Tricked at a banquet into lying down in a chest, which was sealed and thrown into the Nile
The chest had been built secretly to his exact measurements.
Myth · Egyptian
Osiris
Egyptian mythology — god of the dead and resurrection
Murdered king turned lord of the dead. His brother tricked him into a chest, drowned him and later cut him to pieces; his wife reassembled him long enough to conceive their son, and he became ruler of the underworld, where he presides over the weighing of the heart. His death and revival made him the god of the Nile flood, of grain, and of every Egyptian's hope of an afterlife.
How to spot them
- ▸A mummified man with green or black skin, holding a crook and a flail
- ▸Wears the tall white atef crown with a plume on each side
- ▸Enthroned as judge at the weighing of the heart against the feather of Maat
- ▸Quiz clue: 'Abydos', 'djed pillar', 'fourteen pieces', 'the flooding of the Nile'
Stories & episodes
Cut into fourteen pieces and scattered across Egypt, then reassembled by his wife
Every piece was recovered except the phallus, swallowed by a fish in the Nile.
Fathered a son after his own death, who grew up to avenge him and take back the throne
Isis, in the form of a kite, conceived Horus over the corpse.
Presides over the weighing of the heart against the feather of truth
Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead; Ammit devours the hearts that fail.
His yearly death and rebirth were identified with the Nile flood and the sprouting of grain
'Corn mummies' of soil and seed were made to germinate in his shape.
His backbone is venerated as a pillar-shaped amulet meaning stability
The djed pillar, ritually raised at his festivals.
Plutarch wrote the fullest surviving version of his murder story, and in Greek
On Isis and Osiris, second century AD.
Quick-fire facts
- •His chief cult centre was Abydos, believed to hold his head; Busiris in the Delta was another
- •He is the son of Geb and Nut, brother-husband of Isis, brother of Set and Nephthys, father of Horus
- •His regalia are the crook (heka) and flail (nekhakha), and the plumed atef crown
- •Green skin signifies vegetation and rebirth; black signifies the fertile Nile silt
- •The djed pillar amulet represents his backbone and carries the meaning 'stability'
- •The fullest narrative of the myth is Plutarch's On Isis and Osiris, not an Egyptian text
- •From the Middle Kingdom any blessed dead person could be called 'the Osiris N', taking his name
- •Anubis, god of embalming, is said to have performed the first mummification on his body
- •The Greeks identified him with Dionysus
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Sources
- Richard H. Wilkinson — The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
- Geraldine Pinch — Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt