Osiris Famous Quotes

Fortunately, the great king did not have to deal with Set on his own. The Egyptians also worshipped Horus, the son of Osiris. Horus took the twin forms of a falcon, the most visually acute of all creatures, and the still-famous hieroglyphic single Egyptian eye (as alluded to in Rule 7). Osiris is tradition, aged and willfully blind. Horus, his son, could and would, by contrast, see. Horus was the god of attention. That is not the same as rationality. Because he paid attention, Horus could perceive and triumph against the evils of Set, his uncle, albeit at great cost. When Horus confronts Set, they have a terrible battle. Before Set’s defeat and banishment from the kingdom, he tears out one of his nephew’s eyes. But the eventually victorious Horus takes back the eye. Then he does something truly unexpected: he journeys voluntarily to the underworld and gives the eye to his father.

inscriptions on pyramid walls (such as the Old Kingdom’s “Pyramid Texts”), painted on the inside of coffins (such as the Middle Kingdom’s “Coffin Texts”), or texts written on papyri (such as the famous “Book of the Dead,” which dates back to the Second Intermediate Period).

And in the center was the most brilliant object of all: a vast statue of the god Serapis. Like the Greco-Egyptian city he sat above, this god was an international hybrid. Look at his handsome bearded profile and you might think you were looking at Jupiter himself, though he was Egyptian enough that others called him “Osiris.” An immortal amalgam that, some said, had been intentionally created to bring harmony to the mixed races in the city below, causing them to pray rather than fight together. Nonsense, maybe—but Serapis had nonetheless acted as an extremely effective divine diplomat, helping to unite this famously argumentative people. In a city that, at night, glowed with countless flames in a thousand temples, this god was one of the most eagerly worshipped of all.