Osiris

Osiris

Osiris (, from Egyptian wsjr, Coptic ⲟⲩⲥⲓⲣⲉ) is the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He was classically depicted as a green-skinned deity with a pharaoh's beard, partially mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive atef crown, and holding a symbolic crook and flail. He was one of the first to be associated with the mummy wrap. When his brother, Set, cut him up into pieces after killing him, Isis, his wife, found all the pieces and wrapped his body up, enabling him to return to life. Osiris was at times considered the eldest son of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut, as well as being brother and husband of Isis, with Horus being considered his posthumously begotten son. In the Old Kingdom (2686 - 2181 BC) the pharaoh was considered a son of the sun god Ra who, after his death, ascended to join Ra in the sky. With the spread of the Osiris cult, however, there was a change in beliefs. He was also associated with the epithet Khenti-Amentiu, meaning "Foremost of the Westerners", a reference to his kingship in the land of the dead. Through syncretism with Iah, he is also a god of the Moon.Osiris can be considered the brother of Isis, Set, Nephthys, and Horus the Elder, and father of Horus the Younger. The first evidence of the worship of Osiris was found in the middle of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt (25th century BC), although it is likely that he was worshiped much earlier; the Khenti-Amentiu epithet dates to at least the First Dynasty, and was also used as a pharaonic title. Most information available on the Osiris myth is derived from allusions contained in the Pyramid Texts at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, later New Kingdom source documents such as the Shabaka Stone and "The Contendings of Horus and Seth", and much later, in narrative style from the writings of Greek authors including Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus.Osiris was the judge of the dead and the underworld, and the agency that granted all life, including sprouting vegetation and the fertile flooding of the Nile River. He was described as "He Who is Permanently Benign and Youthful" and the "Lord of Silence". The kings of Egypt were associated with Osiris in death – as Osiris rose from the dead so they would be in union with him, and inherit eternal life through a process of imitative magic.Through the hope of new life after death, Osiris began to be associated with the cycles observed in nature, in particular vegetation and the annual flooding of the Nile, through his links with the heliacal rising of Orion and Sirius at the start of the new year. Osiris was widely worshipped until the decline of ancient Egyptian religion during the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire.Some Egyptologists believe Osiris may have been a former living ruler - possibly a shepherd who lived in Predynastic times (5500-3100 BC) in the Nile Delta, whose beneficial rule led to him being revered as a god. The accoutrements of the shepherd, the crook and the flail - once insignia of the Delta god Anedjti, with whom Osiris was associated - support this theory.

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