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The conclusion lies very near at hand, that the Osiris story is in fact the Tammuz story, brought into Egypt by the earliest Semitic tribes. In any case it was a race with a large Semitic mixture which utilized this story in working out a theory of immortality; and in all probability we have in the Osiris-Isis religion a third great religion due to the Semitic race.
They clung to the belief in a life in the grave. The greater people had leisure to learn and to provide the magic necessary to secure a comfortable future life. They loved life and hated death. Thus it was when the priests of the Osiris-Isis religion made their bid to the classical world. They offered immortality by initiation.
The texts were probably somewhat older, but are now used for the first time in this manner, no doubt owing to the increased facility in carving stone. In these the various powers of the other world are invoked by the incidents of the Osiris-Isis legend, to preserve the dead body, to feed the ka, and to assist the other spirit, the ba, in its struggles with supernatural powers.
The pyramid texts introduce us to three important ideas, a curious plurality of the spirit existence, a condition of immortality better than that of the old underworld or Earu, and most important of all, the identification of the king with Osiris according to the terms of the Osiris-Isis legend. In all the older offering formulas it is only the ka spirit which is mentioned.
However this may be, it is clear that the craving of the king for a special immortality, for an exalted future life, found its justification through the Osiris-Isis myth. Horus was the successor of Osiris as lord of the earth and the living. The kings of Egypt were the successors of Horus. The chief name of the king was his Horus name; Menes was the Horus Aha, Cheops the Horus Mejeru.
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