The Greeks identified his parents with their own
deities Cronus and Rhea. When the sun-god Ra perceived that his wife
Nut had been unfaithful to him, he declared with a curse that she
should be delivered of the child in no month and no year. But the
goddess had another lover, the god Thoth or Hermes, as the Greeks
called him, and he playing at draughts with the moon won from her a
seventy-second part of every day, and having compounded five whole
days out of these parts he added them to the Egyptian year of three
hundred and sixty days. This was the mythical origin of the five
supplementary days which the Egyptians annually inserted at the end
of every year in order to establish a harmony between lunar and
solar time. On these five days, regarded as outside the year of
twelve months, the curse of the sun-god did not rest, and
accordingly Osiris was born on the first of them. At his nativity a
voice rang out proclaiming that the Lord of All had come into the
world. Some say that a certain Pamyles heard a voice from the temple
at Thebes bidding him announce with a shout that a great king, the
beneficent Osiris, was born.
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