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Indeed, even at that time the priests of higher grade would have opposed his election; but Ameres was as popular with the lower classes of the priesthood as with the people at large, and their suffrages would have swamped those of his opponents. The multitude had, indeed, never heard so much as a whisper against the orthodoxy of the high priest of Osiris.
Osiris was the son of this goddess who was really a Mai or Mary, the Celestial Mother, he being the only God of the Egyptians who was born upon this earth and lived among men. Of this Forlong remarks: "His birthplace was Mount Sinai; called by the Egyptians Nysa, hence his Greek name Dionysos."
It is evident that the priests of Heliopolis "edited" the religious texts copied and multiplied in the College to suit their own views, but in the early times when they began their work, the worship of Osiris was so widespread, and the belief in him as the god of the resurrection so deeply ingrained in the hearts of the Egyptians, that even in the Heliopolitan system of theology Osiris and his cycle, or company of gods, were made to hold a very prominent position.
These abstentions, graces now, were virtues then, and so efficacious that they perhaps sufficed, as rightly they should, for absolution. But while the assessors listen and Osiris looks gravely on, no one accuses.
His wife, Isis, mourning for the death and the mutilation of her husband, for many days searched diligently with her companions for the portions of the body, and having at length found them, united them together, and bestowed upon them decent interment, while Osiris, thus restored, became the chief deity of his subjects, and his worship was united with that of Isis, as the fecundating and fertilizing powers of nature.
From a hundred and fifty to two hundred miles above Fayum on the left bank of the Nile is Siut, where Ramses XIII took a rest of two days. He was even obliged to halt there, for the mummy of the late pharaoh was still in Abydos, where they were making solemn prayers at the grave of Osiris. Siut was one of the richest parts of Upper Egypt.
"I went no more into caves, for I meditated greatly. 'Osiris, said I, 'creates lions, elephants, horses, and Set gives birth to serpents, bats, crocodiles; the monster which I met is surely a creation of Set, and since it exceeds everything known by us under the sun, Set is a mightier god than Osiris. "So I turned to Set, and on returning to Egypt fixed myself in his temple.
In the nether world, the kingdom of Osiris, where the forty-two judges of the dead pronounce sentence on the worth of the soul after it has been weighed by the goddess of truth and Thoth, who holds the office of writer in heaven, she could hope to meet her dear ones again, but only in case her unjustified soul were not obliged to enter on the career of transmigration through the bodies of different animals, and her body, to whom the soul had been entrusted, remained in a state of preservation.
Thus ended the ceremonies in the month of Khoiak. In the foregoing account of the festival, drawn from the great inscription of Denderah, the burial of Osiris figures prominently, while his resurrection is implied rather than expressed. This defect of the document, however, is amply compensated by a remarkable series of bas-reliefs which accompany and illustrate the inscription.
This kingdom of Osiris was at first thought of as being in the marshlands of the delta; when these became familiar it was transferred to Syria, and finally to the north-east of the sky, where the Milky Way became the heavenly Nile.
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