But little weight can be
attached to their evidence; for the statement of Diodorus is vague
and rhetorical, and the reasons which Macrobius, one of the fathers
of solar mythology, assigns for the identification are exceedingly
slight.
The ground upon which some modern writers seem chiefly to rely for
the identification of Osiris with the sun is that the story of his
death fits better with the solar phenomena than with any other in
nature. It may readily be admitted that the daily appearance and
disappearance of the sun might very naturally be expressed by a myth
of his death and resurrection; and writers who regard Osiris as the
sun are careful to indicate that it is the diurnal, and not the
annual, course of the sun to which they understand the myth to
apply. Thus Renouf, who identified Osiris with the sun, admitted
that the Egyptian sun could not with any show of reason be described
as dead in winter. But if his daily death was the theme of the
legend, why was it celebrated by an annual ceremony? This fact alone
seems fatal to the interpretation of the myth as descriptive of
sunset and sunrise.
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