Thus according to what seems to have been the general native
tradition Osiris was a good and beloved king of Egypt, who suffered
a violent death but rose from the dead and was henceforth worshipped
as a deity. In harmony with this tradition he was regularly
represented by sculptors and painters in human and regal form as a
dead king, swathed in the wrappings of a mummy, but wearing on his
head a kingly crown and grasping in one of his hands, which were
left free from the bandages, a kingly sceptre. Two cities above all
others were associated with his myth or memory. One of them was
Busiris in Lower Egypt, which claimed to possess his backbone; the
other was Abydos in Upper Egypt, which gloried in the possession of
his head. Encircled by the nimbus of the dead yet living god,
Abydos, originally an obscure place, became from the end of the Old
Kingdom the holiest spot in Egypt; his tomb there would seem to have
been to the Egyptians what the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at
Jerusalem is to Christians. It was the wish of every pious man that
his dead body should rest in hallowed earth near the grave of the
glorified Osiris.
Pages:
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035
1036
1037
1038
1039
1040