He came to be looked on as an embodiment of Set or
Typhon, the Egyptian devil and enemy of Osiris. For it was in the
shape of a black pig that Typhon injured the eye of the god Horus,
who burned him and instituted the sacrifice of the pig, the sun-god
Ra having declared the beast abominable. Again, the story that
Typhon was hunting a boar when he discovered and mangled the body of
Osiris, and that this was the reason why pigs were sacrificed once a
year, is clearly a modernised version of an older story that Osiris,
like Adonis and Attis, was slain or mangled by a boar, or by Typhon
in the form of a boar. Thus, the annual sacrifice of a pig to Osiris
might naturally be interpreted as vengeance inflicted on the hostile
animal that had slain or mangled the god. But, in the first place,
when an animal is thus killed as a solemn sacrifice once and once
only in the year, it generally or always means that the animal is
divine, that he is spared and respected the rest of the year as a
god and slain, when he is slain, also in the character of a god.
Pages:
1310
1311
1312
1313
1314
1315
1316
1317
1318
1319
1320
1321
1322
1323
1324
1325
1326
1327
1328
1329
1330
1331
1332
1333
1334