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Plutarch

Of Isis and Osiris

c. 100–120

Plutarch’s essay on Egyptian religion: Isis, Osiris, Typhon, and the winter rites Holydaze retells.

Translated by William Baxter (Philalethes)

English translation by William Baxter (Philalethes), in Plutarch’s Essays and Miscellanies, Vol. IV (Goodwin collected edition). Public domain. Digital text via Project Gutenberg #79588. (Goodwin’s 1874 Morals tradition; this volume prints Baxter’s Isis and Osiris.)

Contents

• 1. §1: It becomes wise men, dame Clea,[13] to go to the Gods for all the good things they would
• 2. §2: And therefore the desire of truth, especially in what relates to the Gods, is a sort of
• 3. §3: Moreover, many have reported her the daughter of Hermes, and many of Prometheus; the
• 4. §4: For the greater part of men are ignorant even of this most common and ordinary thing,
• 5. §5: But now the priests do so abhor all kinds of superfluous excrements, that they not only
• 6. §6: They also that at Heliopolis (_Sun-town_) wait upon the sun never bring wine into his
• 7. §7: As to sea-fish, they do not all of them abstain from all, but some from one sort, and
• 8. §8: For nothing hath been ranked among their sacred and religious rites that savored of
• 9. §9: But their kings (you must know) were always chosen either out of the priesthood or
• 10. §10: This is also confirmed by the most learned of the Greeks (such as Solon, Thales, Plato,
• 11. §11: When therefore you hear the tales which the Egyptians relate about the Gods, such as
• 12. §12: The story is thus told after the most concise manner, the most useless and unnecessary
• 13. §13: And they say that Osiris, when he was king of Egypt, drew them off from a beggarly and
• 14. §14: And because the Pans and Satyrs that inhabited the region about Chemmis were the first
• 15. §15: Of him she had tidings of the ark, how it had been thrown out by the sea upon the coasts
• 16. §16: Isis nursed the child by putting her finger into his mouth instead of the breast; and in
• 17. §17: And in the first place where she could take rest, and found herself to be now at liberty
• 18. §18: But when Isis came to her son Horus, who was then at nurse at Buto, and had laid the
• 19. §19: After this, Osiris coming out of hell to assist his son Horus, first labored and trained
• 20. §20: These then are most of the heads of this fabular narration, the more harsh and coarse
• 21. §21: But Eudoxus saith that, though there be in Egypt many tombs reported to be his, yet his
• 22. §22: They therefore who suppose that, because many things of this sort are both related and
• 23. §23: But I fear this would be to stir things that are not to be stirred, and to declare war
• 24. §24: And although the actions of Semiramis are sung among the Assyrians as very great, and
• 25. §25: Therefore they maintain the wiser opinion, who hold that the things here storied of
• 26. §26: We also hear Homer often calling such as are extraordinary good “Godlike,” and “God’s
• 27. §27: Now such things and such like things as these they tell us are here meant concerning
• 28. §28: Besides, Ptolemaeus Soter saw in a dream the colossus of Pluto that stood at Sinope
• 29. §29: For there is no reason we should attend to the writings of the Phrygians, which say that
• 30. §30: Osiris therefore and Isis passed from the number of good Daemons into that of Gods; but
• 31. §31: And because the Egyptians are of opinion that Typhon was born of a red complexion, they
• 32. §32: And so much for the allegories and secret meanings which this head affords
• 33. §33: These then are the things that may be uttered without doors and in public, they
• 34. §34: They believe also that the sun and moon do not go in chariots, but sail about the world
• 35. §35: And that therefore he is one and the same with Bacchus, who should better know than
• 36. §36: And they call not only the Nile, but in general every humid, the efflux of
• 37. §37: Moreover, the ivy, which the Greeks use to consecrate to Bacchus, is called by the
• 38. §38: They believe likewise that of all the stars, the Sirius (or Dog) is proper to Isis,
• 39. §39: And the conspiracy and usurpation of Typhon will be the power of the drought, which then
• 40. §40: But Isis again recovering Osiris, and rearing up Horus, made strong by exhalations,
• 41. §41: But those who join with these physiological accounts certain mathematical matters
• 42. §42: It is fabled by the Egyptians that Osiris’s death happened upon the seventeenth day of
• 43. §43: They moreover believe that the several risings of the river Nile bear a certain
• 44. §44: But there are some that will have this tale to be a figurative representation of the
• 45. §45: Wherefore it seems to me not to be unconsonant to reason to hold that each of them apart
• 46. §46: And this is the opinion of the greatest and wisest part of
• 47. §47: These men moreover tell us a great many romantic things about these Gods, whereof these
• 48. §48: Such then is the mythology of the
• 49. §49: For the frame and constitution of this world is made up of contrary powers, but yet such
• 50. §50: For which reason they assign him the ass, the most brutal and sottish of all the tame
• 51. §51: On the other hand, they represent Osiris by an eye and a sceptre, the one whereof
• 52. §52: Moreover, in the sacred hymns of Osiris they call him up “who lies hidden in the arms of
• 53. §53: But we must again resume our proper
• 54. §54: And therefore not without great consonancy do they fable that the soul of Osiris is
• 55. §55: This Horus is terminate and complete of himself, yet hath he not quite destroyed Typhon,
• 56. §56: Now the better and more divine nature consists of three; or of the intelligible part, of
• 57. §57: And it may be, Hesiod also, when he makes the first things of all to be chaos, earth,
• 58. §58: But we must remember that we are not to make use of fables as if they were doctrinal
• 59. §59: But where Typhon falls in and touches upon her extreme parts, it is there she appears
• 60. §60: And in general, Typhon is the prevailing power, as both Plato and Aristotle
• 61. §61: But Osiris had his name from ὅσιος and ἱερός (_pious_ and _sacred_) compounded; for he
• 62. §62: And the Egyptian theology seems to favor this
• 63. §63: The sistrum likewise (or _rattle_) doth intimate unto us, that all things ought to be
• 64. §64: To sum up all then in one word, it is not reasonable to believe that either the water or
• 65. §65: By this means we shall be able to deal with the vulgar and more importunate sort also,
• 66. §66: Nor would this be any great harm either, would they save us these Gods in common, and
• 67. §67: No man can imagine these things can be Gods in
• 68. §68: And for this reason we should here make most use of the reasonings from philosophy,
• 69. §69: How then must we manage ourselves at these tetrical, morose, and mournful sacrifices, if
• 70. §70: And the nature of the season gives us suspicion that this tetrical sort of service was
• 71. §71: But now this in its true intention is no such
• 72. §72: For that the Gods, being afraid of Typhon, changed themselves into these animals, and
• 73. §73: And whereas there are many that say that the soul of Typhon himself took its flight into
• 74. §74: It remains yet behind, that I treat of their beneficialness to man, and of their
• 75. §75: Nor had the crocodile his honor given him without a show of probable reason for it; but
• 76. §76: Nor ought we to think it strange that the Egyptians should affect such poor and slender
• 77. §77: If therefore the most approved of the philosophers did not think meet to pass over or
• 78. §78: As to the sacred vestments, that of Isis is party-colored and of different hues; for her
• 79. §79: And that which the present priests do darkly hint out and insinuate to us, though with
• 80. §80: This then is that account of these things which best suits the nature of the
• 81. §81: Moreover, that they call Kyphi is a kind of a composition made up of sixteen