Hi Cladking

I find your perspective of Osiris fundamentally flawed.

You claim that the earliest "incarnation" of Osiris, depicting him in mummified form means that he was somehow "born dead."

This is fallacious. The myths which survive do not attest to this idea in any way or form. He was, in fact, killed in most versions of the Osirian myth which demonstrates he was 'living' and not "born dead", as you have claimed.

You are promulgating an invented mythology to suit your argument which is not supported by the surviving literature.

Plutarch's documentation of the myth of Osiris and Isis details how Osiris was locked alive in a chest and then thrown into the Nile, where we infer that he suffered death by drowning.

Set then dismembers his brother and the fourteen body parts which are scattered and then reassembled by Isis is an obvious metaphorical expression of the waxing and waning lunar cycle.

Your dripping, mummified corpse is, in my opinion, a literal reference to the annual inundation of the Nile. You are aware, I am sure, of the association of Osiris with death and rebirth in Nature. See here, where wheat seeds are seen sprouting from Osiris as the god of death and rebirth:

<[en.wikipedia.org];

In an earlier post, you explained that you preferred literal readings of inscriptions. Quite literally, being instructed not to tread on the "corpse secretions of Osiris" is a reminder that seedlings should not be trodden on but a person must "tiptoe" - or at least tread softly and carefully - in the crop fields, for, if the seedlings are damaged this will cause a failure in the life-sustaining crops that the kingdom depended upon.

There is nothing "nonsensical", "inconsistent" or "illogical" about the reference to PT 722 c and d, which you cite.

Your determination to see illogicality is arguably blinding you to the obvious.

Craig M Lyons writes:

"According to Plutarch, Osiris was slain-suffocated in the box on the seventeenth day of the month of Athyr, when the sun was in Scorpius, in the twenty-eighth year of his reign.

The numbers are significant. Although the moon completes its phases in 29½ days, the number 28 was used symbolically for this interval. And an intricate logic links the moon with the Nile through the number 28.

At Aswan, the traditional southern limit of Egypt, a nilometer measured the height of the river's maximum rise as 28 cubits. This peak occurred in the autumn, in the month of Athyr, just as the Nile was about to decline. Osiris was slain on the seventeenth day of Athyr. Full moon was counted as the month's fifteenth day, but the moon looks full the day before and the day after.

By day 17, it is obvious the moon has started to wane. So, the death of Osiris marked the "death," or fall, of the Nile from its annual flood height and coincided with the day of the moon's monthly "death." Osiris, the god of the Nile and Egypt's life, was a moon god because the river, the land, and the moon wax and wane, cycle after cycle."

WB Yeats: "I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams."

:)



Post Edited (14-Jun-14 23:29)