April 19, 2025 • 40 mins
In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the Ancient Egyptian deity Osiris, an underworld fertility god and judge of the dead. (originally published 4/2/2024)
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I am Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday, so we
are heading into the vault for an older episode of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is part one of
our series on Osiris and the Cult of Osiris, originally
published on April second, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
That's right, let's geek out on some Egyptomania.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
And in this episode, we're going to be diving into
ancient Egyptian mythology once more to discuss an important deity
connected to the topic of resurrection, which I think was
probably on my mind over the weekend due to first five.
It was the Easter holiday. Also on Weird House Cinema,
which is of our Friday episode in the Stuffed Blue
(01:07):
Mind podcast feed, we talked about doctor FIBs rises. Again,
I did not think about this in terms of the
holiday at all. I didn't think, oh, this is our
Easter selection. But then I noticed our social media posts
about it on Easter Sunday, and it's like, you know,
talking about the rise of doctor Fibb's He's rising again.
I was like, oh, wow, we sort of accidentally nailed
(01:29):
it there.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
It's a movie that has so many resurrections. It has
Doctor Fhibes himself coming out of a sort of a
chemically induced slumber where at the end of the first
movie he replaces his blood with embalming fluid and then
goes to sleep in a giant glass contraption under the floor.
At the beginning of this movie he wakes up again.
So that's one sense of rising, though I guess it's
(01:52):
questionable whether he technically died or not there, so he
rises at the beginning of the movie. There. The rest
of the movie is about him trying to live, literally
resurrect his wife Victoria played by Carolyn Monroe from the dead.
She sort of spins the whole movie in a glass
display case, and he is going to take her to
a temple in ancient Egypt under which lies the secret
(02:13):
to resurrection and eternal life. And he departs the end
of the movie on a barge, singing somewhere over the
rainbow to take Carolyn and row down there and bring
her back to life. And I would mention a third
resurrection in the film, which is that the character Vulnavia,
which is melted like sort of a robot clockwork organism.
(02:33):
We're not exactly sure. From the first movie, it's Doctor
Fibes's hinchwoman who helps him commit his quote amazing murders.
She is melted by acid at the end of the
first movie, and then just inexplicably comes back in the
second movie. Also, they resurrect Terry Thomas, remember he bites
it in the first movie, and then he just comes
back playing a totally separate character in the second movie.
(02:56):
And I think that motif of coming back in bodily
form but playing a different character, maybe maybe may it
may have some thematic resonance. That's right.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So what we're gonna be We're gonna be talking about Osiris. Uh.
I don't think Osiris came up in Doctor five Rises again,
maybe they made passing reference to him. I think I
made passing reference to Osiris when we were talking about
the film. But this is a deity best known for
his connections to fertility, to the ancient Egyptian underworld, and
(03:31):
to rights of mummification.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
So, you know, I've seen lots of depictions of the
god o Cyrus before I was familiar with the imagery
associated with him. But something I had never noticed until
I was reading up in preparation for this episode is
that while on the top half of his body, he
is often depicted, you know, looking kind of like a
like a king or a pharaoh, you know, very stately
with a beard, with his with his face exposed under
(03:56):
the crown and all that, if you looked down at
the lower part of his body, apparently his legs are
depicted wrapped together in the in the wrappings of mummification,
so it's like the bottom half of his body is
already mummified. That's right.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, And I invite listeners who are in a position
to do so safely to go ahead and look up
some images of of of historical depictions of Osiris from
ancient Egypt. Yeah, he's generally depicted as a mummified king,
you know, bounds as in the wrappings of mummification. His
skin as is exposed, you know, in his face and
(04:33):
neck and hands, is apparently either black or green. I
tend to find more images of green color choices, though
that may have at one point signified putrification and death,
but came to symbolize his connection to the cycle of
death and life, of resurrection and rebirth, particularly resurrection and
rebirth linked to that of plant life. On top of this,
(04:56):
he is generally depicted as wearing a crown and he
brandishes a crook and a flail, so strong agricultural vibes already.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
But also with power and authority. You know, it's the
crook and the flail and the autaf crown, the crown
I think of Upper Egypt. This is the imagery of
a king.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, absolutely so. He is very much like an embodimentimum
of a mummified king. So let's get a little bit
into the myth of Osiris. Now standard caveat with mythology,
you know, as usually as the case, we're not dealing
with a singular idea from a singular time and place,
but rather a figure and associated narratives that stirred in
(05:35):
the minds of ancient peoples for thousands of years. We
have various accounts of Osiris to go off of, but
our understanding of Osiris is also incomplete, and indeed we
don't know with one hundred percent certainty what his name
even means. It might well mean the Mighty One, but
I think there are some other ideas out there. There's
(05:55):
plenty that experts have had to piece together about Osiris
that is not explicitly, you know, obvious in the source material. Now,
one of the books that I that I turned to
for this episode is the two thousand and two book
Egyptian Mythology by Geraldine Pinch. Pinch also points out that
we don't know when, how and where Osiris was first worshiped.
(06:19):
He might have kicked things off as kind of a
deified pre dynastic king. He might have been an old
vegetation spirit, a jackal god, or even a mother goddess.
And I'm also assuming based on this that you know,
there might have been some interplay between these concepts, you know,
various varied possible origins, gods that are combined into new
(06:40):
gods and so forth. Now, Pinch summarizes the sort of
the what you might think of as the canonical rise
and fall and resurrection of Osiris, pointing out that first
of all, he's generally thought to have been born with
a crown on his head. So taking that concept of
born king that is theay referenced in Christian hymns, sometimes
(07:03):
referring to Jesus, but taking it to a literal degree.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Ah. So, whereas a lot of kings, say, might be
born with a right to the throne that has then
recognized in a coronation by placing the crown upon their head,
that this king is born with the crown already there, like,
it doesn't need to be recognized.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Exactly king at his birth literally because he's look, he's
wearing a little crown, and I guess maybe the crown
grows with him. I mean, he's a god. He can
do these things. And fortunately his mother was also a god,
so he was the eldest son. It is that of
the earth god Geb and the sky god as Newt.
So in many respects, he is the place where earth
(07:43):
and sky converge. He's the very horizon now. Pinch shares
that some accounts allude to him overcoming his father in
a vicious dynastic struggle for rule, and one late text
claims that he died for the first time during this struggle. However,
she stresses that no accounts of Osiris's rule and his
(08:04):
death survive from before the Greco Roman period concerning this issue.
So but one way or another he comes to reign
over Egypt with his sister consort Isis at his side.
But of course this rule does not last according to
the pyramid texts of the Late Old Kingdom, so these
are for more than four thousand years ago. Osiris was
(08:24):
murdered by his brother Seth or set who we've talked
about on the show before, in part because there is
some mystery and disagreement on what the set animal or
Seth animal is that his iconography is based upon. But anyway,
we have this. Yeah, this brother Seth strikes his brother
down and tramples him and or drowns him in the
(08:46):
Nile River, and Pinch writes that a double death may
have been deemed necessary to kill a god.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Okay, So, one way or another, either drowned in the
water or trampled or both, Osiris is dead.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
That's right, He's overthrown. He's been murdered. And one way
or another, Osiris's dead body becomes fragmented, either via a
deliberate chopping up of his corpse by Seth or possibly
due to decomposition. In either event, the dead body of
Osiris becomes divided. Into in some cases fourteen pieces, though
sometimes it's like forty two pieces. A certain number of
(09:22):
pieces of the Dead God come into circulation here, and
I think this varies from something that happens right away again,
like I've killed you and now I'm going to chop
you up, to something that Seth does later comes and
despoils the corpse of Osiris, or something that happens naturally
(09:44):
later on. In any case, the pieces are either scattered
or become scattered.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Okay, So yeah, that's something I don't know if I
ever understood before. Do the pieces come apart as something
that his enemy does to him? Is it kind of
a William Wallace situation or is it more kind of
a some kind of magical principle at work.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah. Based on my understanding of the different accounts that
are looking at here, it looks like it does vary.
And it also seems to vary whether those pieces stays
to some degree scattered or are truly brought together. Again,
I guess it kind of depends on what sort of
concepts are important to the story. That may make more
(10:26):
sense when I start talking about specifics here in a minute,
But in any event, it falls to Isis to gather
the pieces of the fallen Osiris and seek his resurrection
via powerful magic, with the aid of Annibus, an underworld
deity and thought a god of magic who we've also
talked about on the show before. Now Isis herself was
(10:46):
the mother and throne goddess, so each Egyptian king is
her child. It falls to her to find and gather
the pieces of slain Osiris, to assemble him and hold
a long vigil over the corpse along with their sister Nephthus,
and they use a spoken magic, Pinch says, to drive
away Seth the disturber. So I guess there's this idea
(11:07):
that even as they are trying to bring him back,
Seth is trying to disrupt their attempt.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Almost like a scavenger or predatory animal circling. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Now, during this reassembly Osiris is he's described by Pinch
as the inert one. So all of the pieces of
Osiris are either in teared together or assembled into a
hole except for his fallas. And remember again that Osiris
is also a god of fertility, and by this fallus
(11:37):
or depending on the story, by a flash of divine fire,
whatever the case isis becomes pregnant with the Sun by
the deceased God, and this Sun is going to be Horace,
the Sun destined to overcome Seth. So she raises Horace
in the marshes. She has to raise him in safety
and secrecy until he is old enough to challenge his
(12:00):
father's usurper, which he does. He defeats Seth and he
becomes the new ruler.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Now, I think you're going to get into this in
a minute, but that part of the myth is important
because this will come to have a great significance for
the succession in the real world of divine kingship as
a concept in Egypt.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Right now, Another interesting part here is that despite Osiris's
connection with the concept of resurrection by many definitions or
in certainly sort of modern interpretations and I guess like
dungeons and dragons to interpretations, he is not truly resurrected
at this point. He does not become a living flesh again.
(12:39):
He is not resurrected into this world.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Right and this will be an important point of contention
for a question that I think we're going to get
into in part two of this series about the concept
of resurrection in ancient religions. But yeah, Osiris is not
thought to be raised back to the form and the
place where he originally lived. There is a instead, he
(13:03):
goes on living, but it is in a new form
in a new world. There is in a sense a
new Osiris.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
That's right. So basically, the higher powers and other powers
of note here decide that okay, Osiris, you were just,
but your death was not just. So therefore he's permitted
to leave his now mummified body and become the Lord
of the dead in the afterlife, the judge and ruler
of the kingdom of the dead. And it seems like
a pretty cool gig to have a Pinch points out that.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
At all periods. There are a few texts that describe
Osiris as a terrifying figure who dispatches demon messengers to
drag the living into the gloomy realm of the dead.
So inert but not powerless by any means, and he
is just. He is an appropriate judge. He said to
rule over the dead as when enifer, which either means
(13:54):
the one whose body did not decay, and we see
that again his connection to mummification and rites vocation, though
I think it's also according to Pinch, sometimes translated as
the beneficent one. Uh. This was also apparently the title
for the high priest of Osiris in you know, religious traditions.
(14:22):
These are like the basic core myths concerning Osiris to consider,
but you know, we always go deeper than that, Like
what are we to make of these myths? What do
people think they meant? What did they signify? Why did
they have such you know, cultural significance. And again we
have to realize that understandings and interpretations change over time.
(14:44):
Middle Kingdom rituals seem to associate the body of Osiris
with barley and the trampling seth. Again, remember the trampling
being part of the murder of Osiris. Uh, there seems
to be a strong case for associating that trampling with
the donkeys that would thresh the grain via trampling, thus
linking his death and resurrection in this earliest known example
(15:08):
to the cyclical reaping and sowing of crops.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yes, and again asterisk on the word resurrection there. But
you know, it's an interesting thing how people often do
associate religious ideas of resurrection with the cycles of life,
in the cycles of plant life in the seasons. But
when you were talking about donkeys threshing grain. You know,
I made another kind of association there, which is that
(15:33):
the grain begins as something that is from the living plant,
but then when it is is put through agricultural processing,
it is in a way reborn, and it doesn't go
on to live again as a plant, but instead it
goes on to live in a different way. It becomes
something else, which is grain and ultimately food.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, these different sort of phase changes occur. It has
also pointed out that you would have these i the
phallic figures of Osiris that would would be planted with crops,
so they would have like a representation of the god
planted with the the grains planted with the seeds that
you know, that would that would help enable everything to
(16:14):
grow into its next form.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
If if phallic, does that mean that's a representation of
the God with an erection?
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yes, that's the literal. Different definition though. I was looking
at an image of one of these figures in the
British Museum's website and and I'm not sure that that's
really as pronounced in this image, but but that is
that is all. That's how it's classified.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Oh wait, I see it.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Well, it's well compared to it's not as it's not
as as obvious as one might expect.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, it's certainly not as obvious as you might see.
And like some other statuary from the ancient world.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Well, I assume the thing is Osiris is wrapped in bandages,
so it's like it's he's not naked.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I get you. Now.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
There were also New Kingdom period traditions that link o
Cyrus to water, with all the liquids of his putrefying
body being linked to the annual inundation of the Nile,
and not necessarily just putrefying liquids, like you know, just
the various liquids of the body, but also like putrification
liquids thrown in there. So I don't want to make
it sound like it's all gross or anything. And at
(17:24):
least one tradition holding that his body parts are buried
at scattered sites throughout Egypt and the tomb of the
left Leg on the Nile island of Baiga. I've also
seen this place referred to simply as the tomb of Osyrius. Anyway,
different traditions hold that this is the source of the inundation.
Now I'm thinking about the underworld and the cosmos of
the ancient Egyptians, which I think on one hand it's
(17:45):
easy to think of that, Okay, these are the worlds
beyond our world, but also they're kind of tied to
to what is seen and what is not seen but
kind of implied, and they The one area I want
to touch on here is the idea of the sun barge,
the manget, the boat of millions of years that travels
(18:07):
through the sky with the sun and then down each
night over the horizon and then through the underworld to
emerge once more on the other side. And of course
there's there's fighting that takes place. It is like a
kind of a it's a perilous journey for the sun
through the underworld to come back again when the sun rises.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah, it's a whole quest. It's a whole quest line.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, which is which is at once again very epic
and otherworldly, but also tied directly to what we observe
occurring with the sun. Like the sun goes here and
then it goes under seemingly and comes back. What's going
on there? And then we have this mythic extrapolation of that.
But according to Pinch.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
It's singing somewhere over the rainbow.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
According to Pinch, the New Kingdom under and the New
Kingdom Underworld books specify that during the darkest hour of
the night, the god that is is driving the sun
barge ray or raw passes through the underworld chamber where
the body of Osiris rests, and in this moment may
(19:10):
become one soul, and this allows Osyrus and all the
dead to live again. So, now that we've established some
of the basics about this underworld fertility god, I wanted
to get into the cult of Osiris a bit more. Again,
we don't know exactly when, where or how Osiris was
first worshiped, or indeed the earliest form or forms that
(19:31):
he took in these ancient Egyptian belief systems, but over
time he becomes vitally linked with the cycle of life
and death, with crops, with the inundation, with mummification, and
the promise of resurrection.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
And just a note on terminology. When we talk about
things like the cult of Osiris, cult in that sense
does not have the negative connotations that cult has in
the modern world. That's just the term you use for
any any group in the ancient world that is devoted
to the care and worship of a god.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Now, one topic that I was really taken with was
discussion of the popularity of Osiris, and to a certain extent,
the overall popularity of the ancient Egyptian religion, because, on
one hand, I don't remember where I read this, but
I know I've read commentary that the ancient Egyptian religion
was something very much all of the desert of this
(20:23):
nile nourished region and something that just did not travel
well and was not picked up by other cultures in
a meaningful deeper way. But on the other hand, the
trappings of ancient Egypt clearly have fascinated other cultures for
an exceedingly long period of time, often in these waves
of Egyptomania, as it's sometimes termed. So I really wanted
(20:46):
to get into this latter idea a bit more so.
I turned to various sections dealing with Osiris in the
excellent twenty sixteen book Egyptomania, A History of Fascination, Obsession,
and Fantasy by Ronald H.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Fritz.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Okay, so Fritz mentions that the aforementioned pyramid texts from
more than four thousand years ago refer to differing ideas
about life and death but also they bring up the
rising popularity of Osiris within the pantheon, and I was
thinking about this as well. This is I think this
is something interesting to observe in religion, that it's mostly
(21:21):
within these polytheistic traditions that you really get to see
or in the and or imagine this idea of the
rise and fall of particular gods and goddesses, as well
as the more like straightforward adoption of foreign originating gods
into a given pantheon. You know, we've discussed examples of
this before, but there's not there's either no room for
(21:44):
this or not as much room for this in monotheistic traditions.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on the specific
monotheistic religion, but yes, like growing up a lot of people,
this is another one of the many ways that if
you grow up in a certain religious context, you might
just assume that all religions are similar to your religion.
So like growing up in a Christian context, I think
a lot of people think that all religions have a
(22:08):
quote jealous God, like the like the Abrahamic faiths. Do
you know a God who says you shall worship me
and me alone? And there's basically one right way to
have a religion, and it's it's the one you've got,
whereas with a lot of polytheistic religions it's it's much
more free form. You know that you can add gods
on to the list of gods that you worship, you
(22:29):
can remove gods, you can sort of like just shift
your focus wherever you think it is best. And that
doesn't compute. Like a lot of Christians look back on
the pagan context of the Roman Empire, say, and they
don't realize that. Like when you would be preaching about
Jesus to Roman pagans, to a lot of them, they
(22:50):
just be hearing about this is well, this is another god.
You know, I've got Apollo, and I've got Jupiter and
these other gods that I worship, and here somebody's talking
about a new one. Oh, except this is weird. They're
telling me that if I worship this new one, if
I worship Christ, I can't worship any of the others anymore.
That would be weird and different.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Yeah, it's like downloading apps for your phone, right, Like,
what's this one due? This is a new one? Sounds useful.
I'll get it too. Whoa, this one says, I can't
use any other apps. I've just I've got to use
this one universal app for everything. Yeah, does it work?
Is what it sounds like. If it's promises to do everything,
it probably doesn't do them as well as these specialized
apps that I already had.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
But to come back to your your original example, Yeah,
sort of the rise and fall in the popularity of
various gods within these polytheistic pantheons, where you can believe
in multiple gods and devote whatever time and care you
think is appropriate to each one of them. I guess,
you know, the institution of a monotheistic faith like Christianity
would be an outlier there where it's like suddenly you
(23:51):
pick that, you pick the new God, the Christ, and
you can't believe in any of the others anymore. That
one goes right to the top. But with the others, Yeah,
you do get to see these fluctuations over time.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, like some of the Christian examples we've looked at
in the past, it's like, oh, your God, actually it
can be part of this religion. But I'm sorry they're
a demon now, Yeah, the demons were rebel angels that
our God defeated. So but yeah, we can work them
in as that. But then again I was thinking about this,
it's like, well, well, we've also looked at examples where,
(24:21):
you know, in various Greek myths where something that was
once a deity for a particular time in place then
later on becomes more of a supporting character or a
monster or something to that effect. So it's something that
takes place just in general, I guess, and is not
particular to monotheistic or polytheistic one way. I kept thinking
(24:43):
of those kind of like if you had like a
stock ticker for belief, you know, it's like polytheism, you
have a lot of different stocks that are going up
and down, but under monotheism, like you're supposed to just
have the one stock. Yeah, and you're either all invested
in that or people are falling out of interest of that.
I don't know. It's not a perfect way of thinking
(25:03):
about it, but it does seem like, certainly with the
polytheistic religions of the Greeks and the Romans, there is
a lot more openness to hey, there's a new god
this other country has. Let's take a look at. Let's
see what worshiping this god is like, what's going to this.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Cult Like, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of just absorption
of other figures. One example that I was just reading
about earlier today again, I think we're going to talk
about this more in the second episode, is there's a
Greek figure sometimes referred to as a god. He was
like a mortal lover of Aphrodite named Adonis, who is
very much thought to have been derived from from other deities,
(25:43):
other ancient Near Eastern deities like Mesopotamian agriculture gods such
as Tammuz or DEMUSI. So it's just here, here's a
cult figure from one part of the world is absorbed
into the number of gods believed in in a different
part of the world.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I just want to add a quick note since we
are talking at least briefly here about monotheism and polytheism,
and in an episode that deals with ancient Egyptian religion,
where we're not going to have time to get into
discussion of at and Autanism here. But of course that
has been like a discussion I think we've touched on
in the past. Where as some experts agree or disagree
on whether Autanism is truly a monotheistic religion or should
(26:25):
be thought of as such. So that's a whole different
subject for another time.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
The short version is one ancient Egyptian king tried to
elevate a particular deity from the Egyptian pantheon above all
others and make that the exclusive focus of state worship.
But yeah, you can read more about that if you
go look up Auten.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, and basically after that king's death, everyone's like, well,
let's go back to the other thing we were telling
where maybe not as into the sun disc as we
were pretending to be anyway, back to o Cyrus here. So,
(27:07):
Fritz writes that the Old Kingdom, so this is roughly
twenty seven hundred to twenty two hundred BCE, was more rigid,
was more formal, but that the Middle Kingdom to follow,
also known as the Period of Reunification from twenty forty
to seventeen eighty two BC, it was more balance, more sympathetic.
There's greater literacy, there was more of a melding of
(27:29):
sort of high mythology and the folklore of the people,
and the rulers of this period promoted the worship of
Osiris and the cult s emphasis on resurrection, and the afterlife. Now,
I think it's easy to take this last bit for granted,
because if you adhere to a religion, or you're closely
aligned with one or one or more religions via your culture,
(27:50):
your upbringing, or just your general interests, then the continuation
of the soul is not a radical concept. It's like
it's it's hard to put yourself in a mindset where
someone is coming at you with some radically new concept
of religious continuation of the soul, of some sort of
immortality of the soul, someone saying, hey, guess what, you
(28:10):
know that part of you that feels special inside your
consciousness and heart and all of that. What if that
doesn't have to be annihilated when you die? And I
have to stress I say this as someone who was
raised in a Protestant church that even now sometimes for
me it's more challenging to exercise or entertain a worldview
in which there is no continuation of the human soul
(28:34):
after death. And that's regardless of logic or reason. It's
just such a huge part of not only the Christian
worldview view but also the mainstream worldview that of course
what we have is special, and that somehow it continues
on in one form or another, either directly aligned with
some sort of belief system or just you know, in
sort of the general pop culture sense of like spirits
(28:55):
and angels and like there's just something that must live
on after we die in our physical bodies. And there's
nothing wrong with that concept, I think, at least just
when it's employed in a way that gives us hope
and peace, though of course it can also be used
for opposite aims. But to bring us back to this
period in which like the cult of Osiris is rising
and it's becoming more and more popular, imagine a religious
(29:18):
world and a worldview in which the afterlife is largely unavailable.
It exists, but it's not for the common people. It
is not for most people. It is for a very
small percentage of people. It is like the equivalent of
like extreme opulent wealth in our world, you know, like
(29:38):
it is the SuperMansion with the apocalypse bunker. You know,
this is only for a very small, very slender portion
of society. It is not for you. But during the
Middle Kingdom you have this ongoing democratization of the afterlife
where it describes and this was enhanced by the Cult
(29:59):
of Cyrus. So I want to read a passage from
Fittzer where he goes through an example of this quote.
Prior to the Middle Kingdom, Egyptians believed that all people
possessed a ka, or a soul or life force, but
only rulers possessed a ba, which was the individual uniqueness
that constitutes a personality. It required the ka and the
(30:21):
ba to be kept united or at least in close
proximity for immortality in the afterlife. When the people of
the Middle Kingdom came to believe that all humans had
a ba, they were conceding that everyone could enjoy the
after life if the proper burial rituals were followed. Yeah,
so suddenly it's available to everyone who at least can
(30:44):
undergo the proper rituals. And so you saw certain rituals
become more popular and are more present in the archaeological record,
such as the use of shabti statues. They begin to
appear in more tombs. These would have been like little
representations of servants, servants that would work for the deceased
(31:04):
in the afterlife, like this will be buried with you,
and now you will have a servant to help you
in the afterlife, this sort of general idea we see
in various other religions as well. Okay, and so Osiris
becomes very popular within Egypt. But then eventually the ancient
Greeks and then the ancient Romans they also get a
(31:25):
whiff of Osiris and they're like, oh, we would like
some of that as well. He points out that, yeah,
the ancient Greeks and Romans were some of the initial egyptomaniacs.
And while the Greeks found on the whole that the
religion of the Egyptians was profoundly different from their own,
they were intrigued by its systems of magic and by it,
you know, its deities, just as we are intrigued by
(31:47):
these things today. And they did recognize some fundamental similarities.
He writes that the Greeks frequently attempted to synchronize the
gods of other cultures with their own, and they certainly
did this with the Egyptians. So and actually, for some
Greek writers, these fundamental similarities were incredibly important.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Right. So they might say, actually, we're talking about the
same god when we say this god and they say
that god. But we just have different names for the
same one here.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Right, and they seem to take it even a step
beyond that, because there's one thing to say, well, you know,
I have my concept of God and you have yours,
but we're really on the same you know, we're really
on the same wavelength. But it's another to say yours
came first. I'm pretty sure mine's just a knockoff of yours,
you know, And we kind of see this. According to Fritz,
(32:40):
so fifth century BC Greek historian Herodotus concluded that knowledge
of the gods spread from Egyptian origins to the Greeks.
So it's like, well, the Egyptians discovered the gods first,
and we just followed. We learned of this from them,
and anyway, he ends up drawing numerous lines between Greek
gods and possible Egyptian word origins, though Fritz points out
(33:01):
that there are clear exceptions to this line of thinking,
such as Poseidon, who was apparently brought to Greece more
from the direction of Libya. Still, others made these connections.
To Plutarch made these connections, so there seems to have
been at the very least like a recognized heritage in
all of this. Now that and certainly the Greeks and
(33:22):
the Romans were particularly taken by not only of Cyrus,
but also Isis. Here's another bit from Fritz that I
want to read.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Although in the modern stereotype the Egyptian religion is depicted
as mystical, mysterious, and magical, Greek and Roman visitors did
not see it in this way. Plutarch's staunchly defended Egyptian
religion as rational and ethical, rather than merely superstitious. Herotogus
went so far as to credit the Egyptians with the
invention of the common practices of ancient religion, such as altars, statues,
(33:55):
and temples dedicated to the various gods. The cult of
Isis became so populated that it spread throughout the lands
of the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I mean, first of all, ancient Egypt was simply so ancient,
like there were there were these remnants of great civilizations
that had been around for so long. We've mentioned this
on the show before, but the astounding fact that to
the Romans, like Plutarch, the you know, the old Kingdom
(34:27):
of Egypt, the pyramids were older to them than the
Roman Empire is to us. The distance of history there
is is crazy to believe. So so there's there. On
one hand, ancient Egypt was just so evidently ancient as
a great civilization, you could imagine things, many things you
(34:47):
had might have come from it. But then also as
you're saying, there's just this clear spread of say the
cult of isis.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Yeah, and at the same time, yes, sometimes attributing things
to the Egyptians that that they probably didn't invent. Like
Fritz mentions that that Diodorus credited of Cyrus with the
invention of great cultivation and ultimately wine making, though there
does not seem to be evidence of this, you know
(35:15):
that they're that wine and great cultivation has an Egyptian
origin now, but eventually we do see more of a
full on appropriation and recreation of Egyptian concepts. And in
one of the strong examples of this, and one that
concerns of Cyrus is the god so Rapists. This would
have been a Greco Egyptian syncretic deity. So it's it's
(35:39):
like an amalgam of both Cyrus and in Oppus, as
well as aspects of various Greek deities, Like I think
there's a little Zeus and Hades in there. This would
have been a being that would have that would have
become popular on under the the Ptolemaic rule. But still
that doesn't mean that, for instance, that doesn't really seem
(36:01):
to impact Isis. Based on what I've read, the worship
of Isis may have spread even more in Roman culture.
Worship of Isis would travel along trade routes through the
Mediterranean world, into Spain and even to the British Isles,
so I think there I've read articles about archaeological evidence
of Isis worship, like ancient Isis worship in London. So
(36:23):
I'm not talking about like later periods of Egypt Domania
where you had occultists and so forth bringing in the
concept of Isis, but kind of like original Isis worship,
if you will. But then again to the point, and
I don't want to go through all the examples of
Egypt Domania. I do recommend everyone check out that book,
because this is a book that deals not only with
(36:45):
like ancient Egyptian religion and culture in its origin, but
also these various levels of Egypt Domania from like you know,
dealing with examples from say the Victorian world and the
Renaissance on up through like trashy b movies give like,
you know, brief breakdowns of some really bad mummy movies.
(37:05):
But they are examples of at least the reverberations of
international and multicultural interest in ancient Egypt. And it may
in many cases it might not be that deep. You know,
it might be just like, oh, I kind of like
how this looks and this sounds weird to me, so
I'm gonna make a horror movie. But it's still, you know,
reverberations are the same energy. But we'll mention one really quickly.
(37:30):
So during Renaissance Egyptomania, there was there was still a
fair amount of pull toward Osyrus. There's a character that
was an Italian who was originally named Giovanni Nani who
lived fourteen thirty two through fifteen oh two, went by
the name Viterbo, and he made various connections between Etruscan
(37:51):
traditions and the Egyptians. But he even went so far
as to claim that the Boreses were the descendants of Osiris.
I'm not sure what sort of supporting material he made
for that, but in anyway, Osiris would continue to serve
as a central figure in various waves of Egyptomania. Moving forward, So,
(38:13):
Osiris is invoked in various occultist movements, and Osiris is
definitely invoked by various ancient astronaut writers. And you also
see the use of Osiris in the movements of Afrocentrists
and also Afrofuturists. It's just I mean, he is a
powerful figure mythologically, and of course he's going to We're
(38:35):
going to keep coming back to him and finding new
ways to sort of think about him and new ways
to invoke him.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Okay, well, I think maybe that will do it for
part one of our series on Osiris, but we've got
more to talk about next time. That's right.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
We shall return in a part two and that will
be on Thursday. In the meantime, certainly write in if
you have feedback on this episode, other examples of Osiris
or isisigyptomania that you want to bring up. Everything is
fair game, but just reminder stuff Blow your Mind is
primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we do listener mail. On
(39:12):
Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on Fridays
we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
with rat Rat Rat Rat
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I am Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday, so we
are heading into the vault for an older episode of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is part one of
our series on Osiris and the Cult of Osiris, originally
published on April second, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
That's right, let's geek out on some Egyptomania.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
And in this episode, we're going to be diving into
ancient Egyptian mythology once more to discuss an important deity
connected to the topic of resurrection, which I think was
probably on my mind over the weekend due to first five.
It was the Easter holiday. Also on Weird House Cinema,
which is of our Friday episode in the Stuffed Blue
(01:07):
Mind podcast feed, we talked about doctor FIBs rises. Again,
I did not think about this in terms of the
holiday at all. I didn't think, oh, this is our
Easter selection. But then I noticed our social media posts
about it on Easter Sunday, and it's like, you know,
talking about the rise of doctor Fibb's He's rising again.
I was like, oh, wow, we sort of accidentally nailed
(01:29):
it there.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
It's a movie that has so many resurrections. It has
Doctor Fhibes himself coming out of a sort of a
chemically induced slumber where at the end of the first
movie he replaces his blood with embalming fluid and then
goes to sleep in a giant glass contraption under the floor.
At the beginning of this movie he wakes up again.
So that's one sense of rising, though I guess it's
(01:52):
questionable whether he technically died or not there, so he
rises at the beginning of the movie. There. The rest
of the movie is about him trying to live, literally
resurrect his wife Victoria played by Carolyn Monroe from the dead.
She sort of spins the whole movie in a glass
display case, and he is going to take her to
a temple in ancient Egypt under which lies the secret
(02:13):
to resurrection and eternal life. And he departs the end
of the movie on a barge, singing somewhere over the
rainbow to take Carolyn and row down there and bring
her back to life. And I would mention a third
resurrection in the film, which is that the character Vulnavia,
which is melted like sort of a robot clockwork organism.
(02:33):
We're not exactly sure. From the first movie, it's Doctor
Fibes's hinchwoman who helps him commit his quote amazing murders.
She is melted by acid at the end of the
first movie, and then just inexplicably comes back in the
second movie. Also, they resurrect Terry Thomas, remember he bites
it in the first movie, and then he just comes
back playing a totally separate character in the second movie.
(02:56):
And I think that motif of coming back in bodily
form but playing a different character, maybe maybe may it
may have some thematic resonance. That's right.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So what we're gonna be We're gonna be talking about Osiris. Uh.
I don't think Osiris came up in Doctor five Rises again,
maybe they made passing reference to him. I think I
made passing reference to Osiris when we were talking about
the film. But this is a deity best known for
his connections to fertility, to the ancient Egyptian underworld, and
(03:31):
to rights of mummification.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
So, you know, I've seen lots of depictions of the
god o Cyrus before I was familiar with the imagery
associated with him. But something I had never noticed until
I was reading up in preparation for this episode is
that while on the top half of his body, he
is often depicted, you know, looking kind of like a
like a king or a pharaoh, you know, very stately
with a beard, with his with his face exposed under
(03:56):
the crown and all that, if you looked down at
the lower part of his body, apparently his legs are
depicted wrapped together in the in the wrappings of mummification,
so it's like the bottom half of his body is
already mummified. That's right.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, And I invite listeners who are in a position
to do so safely to go ahead and look up
some images of of of historical depictions of Osiris from
ancient Egypt. Yeah, he's generally depicted as a mummified king,
you know, bounds as in the wrappings of mummification. His
skin as is exposed, you know, in his face and
(04:33):
neck and hands, is apparently either black or green. I
tend to find more images of green color choices, though
that may have at one point signified putrification and death,
but came to symbolize his connection to the cycle of
death and life, of resurrection and rebirth, particularly resurrection and
rebirth linked to that of plant life. On top of this,
(04:56):
he is generally depicted as wearing a crown and he
brandishes a crook and a flail, so strong agricultural vibes already.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
But also with power and authority. You know, it's the
crook and the flail and the autaf crown, the crown
I think of Upper Egypt. This is the imagery of
a king.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, absolutely so. He is very much like an embodimentimum
of a mummified king. So let's get a little bit
into the myth of Osiris. Now standard caveat with mythology,
you know, as usually as the case, we're not dealing
with a singular idea from a singular time and place,
but rather a figure and associated narratives that stirred in
(05:35):
the minds of ancient peoples for thousands of years. We
have various accounts of Osiris to go off of, but
our understanding of Osiris is also incomplete, and indeed we
don't know with one hundred percent certainty what his name
even means. It might well mean the Mighty One, but
I think there are some other ideas out there. There's
(05:55):
plenty that experts have had to piece together about Osiris
that is not explicitly, you know, obvious in the source material. Now,
one of the books that I that I turned to
for this episode is the two thousand and two book
Egyptian Mythology by Geraldine Pinch. Pinch also points out that
we don't know when, how and where Osiris was first worshiped.
(06:19):
He might have kicked things off as kind of a
deified pre dynastic king. He might have been an old
vegetation spirit, a jackal god, or even a mother goddess.
And I'm also assuming based on this that you know,
there might have been some interplay between these concepts, you know,
various varied possible origins, gods that are combined into new
(06:40):
gods and so forth. Now, Pinch summarizes the sort of
the what you might think of as the canonical rise
and fall and resurrection of Osiris, pointing out that first
of all, he's generally thought to have been born with
a crown on his head. So taking that concept of
born king that is theay referenced in Christian hymns, sometimes
(07:03):
referring to Jesus, but taking it to a literal degree.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Ah. So, whereas a lot of kings, say, might be
born with a right to the throne that has then
recognized in a coronation by placing the crown upon their head,
that this king is born with the crown already there, like,
it doesn't need to be recognized.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Exactly king at his birth literally because he's look, he's
wearing a little crown, and I guess maybe the crown
grows with him. I mean, he's a god. He can
do these things. And fortunately his mother was also a god,
so he was the eldest son. It is that of
the earth god Geb and the sky god as Newt.
So in many respects, he is the place where earth
(07:43):
and sky converge. He's the very horizon now. Pinch shares
that some accounts allude to him overcoming his father in
a vicious dynastic struggle for rule, and one late text
claims that he died for the first time during this struggle. However,
she stresses that no accounts of Osiris's rule and his
(08:04):
death survive from before the Greco Roman period concerning this issue.
So but one way or another he comes to reign
over Egypt with his sister consort Isis at his side.
But of course this rule does not last according to
the pyramid texts of the Late Old Kingdom, so these
are for more than four thousand years ago. Osiris was
(08:24):
murdered by his brother Seth or set who we've talked
about on the show before, in part because there is
some mystery and disagreement on what the set animal or
Seth animal is that his iconography is based upon. But anyway,
we have this. Yeah, this brother Seth strikes his brother
down and tramples him and or drowns him in the
(08:46):
Nile River, and Pinch writes that a double death may
have been deemed necessary to kill a god.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Okay, So, one way or another, either drowned in the
water or trampled or both, Osiris is dead.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
That's right, He's overthrown. He's been murdered. And one way
or another, Osiris's dead body becomes fragmented, either via a
deliberate chopping up of his corpse by Seth or possibly
due to decomposition. In either event, the dead body of
Osiris becomes divided. Into in some cases fourteen pieces, though
sometimes it's like forty two pieces. A certain number of
(09:22):
pieces of the Dead God come into circulation here, and
I think this varies from something that happens right away again,
like I've killed you and now I'm going to chop
you up, to something that Seth does later comes and
despoils the corpse of Osiris, or something that happens naturally
(09:44):
later on. In any case, the pieces are either scattered
or become scattered.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Okay, So yeah, that's something I don't know if I
ever understood before. Do the pieces come apart as something
that his enemy does to him? Is it kind of
a William Wallace situation or is it more kind of
a some kind of magical principle at work.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah. Based on my understanding of the different accounts that
are looking at here, it looks like it does vary.
And it also seems to vary whether those pieces stays
to some degree scattered or are truly brought together. Again,
I guess it kind of depends on what sort of
concepts are important to the story. That may make more
(10:26):
sense when I start talking about specifics here in a minute,
But in any event, it falls to Isis to gather
the pieces of the fallen Osiris and seek his resurrection
via powerful magic, with the aid of Annibus, an underworld
deity and thought a god of magic who we've also
talked about on the show before. Now Isis herself was
(10:46):
the mother and throne goddess, so each Egyptian king is
her child. It falls to her to find and gather
the pieces of slain Osiris, to assemble him and hold
a long vigil over the corpse along with their sister Nephthus,
and they use a spoken magic, Pinch says, to drive
away Seth the disturber. So I guess there's this idea
(11:07):
that even as they are trying to bring him back,
Seth is trying to disrupt their attempt.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Almost like a scavenger or predatory animal circling. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Now, during this reassembly Osiris is he's described by Pinch
as the inert one. So all of the pieces of
Osiris are either in teared together or assembled into a
hole except for his fallas. And remember again that Osiris
is also a god of fertility, and by this fallus
(11:37):
or depending on the story, by a flash of divine fire,
whatever the case isis becomes pregnant with the Sun by
the deceased God, and this Sun is going to be Horace,
the Sun destined to overcome Seth. So she raises Horace
in the marshes. She has to raise him in safety
and secrecy until he is old enough to challenge his
(12:00):
father's usurper, which he does. He defeats Seth and he
becomes the new ruler.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Now, I think you're going to get into this in
a minute, but that part of the myth is important
because this will come to have a great significance for
the succession in the real world of divine kingship as
a concept in Egypt.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Right now, Another interesting part here is that despite Osiris's
connection with the concept of resurrection by many definitions or
in certainly sort of modern interpretations and I guess like
dungeons and dragons to interpretations, he is not truly resurrected
at this point. He does not become a living flesh again.
(12:39):
He is not resurrected into this world.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Right and this will be an important point of contention
for a question that I think we're going to get
into in part two of this series about the concept
of resurrection in ancient religions. But yeah, Osiris is not
thought to be raised back to the form and the
place where he originally lived. There is a instead, he
(13:03):
goes on living, but it is in a new form
in a new world. There is in a sense a
new Osiris.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
That's right. So basically, the higher powers and other powers
of note here decide that okay, Osiris, you were just,
but your death was not just. So therefore he's permitted
to leave his now mummified body and become the Lord
of the dead in the afterlife, the judge and ruler
of the kingdom of the dead. And it seems like
a pretty cool gig to have a Pinch points out that.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
At all periods. There are a few texts that describe
Osiris as a terrifying figure who dispatches demon messengers to
drag the living into the gloomy realm of the dead.
So inert but not powerless by any means, and he
is just. He is an appropriate judge. He said to
rule over the dead as when enifer, which either means
(13:54):
the one whose body did not decay, and we see
that again his connection to mummification and rites vocation, though
I think it's also according to Pinch, sometimes translated as
the beneficent one. Uh. This was also apparently the title
for the high priest of Osiris in you know, religious traditions.
(14:22):
These are like the basic core myths concerning Osiris to consider,
but you know, we always go deeper than that, Like
what are we to make of these myths? What do
people think they meant? What did they signify? Why did
they have such you know, cultural significance. And again we
have to realize that understandings and interpretations change over time.
(14:44):
Middle Kingdom rituals seem to associate the body of Osiris
with barley and the trampling seth. Again, remember the trampling
being part of the murder of Osiris. Uh, there seems
to be a strong case for associating that trampling with
the donkeys that would thresh the grain via trampling, thus
linking his death and resurrection in this earliest known example
(15:08):
to the cyclical reaping and sowing of crops.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yes, and again asterisk on the word resurrection there. But
you know, it's an interesting thing how people often do
associate religious ideas of resurrection with the cycles of life,
in the cycles of plant life in the seasons. But
when you were talking about donkeys threshing grain. You know,
I made another kind of association there, which is that
(15:33):
the grain begins as something that is from the living plant,
but then when it is is put through agricultural processing,
it is in a way reborn, and it doesn't go
on to live again as a plant, but instead it
goes on to live in a different way. It becomes
something else, which is grain and ultimately food.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, these different sort of phase changes occur. It has
also pointed out that you would have these i the
phallic figures of Osiris that would would be planted with crops,
so they would have like a representation of the god
planted with the the grains planted with the seeds that
you know, that would that would help enable everything to
(16:14):
grow into its next form.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
If if phallic, does that mean that's a representation of
the God with an erection?
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yes, that's the literal. Different definition though. I was looking
at an image of one of these figures in the
British Museum's website and and I'm not sure that that's
really as pronounced in this image, but but that is
that is all. That's how it's classified.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Oh wait, I see it.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Well, it's well compared to it's not as it's not
as as obvious as one might expect.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, it's certainly not as obvious as you might see.
And like some other statuary from the ancient world.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Well, I assume the thing is Osiris is wrapped in bandages,
so it's like it's he's not naked.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I get you. Now.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
There were also New Kingdom period traditions that link o
Cyrus to water, with all the liquids of his putrefying
body being linked to the annual inundation of the Nile,
and not necessarily just putrefying liquids, like you know, just
the various liquids of the body, but also like putrification
liquids thrown in there. So I don't want to make
it sound like it's all gross or anything. And at
(17:24):
least one tradition holding that his body parts are buried
at scattered sites throughout Egypt and the tomb of the
left Leg on the Nile island of Baiga. I've also
seen this place referred to simply as the tomb of Osyrius. Anyway,
different traditions hold that this is the source of the inundation.
Now I'm thinking about the underworld and the cosmos of
the ancient Egyptians, which I think on one hand it's
(17:45):
easy to think of that, Okay, these are the worlds
beyond our world, but also they're kind of tied to
to what is seen and what is not seen but
kind of implied, and they The one area I want
to touch on here is the idea of the sun barge,
the manget, the boat of millions of years that travels
(18:07):
through the sky with the sun and then down each
night over the horizon and then through the underworld to
emerge once more on the other side. And of course
there's there's fighting that takes place. It is like a
kind of a it's a perilous journey for the sun
through the underworld to come back again when the sun rises.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah, it's a whole quest. It's a whole quest line.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, which is which is at once again very epic
and otherworldly, but also tied directly to what we observe
occurring with the sun. Like the sun goes here and
then it goes under seemingly and comes back. What's going
on there? And then we have this mythic extrapolation of that.
But according to Pinch.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
It's singing somewhere over the rainbow.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
According to Pinch, the New Kingdom under and the New
Kingdom Underworld books specify that during the darkest hour of
the night, the god that is is driving the sun
barge ray or raw passes through the underworld chamber where
the body of Osiris rests, and in this moment may
(19:10):
become one soul, and this allows Osyrus and all the
dead to live again. So, now that we've established some
of the basics about this underworld fertility god, I wanted
to get into the cult of Osiris a bit more. Again,
we don't know exactly when, where or how Osiris was
first worshiped, or indeed the earliest form or forms that
(19:31):
he took in these ancient Egyptian belief systems, but over
time he becomes vitally linked with the cycle of life
and death, with crops, with the inundation, with mummification, and
the promise of resurrection.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
And just a note on terminology. When we talk about
things like the cult of Osiris, cult in that sense
does not have the negative connotations that cult has in
the modern world. That's just the term you use for
any any group in the ancient world that is devoted
to the care and worship of a god.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Now, one topic that I was really taken with was
discussion of the popularity of Osiris, and to a certain extent,
the overall popularity of the ancient Egyptian religion, because, on
one hand, I don't remember where I read this, but
I know I've read commentary that the ancient Egyptian religion
was something very much all of the desert of this
(20:23):
nile nourished region and something that just did not travel
well and was not picked up by other cultures in
a meaningful deeper way. But on the other hand, the
trappings of ancient Egypt clearly have fascinated other cultures for
an exceedingly long period of time, often in these waves
of Egyptomania, as it's sometimes termed. So I really wanted
(20:46):
to get into this latter idea a bit more so.
I turned to various sections dealing with Osiris in the
excellent twenty sixteen book Egyptomania, A History of Fascination, Obsession,
and Fantasy by Ronald H.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Fritz.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Okay, so Fritz mentions that the aforementioned pyramid texts from
more than four thousand years ago refer to differing ideas
about life and death but also they bring up the
rising popularity of Osiris within the pantheon, and I was
thinking about this as well. This is I think this
is something interesting to observe in religion, that it's mostly
(21:21):
within these polytheistic traditions that you really get to see
or in the and or imagine this idea of the
rise and fall of particular gods and goddesses, as well
as the more like straightforward adoption of foreign originating gods
into a given pantheon. You know, we've discussed examples of
this before, but there's not there's either no room for
(21:44):
this or not as much room for this in monotheistic traditions.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on the specific
monotheistic religion, but yes, like growing up a lot of people,
this is another one of the many ways that if
you grow up in a certain religious context, you might
just assume that all religions are similar to your religion.
So like growing up in a Christian context, I think
a lot of people think that all religions have a
(22:08):
quote jealous God, like the like the Abrahamic faiths. Do
you know a God who says you shall worship me
and me alone? And there's basically one right way to
have a religion, and it's it's the one you've got,
whereas with a lot of polytheistic religions it's it's much
more free form. You know that you can add gods
on to the list of gods that you worship, you
(22:29):
can remove gods, you can sort of like just shift
your focus wherever you think it is best. And that
doesn't compute. Like a lot of Christians look back on
the pagan context of the Roman Empire, say, and they
don't realize that. Like when you would be preaching about
Jesus to Roman pagans, to a lot of them, they
(22:50):
just be hearing about this is well, this is another god.
You know, I've got Apollo, and I've got Jupiter and
these other gods that I worship, and here somebody's talking
about a new one. Oh, except this is weird. They're
telling me that if I worship this new one, if
I worship Christ, I can't worship any of the others anymore.
That would be weird and different.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Yeah, it's like downloading apps for your phone, right, Like,
what's this one due? This is a new one? Sounds useful.
I'll get it too. Whoa, this one says, I can't
use any other apps. I've just I've got to use
this one universal app for everything. Yeah, does it work?
Is what it sounds like. If it's promises to do everything,
it probably doesn't do them as well as these specialized
apps that I already had.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
But to come back to your your original example, Yeah,
sort of the rise and fall in the popularity of
various gods within these polytheistic pantheons, where you can believe
in multiple gods and devote whatever time and care you
think is appropriate to each one of them. I guess,
you know, the institution of a monotheistic faith like Christianity
would be an outlier there where it's like suddenly you
(23:51):
pick that, you pick the new God, the Christ, and
you can't believe in any of the others anymore. That
one goes right to the top. But with the others, Yeah,
you do get to see these fluctuations over time.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, like some of the Christian examples we've looked at
in the past, it's like, oh, your God, actually it
can be part of this religion. But I'm sorry they're
a demon now, Yeah, the demons were rebel angels that
our God defeated. So but yeah, we can work them
in as that. But then again I was thinking about this,
it's like, well, well, we've also looked at examples where,
(24:21):
you know, in various Greek myths where something that was
once a deity for a particular time in place then
later on becomes more of a supporting character or a
monster or something to that effect. So it's something that
takes place just in general, I guess, and is not
particular to monotheistic or polytheistic one way. I kept thinking
(24:43):
of those kind of like if you had like a
stock ticker for belief, you know, it's like polytheism, you
have a lot of different stocks that are going up
and down, but under monotheism, like you're supposed to just
have the one stock. Yeah, and you're either all invested
in that or people are falling out of interest of that.
I don't know. It's not a perfect way of thinking
(25:03):
about it, but it does seem like, certainly with the
polytheistic religions of the Greeks and the Romans, there is
a lot more openness to hey, there's a new god
this other country has. Let's take a look at. Let's
see what worshiping this god is like, what's going to this.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Cult Like, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of just absorption
of other figures. One example that I was just reading
about earlier today again, I think we're going to talk
about this more in the second episode, is there's a
Greek figure sometimes referred to as a god. He was
like a mortal lover of Aphrodite named Adonis, who is
very much thought to have been derived from from other deities,
(25:43):
other ancient Near Eastern deities like Mesopotamian agriculture gods such
as Tammuz or DEMUSI. So it's just here, here's a
cult figure from one part of the world is absorbed
into the number of gods believed in in a different
part of the world.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I just want to add a quick note since we
are talking at least briefly here about monotheism and polytheism,
and in an episode that deals with ancient Egyptian religion,
where we're not going to have time to get into
discussion of at and Autanism here. But of course that
has been like a discussion I think we've touched on
in the past. Where as some experts agree or disagree
on whether Autanism is truly a monotheistic religion or should
(26:25):
be thought of as such. So that's a whole different
subject for another time.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
The short version is one ancient Egyptian king tried to
elevate a particular deity from the Egyptian pantheon above all
others and make that the exclusive focus of state worship.
But yeah, you can read more about that if you
go look up Auten.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, and basically after that king's death, everyone's like, well,
let's go back to the other thing we were telling
where maybe not as into the sun disc as we
were pretending to be anyway, back to o Cyrus here. So,
(27:07):
Fritz writes that the Old Kingdom, so this is roughly
twenty seven hundred to twenty two hundred BCE, was more rigid,
was more formal, but that the Middle Kingdom to follow,
also known as the Period of Reunification from twenty forty
to seventeen eighty two BC, it was more balance, more sympathetic.
There's greater literacy, there was more of a melding of
(27:29):
sort of high mythology and the folklore of the people,
and the rulers of this period promoted the worship of
Osiris and the cult s emphasis on resurrection, and the afterlife. Now,
I think it's easy to take this last bit for granted,
because if you adhere to a religion, or you're closely
aligned with one or one or more religions via your culture,
(27:50):
your upbringing, or just your general interests, then the continuation
of the soul is not a radical concept. It's like
it's it's hard to put yourself in a mindset where
someone is coming at you with some radically new concept
of religious continuation of the soul, of some sort of
immortality of the soul, someone saying, hey, guess what, you
(28:10):
know that part of you that feels special inside your
consciousness and heart and all of that. What if that
doesn't have to be annihilated when you die? And I
have to stress I say this as someone who was
raised in a Protestant church that even now sometimes for
me it's more challenging to exercise or entertain a worldview
in which there is no continuation of the human soul
(28:34):
after death. And that's regardless of logic or reason. It's
just such a huge part of not only the Christian
worldview view but also the mainstream worldview that of course
what we have is special, and that somehow it continues
on in one form or another, either directly aligned with
some sort of belief system or just you know, in
sort of the general pop culture sense of like spirits
(28:55):
and angels and like there's just something that must live
on after we die in our physical bodies. And there's
nothing wrong with that concept, I think, at least just
when it's employed in a way that gives us hope
and peace, though of course it can also be used
for opposite aims. But to bring us back to this
period in which like the cult of Osiris is rising
and it's becoming more and more popular, imagine a religious
(29:18):
world and a worldview in which the afterlife is largely unavailable.
It exists, but it's not for the common people. It
is not for most people. It is for a very
small percentage of people. It is like the equivalent of
like extreme opulent wealth in our world, you know, like
(29:38):
it is the SuperMansion with the apocalypse bunker. You know,
this is only for a very small, very slender portion
of society. It is not for you. But during the
Middle Kingdom you have this ongoing democratization of the afterlife
where it describes and this was enhanced by the Cult
(29:59):
of Cyrus. So I want to read a passage from
Fittzer where he goes through an example of this quote.
Prior to the Middle Kingdom, Egyptians believed that all people
possessed a ka, or a soul or life force, but
only rulers possessed a ba, which was the individual uniqueness
that constitutes a personality. It required the ka and the
(30:21):
ba to be kept united or at least in close
proximity for immortality in the afterlife. When the people of
the Middle Kingdom came to believe that all humans had
a ba, they were conceding that everyone could enjoy the
after life if the proper burial rituals were followed. Yeah,
so suddenly it's available to everyone who at least can
(30:44):
undergo the proper rituals. And so you saw certain rituals
become more popular and are more present in the archaeological record,
such as the use of shabti statues. They begin to
appear in more tombs. These would have been like little
representations of servants, servants that would work for the deceased
(31:04):
in the afterlife, like this will be buried with you,
and now you will have a servant to help you
in the afterlife, this sort of general idea we see
in various other religions as well. Okay, and so Osiris
becomes very popular within Egypt. But then eventually the ancient
Greeks and then the ancient Romans they also get a
(31:25):
whiff of Osiris and they're like, oh, we would like
some of that as well. He points out that, yeah,
the ancient Greeks and Romans were some of the initial egyptomaniacs.
And while the Greeks found on the whole that the
religion of the Egyptians was profoundly different from their own,
they were intrigued by its systems of magic and by it,
you know, its deities, just as we are intrigued by
(31:47):
these things today. And they did recognize some fundamental similarities.
He writes that the Greeks frequently attempted to synchronize the
gods of other cultures with their own, and they certainly
did this with the Egyptians. So and actually, for some
Greek writers, these fundamental similarities were incredibly important.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Right. So they might say, actually, we're talking about the
same god when we say this god and they say
that god. But we just have different names for the
same one here.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Right, and they seem to take it even a step
beyond that, because there's one thing to say, well, you know,
I have my concept of God and you have yours,
but we're really on the same you know, we're really
on the same wavelength. But it's another to say yours
came first. I'm pretty sure mine's just a knockoff of yours,
you know, And we kind of see this. According to Fritz,
(32:40):
so fifth century BC Greek historian Herodotus concluded that knowledge
of the gods spread from Egyptian origins to the Greeks.
So it's like, well, the Egyptians discovered the gods first,
and we just followed. We learned of this from them,
and anyway, he ends up drawing numerous lines between Greek
gods and possible Egyptian word origins, though Fritz points out
(33:01):
that there are clear exceptions to this line of thinking,
such as Poseidon, who was apparently brought to Greece more
from the direction of Libya. Still, others made these connections.
To Plutarch made these connections, so there seems to have
been at the very least like a recognized heritage in
all of this. Now that and certainly the Greeks and
(33:22):
the Romans were particularly taken by not only of Cyrus,
but also Isis. Here's another bit from Fritz that I
want to read.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Although in the modern stereotype the Egyptian religion is depicted
as mystical, mysterious, and magical, Greek and Roman visitors did
not see it in this way. Plutarch's staunchly defended Egyptian
religion as rational and ethical, rather than merely superstitious. Herotogus
went so far as to credit the Egyptians with the
invention of the common practices of ancient religion, such as altars, statues,
(33:55):
and temples dedicated to the various gods. The cult of
Isis became so populated that it spread throughout the lands
of the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I mean, first of all, ancient Egypt was simply so ancient,
like there were there were these remnants of great civilizations
that had been around for so long. We've mentioned this
on the show before, but the astounding fact that to
the Romans, like Plutarch, the you know, the old Kingdom
(34:27):
of Egypt, the pyramids were older to them than the
Roman Empire is to us. The distance of history there
is is crazy to believe. So so there's there. On
one hand, ancient Egypt was just so evidently ancient as
a great civilization, you could imagine things, many things you
(34:47):
had might have come from it. But then also as
you're saying, there's just this clear spread of say the
cult of isis.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Yeah, and at the same time, yes, sometimes attributing things
to the Egyptians that that they probably didn't invent. Like
Fritz mentions that that Diodorus credited of Cyrus with the
invention of great cultivation and ultimately wine making, though there
does not seem to be evidence of this, you know
(35:15):
that they're that wine and great cultivation has an Egyptian
origin now, but eventually we do see more of a
full on appropriation and recreation of Egyptian concepts. And in
one of the strong examples of this, and one that
concerns of Cyrus is the god so Rapists. This would
have been a Greco Egyptian syncretic deity. So it's it's
(35:39):
like an amalgam of both Cyrus and in Oppus, as
well as aspects of various Greek deities, Like I think
there's a little Zeus and Hades in there. This would
have been a being that would have that would have
become popular on under the the Ptolemaic rule. But still
that doesn't mean that, for instance, that doesn't really seem
(36:01):
to impact Isis. Based on what I've read, the worship
of Isis may have spread even more in Roman culture.
Worship of Isis would travel along trade routes through the
Mediterranean world, into Spain and even to the British Isles,
so I think there I've read articles about archaeological evidence
of Isis worship, like ancient Isis worship in London. So
(36:23):
I'm not talking about like later periods of Egypt Domania
where you had occultists and so forth bringing in the
concept of Isis, but kind of like original Isis worship,
if you will. But then again to the point, and
I don't want to go through all the examples of
Egypt Domania. I do recommend everyone check out that book,
because this is a book that deals not only with
(36:45):
like ancient Egyptian religion and culture in its origin, but
also these various levels of Egypt Domania from like you know,
dealing with examples from say the Victorian world and the
Renaissance on up through like trashy b movies give like,
you know, brief breakdowns of some really bad mummy movies.
(37:05):
But they are examples of at least the reverberations of
international and multicultural interest in ancient Egypt. And it may
in many cases it might not be that deep. You know,
it might be just like, oh, I kind of like
how this looks and this sounds weird to me, so
I'm gonna make a horror movie. But it's still, you know,
reverberations are the same energy. But we'll mention one really quickly.
(37:30):
So during Renaissance Egyptomania, there was there was still a
fair amount of pull toward Osyrus. There's a character that
was an Italian who was originally named Giovanni Nani who
lived fourteen thirty two through fifteen oh two, went by
the name Viterbo, and he made various connections between Etruscan
(37:51):
traditions and the Egyptians. But he even went so far
as to claim that the Boreses were the descendants of Osiris.
I'm not sure what sort of supporting material he made
for that, but in anyway, Osiris would continue to serve
as a central figure in various waves of Egyptomania. Moving forward, So,
(38:13):
Osiris is invoked in various occultist movements, and Osiris is
definitely invoked by various ancient astronaut writers. And you also
see the use of Osiris in the movements of Afrocentrists
and also Afrofuturists. It's just I mean, he is a
powerful figure mythologically, and of course he's going to We're
(38:35):
going to keep coming back to him and finding new
ways to sort of think about him and new ways
to invoke him.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Okay, well, I think maybe that will do it for
part one of our series on Osiris, but we've got
more to talk about next time. That's right.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
We shall return in a part two and that will
be on Thursday. In the meantime, certainly write in if
you have feedback on this episode, other examples of Osiris
or isisigyptomania that you want to bring up. Everything is
fair game, but just reminder stuff Blow your Mind is
primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we do listener mail. On
(39:12):
Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on Fridays
we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
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