Budge, Ernest A. Wallis [Bearb.]: The book of the dead: the Papyrus Ani in the British Museum ; the Egyptian text with interlinear transliteration and translation, a running translation, introd. etc. ([Text]) (London, 1895)

INTRODUCTION'.

piuiarch’s version. the month Hathor,1 2 when Osiris was in the twenty-eighth year either of his reign or
of his age. The first to know of what had happened were the Pans and Satyrs,
who dwelt hard by Panopolis ; and finally the news was brought to Isis at Coptos,
whereupon she cut off a lock of hair3 ancl put on mourning apparel. She then set
out in deep grief to find her husband’s body, and in the course of her wanderings
she discovered that Osiris had been united with her sister Nephthys, and that
Anubis, the offspring of the union, hacl been exposed by his mother as soon as
born. Isis tracked him by the help of dogs, and bred him up to be her guard and
attendant. Soon after she learned that the chest had been carried by the sea to
Byblos, where it had been gently laid by the waves among the branches of a
tamarisk tree (ipeUrj tlvV), which in a very short time had grown to a magnificent
size and had enclosed the chest within its trunk. The king of the country,
admiring the tree, cut it down and made a pillar for the roof of his house of that
part which contained the body of Osiris. When Isis heard of this she went to
Byblos, and, gaining admittance to the palace through the report of the royal
maidens, she was made nurse to one of the king’s sons. Instead of nursing the
child in the ordinary way, Isis gave him her finger to suck, and each night she put
him into the fire to consume his mortal parts, changing herself the while into a
swallow' and bemoaning her fate. But the queen once happened to see her son in
flames, and cried out, and thus deprived him of immortality. Then Isis told the
queen her story, and begged for the pillar which supported the roof. This she cut
open, and took out the chest and her husband’s body,3 and her lamentations were
so terrible that one of the royal children died of fright. She then brought the

1 In the Calendar In the fourth Sallier papyrus (No. 10,184) this day is marked triply unlucky
^ ^ ^, and it is said that great lamentation by Isis and Nephthys took place for Un-nefer (Osiris)

thereon. See Chabas, Le Calendrier, p. 50. Here we have Plutarch’s statement supported by
documentary evidence. Some very interesting details concerning the festivals of Osiris in the month
Choiak are given by Loret in Recueil de Travaux, t. iii., p. 43 ff; t. iv., p. 21 ff.; and t. v., p. 85 fif.
The various mysteries which took place thereat are minutely described.

2 On the cutting of the hair as a sign of mourning, see W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the
Semites, p. 395 ; and for other beliefs about the hair see Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii., p. 364, and
Fraser, Golden Bough, pp. 193--208.

8 The story continues that Isis then wrapped the pillar in fine linen and anointed it with oil, and
restored it to the queen. Plutarch adds that the piece of wood is, to this day, preserved in the temple
of Isis, and worshipped by the people of Byblos. Prof. Robertson Smith suggests (Religion of the
Semites, p. 175) that the rite of draping and anointing a sacred stump supplies the answer to the
unsolved question of the nature of the ritual practices connected with the Ashera. That some sort
of drapery belonged to the Ashera is clear from 2 Kings xxiii., 7. See also Tylor, Primitive Culture,
vol. 11., p. 150; and Fraser, Golden Bough, vol. i., p. 304 ff.