Thus we may take it as fairly certain that from 30 B.C.
onwards the Egyptian festivals were stationary in the solar year.
Herodotus tells us that the grave of Osiris was at Sais in Lower
Egypt, and that there was a lake there upon which the sufferings of
the god were displayed as a mystery by night. This commemoration of
the divine passion was held once a year: the people mourned and beat
their breasts at it to testify their sorrow for the death of the
god; and an image of a cow, made of gilt wood with a golden sun
between its horns, was carried out of the chamber in which it stood
the rest of the year. The cow no doubt represented Isis herself, for
cows were sacred to her, and she was regularly depicted with the
horns of a cow on her head, or even as a woman with the head of a
cow. It is probable that the carrying out of her cow-shaped image
symbolised the goddess searching for the dead body of Osiris; for
this was the native Egyptian interpretation of a similar ceremony
observed in Plutarch's time about the winter solstice, when the gilt
cow was carried seven times round the temple.
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