Osiris is the Greek name of a god of the Egyptian Mythologie. The translation of this name present of the difficulties and several assumptions are proposed. Thus “Ousir”, or “Iousiris”, according to an old C-W communication, was translated by “Seat of the Eye” (of the sun?), “the powerful eye”, “That which makes its throne” (by allusion to its seat), “the seat of powerful” (by reference to the crown), “That which it gave in function” (referring to its resurrection and its new creative power, thanks to the magic of Isis).

Its Egyptian name is Ousir or Asir ; it was called also Ounen-Néfer (“the eternally beautiful one”) and Khenty-Imentyou (“That which is with the head of the Westerners”, i.e. the late ones).

It belongs to large the Ennéade of Iounou (Héliopolis). It is the god of died and the guarantor of the survival of late in the underground world. Its symbol is the Pilier Djed, its attributes are the false beard, the stick Heka, the flagellum Nekhekh and the Couronne Atef.

In the Texts of the Pyramids , the late king is identified in Osiris. With the Average Empire, immortality is not any more the privilege of the sovereign: each late could reach the eternal life, becoming itself similar in Osiris.

The myth of Osiris

There exist several versions of the myth osirien, of which most recent was transmitted to us by Plutarque. Wire of Geb and Nout, husband of Isis, Osiris were king d' Égypte. Indeed, Geb, to the evening of its life, would have given in division the world to its two sons, Osiris and Seth. In Osiris the Black cotton soil of Egypt, in Seth sterile Red Grounds, the deserts which surround the Double Country.

The legend makes of Osiris and Isis, his wife, of the sovereigns benefactors. Osiris taught with human the rudiments of agriculture and fishing, while Isis taught them weaving and medicine. During this time, Seth reigned on the desert and hostile regions like on the foreign grounds. Jealous of his brother, it projected his assassination. During a banquet in the honor of Osiris, Seth offered to the assistance a splendid trunk, swearing to yield it to that which would fill up it perfectly. When the turn came from Osiris, which was the only one to reach that point, Seth made close again and seal the trunk, while its accomplices drove out the guests and kept Isis away… Seth threw the trunk in the the Nile, which carried it in the the Mediterranean. Osiris died drowned and therefore it is often represented the face of color blue or green

After the assassination of her husband, Isis was put in the search of its body. It found it with Byblos, with the Lebanon, from where, after many stratagems, it brought back it to Egypt to bury it and cry it. Seth ends up discovering the tomb, left the body the vault and cut up it in fourteen pieces which it dispersed in the Nile. Isis, the wife and faithful widow, found the scraps of the body of its beloved, except the phallus, swallowed by a fish. She reconstituted it out of clay, then she undertook to gather the ravaged body of her late husband, with the assistance of her sister Nephtys. It embauma the corpse, assisted by Anubis, giving again a last spark of strength to him. When it was revived temporarily by Isis, which insufflated the life to him, Osiris could fertilize it. It gave him a son, Horus, “the avenger of its Father”, who fought his uncle Seth in interminable tournaments. The court of the gods ends up slicing: Horus entered in possession of its heritage and occupied the throne of Egypt, like Pharaon after him.

Reconstituted by the rites of the embalming, Osiris became the first Momie, Ounen-Néfer (“the eternally beautiful one”) because protected from the putrefaction, and returned to the life the such ground of Egypt itself after each flood. Become the god of died and the Lord of Beyond, it transformed its kingdom into fertile fields, the Champs of Ialou. Since, it chairs the court divine during the weighing of the heart, with the aspect that we know to him, the arms crosseds on the chest, carrying the Atef crown, momifié and sheathed in a shroud of flax letting appear only its head and its naked hands which hold the badges of its royalty on the world of the “Westerners”. “Supreme Judge of the hearts”, it grants to late the eternal life or on the contrary theirs refuses and condemns them to nothing.

The worship

In the beginning, Osiris was probably a god of fruitfulness, personification of the vegetable revival, in opposition to Seth the sterile one. Its funerary aspect undoubtedly derives from Andjety, divinity local of Bousiris, from which it borrows the attributes such as the Heka and the Nekhekh, symbols of Pasteur, and distinguished of Pharaon, guard of his people. By a frequent syncretism in the Egyptian religion, it was also identified with the god-jackal of Abydos, Khenty-Imentyou, “That which is with the head of the Westerners”.

Osiris is thus the god of the revival, that which reappears eternally. It is also the personification of the fertile ground of the delta and the cultivable fields, the guarantor of the balance of the world - the Maât - and of the natural cycles: died and rebirth, dryness and fertility, disappearance and reappearance of the star Sothis.

Sixteen name claiming possession of a relic, the places of worship of the god multiplied. Its name is especially associated with Abydos, in High-Egypt, and with Bousiris, in the delta. In Abydos, where was to be preserved a supposed reliquary-fetish to contain the head of the god, the burial of the king Djer, Pharaon of, was comparable with the tomb of Osiris. Séthi {{Ier}} made there build a cenotaph which took again the architecture of this tomb and joined it with the temple dédicatoire that it built on the road of pilgrimage of the Holy City. Abydos was the door connecting the underground world to the world of alive and the place of “Great the annual Procession”. Each year, in the 4th month of the Flood, the god left his temple, sheltered in his portable boat Nechemet; then it crosses the “Large terrace” where clashed its faithful and partisans of Seth. Arrived at the crowned place of Peker, it is descended in the tomb from Djer, ressuscity and escorted triumphs over it in its temple.

One could identify other burials of Osiris of which that of Gizeh, recently discovered, that of Philae, on an island close to the large temple of Isis, those of Dendérah and Karnak. Others still are attested by the ancient historians like Hérodote, which visited some with Know.

The six king-gods are in the order:

1. Re,
2. Shou,
3. Geb,
4. Osiris,
5. Horus,
6. Thot (dubious).