The blow was parried by the wisdom or the folly of the
vast majority of mankind, who refused to purchase a chance of saving
their souls with the certainty of extinguishing the species.
XXXVIII. The Myth of Osiris
IN ANCIENT EGYPT the god whose death and resurrection were annually
celebrated with alternate sorrow and joy was Osiris, the most
popular of all Egyptian deities; and there are good grounds for
classing him in one of his aspects with Adonis and Attis as a
personification of the great yearly vicissitudes of nature,
especially of the corn. But the immense vogue which he enjoyed for
many ages induced his devoted worshippers to heap upon him the
attributes and powers of many other gods; so that it is not always
easy to strip him, so to say, of his borrowed plumes and to restore
them to their proper owners.
The story of Osiris is told in a connected form only by Plutarch,
whose narrative has been confirmed and to some extent amplified in
modern times by the evidence of the monuments.
Osiris was the offspring of an intrigue between the earth-god Seb
(Keb or Geb, as the name is sometimes transliterated) and the
sky-goddess Nut.
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