Section 3. Osiris a God of Fertility.
AS A GOD of vegetation Osiris was naturally conceived as a god
of creative energy in general, since men at a certain stage of
evolution fail to distinguish between the reproductive powers of
animals and of plants. Hence a striking feature in his worship was
the coarse but expressive symbolism by which this aspect of his
nature was presented to the eye not merely of the initiated but of
the multitude. At his festival women used to go about the villages
singing songs in his praise and carrying obscene images of him
which they set in motion by means of strings. The custom was
probably a charm to ensure the growth of the crops. A similar
image of him, decked with all the fruits of the earth, is said to have
stood in a temple before a figure of Isis, and in the chambers
dedicated to him at Philae the dead god is portrayed lying on his
bier in an attitude which indicates in the plainest way that even in
death his generative virtue was not extinct but only suspended,
ready to prove a source of life and fertility to the world when the
opportunity should offer. Hymns addressed to Osiris contain
allusions to this important side of his nature. In one of them it is
said that the world waxes green in triumph through him; and
another declares, "Thou art the father and mother of mankind, they
live on thy breath, they subsist on the flesh of thy body." We may
conjecture that in this paternal aspect he was supposed, like other
gods of fertility, to bless men and women with offspring, and that
the processions at his festival were intended to promote this object
as well as to quicken the seed in the ground. It would be to
misjudge ancient religion to denounce as lewd and profligate the
emblems and the ceremonies which the Egyptians employed for
the purpose of giving effect to this conception of the divine power.
The ends which they proposed to themselves in these rites were
natural and laudable; only the means they adopted to compass
them were mistaken. A similar fallacy induced the Greeks to adopt
a like symbolism in their Dionysiac festivals, and the superficial
but striking resemblance thus produced between the two religions
has perhaps more than anything else misled enquirers, both
ancient and modern, into identifying worships which, though
certainly akin in nature, are perfectly distinct and independent in
origin. 1