However the
details of the ceremony may have varied in different places, the
pretence of finding the god's body, and probably of restoring it to
life, was a great event in the festal year of the Egyptians. The
shouts of joy which greeted it are described or alluded to by many
ancient writers.
The funeral rites of Osiris, as they were observed at his great
festival in the sixteen provinces of Egypt, are described in a long
inscription of the Ptolemaic period, which is engraved on the walls
of the god's temple at Denderah, the Tentyra of the Greeks, a town
of Upper Egypt situated on the western bank of the Nile about forty
miles north of Thebes. Unfortunately, while the information thus
furnished is remarkably full and minute on many points, the
arrangement adopted in the inscription is so confused and the
expression often so obscure that a clear and consistent account of
the ceremonies as a whole can hardly be extracted from it. Moreover,
we learn from the document that the ceremonies varied somewhat in
the several cities, the ritual of Abydos, for example, differing
from that of Busiris.
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