"At every burial there was
enacted a representation of the divine mystery which had been
performed of old over Osiris, when his son, his sisters, his friends
were gathered round his mangled remains and succeeded by their
spells and manipulations in converting his broken body into the
first mummy, which they afterwards reanimated and furnished with the
means of entering on a new individual life beyond the grave. The
mummy of the deceased was Osiris; the professional female mourners
were his two sisters Isis and Nephthys; Anubis, Horus, all the gods
of the Osirian legend gathered about the corpse." In this way every
dead Egyptian was identified with Osiris and bore his name. From the
Middle Kingdom onwards it was the regular practice to address the
deceased as "Osiris So-and-So," as if he were the god himself, and
to add the standing epithet "true of speech," because true speech
was characteristic of Osiris. The thousands of inscribed and
pictured tombs that have been opened in the valley of the Nile prove
that the mystery of the resurrection was performed for the benefit
of every dead Egyptian; as Osiris died and rose again from the dead,
so all men hoped to arise like him from death to life eternal.
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