Section 4. Osiris a God of the Dead.
WE have seen that in one of his aspects Osiris was the ruler and
judge of the dead. To a people like the Egyptians, who not only
believed in a life beyond the grave but actually spent much of
their time, labour, and money in preparing for it, this office of the
god must have appeared hardly, if at all, less important than his
function of making the earth to bring forth its fruits in due season.
We may assume that in the faith of his worshippers the two
provinces of the god were intimately connected. In laying their
dead in the grave they committed them to his keeping who could
raise them from the dust to life eternal, even as he caused the
seed to spring from the ground. Of that faith the corn-stuffed
effigies of Osiris found in Egyptian tombs furnish an eloquent and
un-equivocal testimony. They were at once an emblem and an
instrument of resurrection. Thus from the sprouting of the grain the
ancient Egyptians drew an augury of human immortality. They are
not the only people who have built the same lofty hopes on the
same slender foundation. 1
A god who thus fed his people with his own broken body in this
life, and who held out to them a promise of a blissful eternity in a
better world hereafter, naturally reigned supreme in their
affections. We need not wonder, therefore, that in Egypt the
worship of the other gods was overshadowed by that of Osiris,
and that while they were revered each in his own district, he and
his divine partner Isis were adored in all. 2
