For the historian
Berosus, who records the festival and its date, probably used the
Macedonian calendar, since he dedicated his history to Antiochus
Soter; and in his day the Macedonian month Lous appears to have
corresponded to the Babylonian month Tammuz. If this conjecture is
right, the view that the mock king at the Sacaea was slain in the
character of a god would be established.
There is a good deal more evidence that in Egypt the slain
corn-spirit--the dead Osiris--was represented by a human victim,
whom the reapers slew on the harvest-field, mourning his death in a
dirge, to which the Greeks, through a verbal misunderstanding, gave
the name of Maneros. For the legend of Busiris seems to preserve a
reminiscence of human sacrifices once offered by the Egyptians in
connexion with the worship of Osiris. Busiris was said to have been
an Egyptian king who sacrificed all strangers on the altar of Zeus.
The origin of the custom was traced to a dearth which afflicted the
land of Egypt for nine years. A Cyprian seer informed Busiris that
the dearth would cease if a man were annually sacrificed to Zeus.
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