The barley had sprouted and sent
out shoots two or three inches long. Again, in the cemetery at
Cynopolis "were numerous burials of Osiris figures. These were made
of grain wrapped up in cloth and roughly shaped like an Osiris, and
placed inside a bricked-up recess at the side of the tomb, sometimes
in small pottery coffins, sometimes in wooden coffins in the form of
a hawkmummy, sometimes without any coffins at all." These
corn-stuffed figures were bandaged like mummies with patches of
gilding here and there, as if in imitation of the golden mould in
which the similar figures of Osiris were cast at the festival of
sowing. Again, effigies of Osiris, with faces of green wax and their
interior full of grain, were found buried near the necropolis of
Thebes. Finally, we are told by Professor Erman that between the
legs of mummies "there sometimes lies a figure of Osiris made of
slime; it is filled with grains of corn, the sprouting of which is
intended to signify the resurrection of the god." We cannot doubt
that, just as the burial of corn-stuffed images of Osiris in the
earth at the festival of sowing was designed to quicken the seed, so
the burial of similar images in the grave was meant to quicken the
dead, in other words, to ensure their spiritual immortality.
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