interpretations, and I guess like
dungeons and dragons to interpretations, he is not truly resurrected
at this point. He does not become living flesh again.
(12:12):
He is not resurrected into this world.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Right and this will be an important point of contention
for a question that I think we're going to get
into in part two of this series about the concept
of resurrection in ancient religions. But yeah, Osiris is not
thought to be raised back to the form and the
place where he originally lived. There is a instead, he
(12:36):
goes on living, but it is in a new form
in a new world. There is in a sense a
new Osiris.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
That's right. So basically, the higher powers and other powers
of note here decide that okay, Osiris, you were just,
but your death was not just. So therefore he's permitted
to leave his now mummified body and become the Lord
of the dead in the afterlife, the judge and ruler
of the kingdom of the dead. And it seems like
a pretty cool gig to have a Pinch points out that.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
At all periods. There are a few texts that describe
Osiris as a terrifying figure who dispatches demon messengers to
drag the living into the gloomy realm of the dead.
So inert but not powerless by any means, and he
is just he is an appropriate judge. He said to
rule over the dead as when enifer, which either means
(13:27):
the one whose body did not decay, and we see
that again his connection to mummification and rights of mummification.
Though I think it's also, according to Pinch, sometimes translated
as the beneficent One. This was also apparently the title
for the high priest of Osiris in religious traditions. These
(13:55):
are the basic core myths concerning Osiris to consider, but
you know, we always go deeper than that, like what
are we to make of these myths? What do people
think they meant? What did they signify? Why did they
have such you know, cultural significance, And again we have
to realize that understandings and interpretations change over time. Middle
(14:17):
Kingdom rituals seem to associate the body of Osiris with
barley and the trampling seth. Again, remember the trampling being
part of the murder of Osiris. There seems to be
a strong case for associating that trampling with the donkeys
that would thresh the grain via trampling, thus linking his
(14:38):
death and resurrection in this earliest known example to the
cyclical reaping and sowing of crops.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yes, and again asterisk on the word resurrection there. But
you know, it's an interesting thing how people often do
associate religious ideas of resurrection with the cycles of life,
in the cycles of plant life in the seasons. But
when you were talking about donkeys threshing grain, you know,
I made another kind of association there, which is that
(15:06):
the grain begins as something that is from the living plant,
but then when it is is put through agricultural processing,
it is in a way reborn, and it doesn't go
on to live again as a plant, but instead it
goes on to live in a different way. It becomes
something else, which is grain and ultimately food.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah, these different sort of phase changes occur. It has
also pointed out that you would have these ethyphallic figures
of Osiris that would be planted with crops, so they
would have like a representation of the god planted with
the grains, planted with the seeds that you know, that
would that would help enable everything to grow into its
(15:48):
next form.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
If if phallic, does that mean that's a representation of
the god with an erection?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yes, that's the literal, different definition though. I was looking
at an image of one of these figures in the
British Museum's website and and I'm not sure that that's
really as pronounced in this image, but but that is
that is all. That's how it's classified.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Oh wait, I see it.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Well, it's well compared to it's not as it's not
as as obvious as one might expect.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Yeah, it's certainly not as obvious as you might see.
And like some other statuary from the ancient world.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Well, I assume the thing is Ocyrus is wrapped in bandages,
so it's like it's he's not naked.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Now.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
There were also New Kingdom period traditions that linked o
Cyrus to water, with all the liquids of his putrefying
body being linked to the annual inundation of the Nile,
and not necessarily just putrefying liquids like you know, just
the various liquids of the body, but also like putrification
liquids thrown in there. So I don't want to make
it sound like it's all gross or anything. And at
(16:57):
least one tradition holding that his body parts are bare.
It's scattered sites throughout Egypt and the tomb of the
left leg on the Nile island of Baiga. I've also
seen this place referred to simply as the tomb of
Osiris Uh. Anyway, different traditions hold that this is the
source of the inundation. Now I'm thinking about the underworld
and the cosmos of the ancient Egyptians, which I think,
(17:18):
on one hand, it's easy to think of that, Okay,
this is these are the worlds beyond our world, but
also they're kind of tied to to what is seen
and what is not seen, but kind of implied. Basically.
The one area I want to touch on here is
the idea of the sun bargs the manget, the boat
of millions of years that travels through the sky with
(17:42):
the sun and then down each night over the horizon
and then through the underworld to emerge once more on
the other side. And of course there's there's fighting that
takes place. It is like a kind of a it's
a perilous journey for the Sun through the underworld to
come back again when the sun rises.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Yeah, it's a whole quest. It's a whole quest line.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah, which is which is at once again very epic
and otherworldly, but also tied directly to what we observe
occurring with the sun. Like, okay, the sun goes here
and then it goes under seemingly and comes back. What's
going on there? And then we have this mythic extrapolation
of that. But according to Pinch.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
It's singing somewhere over the rainbow.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
According to Pinch, the New Kingdom under and the New
Kingdom Underworld books specify that during the darkest hour of
the night, the god that is that is driving the
sun barge ray or raw passes through the underworld chamber
where the body of Osiris rests, and in this moment
(18:43):
they become one soul and this allows Osyrus and all
the dead to live again. M So, now that we've
established some of the basics about this underworld fertility god.
I wanted to get into the cult of Osiris a
bit more. Again, we don't know exactly when or how
Osiris was first worshiped, or indeed the earliest form or
(19:04):
forms that he took in these ancient Egyptian belief systems,
but over time he becomes vitally linked with the cycle
of life and death, with crops, with the inundation, with mummification,
and the promise of resurrection.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
And just a note on terminology. When we talk about
things like the cult of Osiris, cult in that sense
does not have the negative connotations that cult has in
the modern world. That's just the term you use for
like any any group in the ancient world that is
devoted to the care and worship of a god.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Right now, one topic that I was really taken with
was discussion of the popularity of Osiris, and to a
certain extent, the overall popularity of the ancient Egyptian religion, because,
on one hand, I don't remember where I read this,
but I know I've read commentary that the ancient Egyptian
religion was something very much all of the desert of
(19:56):
this nile nourished region and something that just did not
travel and was not picked up by other cultures in
a meaningful deeper way. But on the other hand, the
trappings of ancient Egypt clearly have fascinated other cultures for
an exceedingly long period of time, often in these waves
of Egyptomania, as it's sometimes termed. So I really wanted
(20:19):
to get into this latter idea a bit more so
I turned to various sections dealing with Osiris in the
excellent twenty sixteen book Egyptomania, A History of Fascination, Obsession,
and Fantasy by Ronald H.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Fritz.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Okay, so Fritz mentions that the aforementioned pyramid texts from
more than four thousand years ago refer to differing ideas
about life and death, but also they bring up the
rising popularity of Osiris within the pantheon. And I was
thinking about this as well. I think this is something
interesting to observe in religion, that it's mostly within these
(20:55):
polytheistic traditions that you really get to see or in
the and or magic and this idea of the rise
and fall of particular gods and goddesses, as well as
the more like straightforward adoption of foreign originating gods into
a given pantheon. You know, we've discussed examples of this before,
but there's not there's either no room for this or
(21:17):
not as much room for this in monotheistic traditions.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on the specific
monotheistic religion, but yes, like growing up a lot of people,
this is another one of the many ways that if
you grow up in a certain religious context, you might
just assume that all religions are similar to your religion.
So like growing up in a Christian context, I think
a lot of people think that all religions have a
(21:41):
quote jealous God, like the like the Abrahamic faiths. Do
you know a God who says you shall worship me
and me alone? And there's basically one right way to
have a religion, and it's it's the one you've got,
whereas with a lot of polytheistic religions, it's it's much
more free form. You know that you can add God
on to the list of gods that you worship, you
(22:02):
can remove gods, you can sort of like just shift
your focus wherever you think it is best. And that
doesn't compute Like a lot of Christians look back on
the pagan context of the Roman Empire, say, and they
don't realize that. Like when you would be preaching about
Jesus to Roman pagans, to a lot of them, they
(22:23):
just be hearing about this is well, this is another god.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
You know.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
I've got Apollo, and I've got Jupiter and these other
gods that I worship, and here somebody's talking about a
new one. Oh, except this is weird. They're telling me
that if I worship this new one, if I worship Christ,
I can't worship any of the others anymore. That would
be weird and different.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, it's like downloading apps for your phone, right, Like,
what's this one do? This is a new one. Sounds useful.
I'll get it too. Whoa this one says, I can't
use any other apps. I've just I've got to use
this one universal app for everything. Yeah, does it work?
Is what it sounds like. If it's promises to do everything,
it probably doesn't do them as well as these specialized
apps that I already had.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
But to come back to your original example, yes, sort
of the rise and fall in the popularity of various
gods within these polytheistic pantheons where you can believe in
multiple gods and devote whatever time and care you think
is appropriate to each one of them. I guess. You know,
the institution of a monotheistic faith like Christianity would be
an outlier there where it's like suddenly you pick that,
(23:25):
you pick the new God, the Christ, and you can't
believe in any of the others anymore. That one goes
right to the top. But with the others, yeah, you
do get to see these fluctuations over time.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, like some of the Christian examples we've looked at
in the past, it's like, oh, your God, actually it
can be part of this religion. But I'm sorry, they're
a demon now, Yeah, the demons were rebel angels that
our God defeated, so but yeah, we can work them
in as that. But then again, I was thinking about this,
it's like, well, well, we've also looked at examples where,
(23:54):
you know, in various Greek myths where something that was
one a deity for a particular time and place then
later on becomes more of a supporting character or a
monster or something.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
To that effect.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
So it's something that takes place just in general, I guess,
and is not particular to monotheistic or polytheistic.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
One way I.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Kept thinking of it those kind of like if you
had like a stock ticker for belief. You know, it's
like polytheism, you have a lot of different stocks that
are going up and down. But under monotheism, like you're
supposed to just have the one stock. Yeah, and you're
either all invested in that or people are falling out
of interest of that. I don't know. It's not a
perfect way of thinking about it, but it does seem like,
(24:39):
certainly with the polytheistic religions of the Greeks and the Romans,
there is a lot more openness to hey, there's a
new god this other country has, let's take a look
at it. Let's see what worshiping this god is, Like,
what's going to this cult?
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Like?
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of just absorption of other figures.
One example that I I was just reading about earlier today. Again,
I think we're going to talk about this more in
the second episode is there's a Greek figure sometimes referred
to as a god. He was like a mortal lover
of Aphrodite named Adonis, who is very much thought to
have been derived from other deities other ancient Near Eastern
(25:17):
deities like Mesopotamian agriculture gods such as Tamuz or DEMUSI.
So it's just here's a cult figure from one part
of the world is absorbed into the number of gods
believed in in a different part of the world.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
I just want to add a quick note since we
are talking at least briefly here about monotheism and polytheism,
and in an episode that deals with ancient Egyptian religion,
where we're not going to have time to get into
discussion of and Autanism here. But of course that has
been like a discussion I think we've touched on in
the past, where as some experts agree or disagree on
whether Autanism is truly a monotheistic religion or should be
(25:58):
thought of as such. So that's a whole different subject
for another time.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
The short version is one ancient Egyptian king tried to
elevate a particular deity from the Egyptian pantheon above all
others and make that the exclusive focus of state worship.
But yeah, you can read more about that if you
go look up Autum.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah, and basically after that king's death, everyone's like, well,
let's go back to the other thing. We were doing
where maybe not as into the sun disc as we
were pretending to be anyway, back to a cyrus here. So,
(26:40):
Fritz writes that the Old Kingdom, so this is roughly
twenty seven hundred to twenty two hundred BC, was more rigid,
was more formal, but that the Middle Kingdom to follow,
also known as the Period of Reunification from twenty forty
to seventeen eighty two BC, it was more balance, more sympathetic.
There's great literacy, there is more of a melding of
(27:02):
sort of high mythology and the folklore of the people,
and the rulers of this period promoted the worship of
Osiris and the cult symphasis on resurrection and the afterlife. Now,
I think it's easy to take this last bit for granted,
because if you adhere to a religion, or you're closely
aligned with one or one or more religions via your culture,
(27:23):
your upbringing, or just your general interests, then the continuation
of the soul is not a radical concept. It's like
it's hard to put yourself in a mindset where someone
is coming at you with some radically new concept of
religious continuation of the soul of some sort of immortality
of the soul, someone saying, hey, guess what, you know
(27:44):
that part of you that feels special inside your consciousness
and heart and all of that. What if that doesn't
have to be annihilated when you die? And I have
to stress. I say this as someone who was raised
in a Protestant church that even now sometimes for me
it's more challenging to exercise or entertain a worldview in
which there is no continuation of the human soul after death.
(28:08):
And that's regardless of logic or reason. It's just such
a huge part of not only the Christian worldview view
but also the mainstream worldview that of course what we
have is special, and that somehow it continues on in
one form or another, either directly aligned with some sort
of belief system or just you know, in sort of
the general pop culture sense of like spirits and angels
(28:29):
and like, there's just something that must live on after
we die in our physical bodies. And there's nothing wrong
with that concept, I think, at least just when it's
employed in a way that gives us hope and peace,
though of course it can also be used for opposite aims.
But to bring us back to this period, in which
like the Cult of Osiris is rising and it's becoming
more and more popular. Imagine a religious world and a
(28:52):
worldview in which the afterlife is largely unavailable. It exists,
but it's not for the common people, not for most people.
It is for a very small percentage of people. It
is like the equivalent of like extreme opulent wealth in
our world, you know, like it is the SuperMansion with
(29:14):
the apocalypse bunker. You know it is. This is only
for a very small, very slender portion of society. It
is not for you. But during the Middle Kingdom you
have this ongoing democratization of the afterlife, fritz It describes,
and this was enhanced by the cult of Osiris. So
I want to read a passage from Fritzer where he
(29:36):
goes through an example of this quote. Prior to the
Middle Kingdom, Egyptians believed that all people possessed a ka,
or a soul or life force, but only rulers possessed
a ba, which was the individual uniqueness that constitutes a personality.
It required the ka and the Ba to be kept
united or at least in close proximity for immortality in
(30:00):
the afterlife. When the people of the Middle kingdom came
to believe that all humans had a ba. They were
conceding that everyone could enjoy the after life if the
proper burial rituals were followed. Yeah, so suddenly it's available
to everyone who at least can undergo the proper rituals.
And so you saw certain rituals become more popular and
(30:22):
are more present in the archaeological record, such as the
use of shabti statues. They begin to appear in more tombs.
These would have been like little representations of servants, servants
that would work for the deceased in the afterlife, like
this will be buried with you, and now you will
have a servant to help you in the afterlife. This
(30:43):
sort of general idea we see in various other religions
as well. Okay, and so osiris becomes very popular within Egypt.
But then eventually the ancient Greeks and then the ancient
Romans they also get a whiff of osiris and they're like, oh,
we would like some of that as well. He points
out that the ancient Greeks and Romans were some of
(31:05):
the initial egyptomaniacs, and while the Greeks found on the
whole that the religion of the Egyptians was profoundly different
from their own. They were intrigued by its systems of
magic and by it, you know, its deities, just as
we are intrigued by these things today. And they did
recognize some fundamental similarities. He writes that the Greeks frequently
(31:27):
attempted to synchronize the gods of other cultures with their own,
and they certainly did this with the Egyptians. And actually,
for some Greek writers, these fundamental similarities were incredibly important.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Right, So they might say, actually, we're talking about the
same god when we say this God and they say
that God. But we just have different names for the
same one here.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Right, And they seem to take it even a step
beyond that, because it's one thing to say, well, you know,
I have my concept of God and you have yours
on the same you know where else, really on the
same wavelength. But it's another to say your yours came first.
I'm pretty sure mine's just a knockoff of yours, you know.
And we kind of see this. According to Fritz So,
(32:13):
fifth century BC Greek historian Herodotus concluded that knowledge of
the gods spread from Egyptian origins to the Greeks. So
it's like, well, the Egyptians discovered the gods first, and
we just followed. We learned of this from them, And anyway,
he ends up drawing numerous lines between Greek gods and
possible Egyptian origins, though Fritz points out that there are
(32:35):
there are clear exceptions to this line of thinking, such
as Poseidon, who was apparently brought to Greece more from
the direction of Libya. Still, others made these connections. To
Plutarch made these connections, so there seems to have been
at the very least like a recognized heritage in all
of this. Now that and certainly the Greeks and the
(32:56):
Romans were particularly taken by not only a Cyrus, but
also isis Here's another bit from Fritz that I want
to read. Quote. Although in the modern stereotype the Egyptian
religion is depicted as mystical, mysterious and magical, Greek and
Roman visitors did not see it in this way. Plutarch's
staunchly defended Egyptian religion as rational and ethical rather than
(33:19):
merely superstitious. Herodotus went so far as to credit the
Egyptians with the invention of the common practices of ancient religion,
such as altars, statues, and temples dedicated to the various gods.
The cult of Isis became so populated that it spread
throughout the lands of the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Roman Empire.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
I mean, first of all, ancient Egypt was simply so ancient,
like there were these remnants of great civilizations that had
been around for so long. We've mentioned this on the
show before, but the astounding fact that to the Romans,
like Plutarch, you know, the old King of Egypt, the
(34:00):
pyramids were older to them than the Roman Empire is
to us. The distance of history there is is crazy
to believe. So so there's there. On one hand, ancient
Egypt was just so evidently ancient as a great civilization,
you could imagine things, many things you had might have
(34:21):
come from it. But then also, as you're saying, there's
just this clear spread of say, the cult of Isis.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, and at the same time, yes, sometimes attributing things
to the Egyptians that that they probably didn't invent, Like
Fritz mentions that that Diodorus credited of Cyrus with the
invention of great cultivation and ultimately wine making, though there
does not seem to be evidence of this, you know
(34:48):
that they're that wine and great cultivation has an Egyptian
origin now, but eventually we do see more of a
full on appropriation and recreation of Egyptian concepts. And in
one of the strong examples of this, and one of
the concerns of Cyrus is the god so rapists, this
would have been a Greco Egyptian syncretic deity. So it's
(35:12):
it's like an amalgam of both Cyrus and in Oppus,
as well as aspects of various Greek deities, like I
think there's a little Zeus and Hades in there. This
would have been a being that would have that would
have become popular on under the Ptolemaic rule. But still
that doesn't mean that, for instance, that doesn't really seem
(35:34):
to impact Isis. Based on what I've read, the worship
of Isis may have spread even more in Roman culture.
Worship of Isis would travel along trade routes through the
Mediterranean world into Spain and even to the British Isles,
so I think there I've read articles about archaeological evidence
of Isis worship, like ancient Isis worship in London. So
(35:56):
I'm not talking about like later periods of Egyptomania where
you had occultists and so forth bringing in the concept
of isis, but kind of like original Isis worship, if
you will. But then again to the point, and I
don't want to go through all the examples of egypt Domania.
I do recommend everyone check out that book, because this
(36:16):
is a book that deals not only with like ancient
Egyptian religion and culture in its origin, but also these
various levels of egypt Domania from like you know, dealing
with examples from say the Victorian world and the Renaissance
on up through like trashy be movies if like you know,
brief breakdowns of some really bad Mummy movies. But they
(36:39):
are examples of at least the reverberations of international and
multicultural interest in ancient Egypt. And it may in many
cases it might not be that deep. You know, it
might be just like, oh, I kind of like how
this looks and this sounds weird to me, so I'm
gonna make a horror movie. But it's still you know,
reverberations are the same energy. But we'll mention one really
(37:02):
quickly so during Renaissance Egypt Doomania, there was still a
fair amount of pull toward Osiris. There's a character that
was an Italian who was originally named Giovanni Nani who
lived fourteen thirty two through fifteen oh two, went by
the name Viterbo, and he made various connections between Etruscan
(37:24):
traditions and the Egyptians. But he even went so far
as to claim that the Boreses were the descendants of Osiris.
I'm not sure what sort of supporting material he made
for that, but in anyway, Osiris would continue to serve
as a central figure in various waves of Egyptomania moving forward.
(37:45):
So Osiris is invoked in various occultist movements. In Osiris
is definitely invoked by various ancient astronaut writers, and you
also see the use of Osiris in the movements of
Afrocentrists and also afro Futurists. It's just, I mean, he
is a powerful figure mythologically, and of course he's going
(38:07):
to We're going to keep coming back to him and
finding new ways to sort of think about him and
new ways to invoke him.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Okay, well, I think maybe that will do it for
part one of our series on Osiris, but we've got
more to talk about next time. That's right.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
We shall return in a part two and that will
be on Thursday. In the meantime, certainly write in if
you have feedback on this episode of other examples of osiris,
or isisigyptomania that you want to bring up. Everything is
fair game, but just a reminder. Stuff Blow your Mind
is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we do listener mail.
(38:45):
On Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on
Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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