Hymns addressed to Osiris contain allusions to this
important side of his nature. In one of them it is said that the
world waxes green in triumph through him; and another declares,
"Thou art the father and mother of mankind, they live on thy breath,
they subsist on the flesh of thy body." We may conjecture that in
this paternal aspect he was supposed, like other gods of fertility,
to bless men and women with offspring, and that the processions at
his festival were intended to promote this object as well as to
quicken the seed in the ground. It would be to misjudge ancient
religion to denounce as lewd and profligate the emblems and the
ceremonies which the Egyptians employed for the purpose of giving
effect to this conception of the divine power. The ends which they
proposed to themselves in these rites were natural and laudable;
only the means they adopted to compass them were mistaken. A similar
fallacy induced the Greeks to adopt a like symbolism in their
Dionysiac festivals, and the superficial but striking resemblance
thus produced between the two religions has perhaps more than
anything else misled enquirers, both ancient and modern, into
identifying worships which, though certainly akin in nature, are
perfectly distinct and independent in origin.
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