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It is he whom the Egyptians sing of at their banquets under the name of Maneros. But Isis put the coffer by and went to see her son Horus at the city of Buto, and Typhon found the coffer as he was hunting a boar one night by the light of a full moon. And he knew the body, and rent it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them abroad.
This song agrees exactly with that which the Hellenes sing calling on the name of Linos, so that besides many other things about which I wonder among those matters which concern Egypt, I wonder especially about this, namely whence they got the song of Linos. It is evident however that they have sung this song from immemorial time, and in the Egyptian tongue Linos is called Maneros.
Gradually the song itself, instead of the king's son, began to be called Maneros, and became the well-known banquet song of the social feasts, calling upon the guests to enjoy life while they might. In time the song became a symbol of gaiety and merriment instead of grief. In most of the ancient civilizations, the songs appear to have been accompanied by clapping of hands, to mark the rhythm.
Theocritus, who was there, wrote a poem on the day, and tells us of the crowds in the streets, of the queen's gifts to the temple, and of the beautiful tapestries, on which were woven the figures of the god and goddess breathing as if alive; and he has given a free translation of the Maneros, the national poem in which the priests each year consoled the goddess Isis for the death of Osiris, which was sung through the streets of Alexandria by a Greek girl in the procession.
While travelling in Ethiopia, the story runs, Osiris met a troupe of revelling satyrs, and, being fond of singing, he admitted them to his train of musicians. In their midst were nine young maidens, skilled in music and various sciences, evidently the prototype of the Grecian Muses. An important mythical character was Maneros, son of the earliest Egyptian king.
Afterwards he received the greatest honour on account of the goddess, for this Maneros, whom the Egyptians so frequently call upon at their banquets, is none other than he. This story is contradicted by those who tell us that the true name of this child was Palaestinus, or Pelusius, and that the city of this name was built by the goddess in memory of him.
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.
In Aberdeenshire, while the last corn cut was generally used to make the clyack sheaf, it was sometimes, though rarely, the first corn cut that was dressed up as a woman and carried home with ceremony. This Phoenician song was called by the Greeks Linus or Ailinus and explained, like Maneros, as a lament for the death of a youth named Linus.
And they further add that this Maneros is thus honoured by the Egyptians at their feasts because he was the first who invented music.
To the plaintive song or cry sung or uttered by Egyptian reapers the Greeks gave the name of Maneros, and explained the name by a story that Maneros, the only son of the first Egyptian king, invented agriculture, and, dying an untimely death, was thus lamented by the people.
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