De Iside et Osiride

It becomes wise men, dame Clea,[*](This Clea was priestess to Isis and to Apollo Delphicus.) to go to the Gods for all the good things they would enjoy. Much more ought we, when we would aim at that knowledge of them which our nature can arrive at, to pray that they themselves would bestow it upon us; truth being the greatest good that man can receive, and the goodliest blessing that God can give. Other good things he bestows on men as they want them, they being not his own peculiars nor of any use to himself. For the blessedness of the Deity consists not in silver and gold, nor yet his power in lightnings and thunders, but in knowledge and wisdom. And it was the best thing Homer ever said of Gods, when he pronounced thus:

Both of one line, both of one country boast,

But royal Jove’s the eldest and knows most;

[*](Il. XIII. 354.)

And therefore the desire of truth, especially in what relates to the Gods, is a sort of grasping after divinity, it using learning and enquiry for a kind of resumption of things sacred, a work doubtless of more religion than any ritual purgation or charge of temples whatever, and especially most acceptable to the Goddess you serve, since she is more eminently wise and speculative, and since knowledge and science (as her very name[*](Plutarch derives Isis, in the usual uncritical way of ancient etymology, from the Greek root ἰς— , found in ἴστε from οἶδα. (G.)) seems to import) appertain more peculiarly to her than any other thing. For the name of Isis is Greek, and so is that of her adversary Typhon, who, being puffed up[*](That is, τετυφωμένος. (G.)) through ignorance and mistake, pulls in pieces and destroys that holy doctrine, which she on the contrary collects, compiles, and delivers down to such as are regularly advanced unto the deified state; which, by constancy of sober diet, and abstaining from sundry meats and the use of women, both restrains the intemperate and voluptuous part, and habituates them to austere and hard services in the temples, the end of which is the knowledge of the original, supreme, and mental being, which the Goddess would have them enquire for, as near to herself and as dwelling with her. Besides, the very name of her temple most apparently promises the knowledge and acquaintance of true being (τὸ ὄν), for they call it Iseion ()Ἴσειον), as who should say, We shall know true being, if with reason and sanctimony we approach the sacred temples of this Goddess.

Moreover, many have reported her the daughter of Hermes, and many of Prometheus; the latter of which they esteem as the author of wit and forecast, and the former of letters and music. For the same reason also they call the former of the Muses at Hermopolis at the same time Isis and Justice, Isis being (as we before said)

For the greater part of men are ignorant even of this most common and ordinary thing, for what reason priests lay aside their hair and go in linen garments. Some are not at all solicitous to be informed about such questions; and others say their veneration for sheep is the cause why they abstain from their wool as well as their flesh, and that they shave their heads in token of mourning, and that they wear linen because of the bloomy color which the flax sendeth forth, in imitation of that ethereal clarity that environs the world. But indeed the true reason of them all is one and the same. For it is not lawful (as Plato saith) for a clean thing to be touched by an unclean; but now no superfluity of food or excrementitious substance can be pure or clean; but wool, down, hair, and nails come up and grow from superfluous excrements. It would

Not at a feast of Gods from five-branched tree

With sharp-edged steel to part the green from dry,

[*](Hes. Works and Days, 740. That is, Do not cut your nails at a banquet of the Gods. The briefer precept of Pythagoras was, Παρὰ θυσίαν μὴ ὀνυχίζου. (G.))

But now the priests do so abhor all kinds of superfluous excrements, that they not only decline most sorts of pulse, and of flesh that of sheep and swine, which produce much superfluity, but also in the time of their purgations they exclude salt from their meals. For which, as they have several other good reasons, so more especially this, that it whets the appetite and renders men over-eager after meat and drink. For that the reason why salt is not accounted clean should be (as Aristagoras tells us) because that, when it is hardened together, many little animals are catched in it and there die, is fond and ridiculous. They are also said to water the Apis from a well of his own, and to restrain him altogether from the river Nile, — not because they hold the water for polluted by reason of the crocodile, as some suppose, for there is nothing in the world in more esteem with the Egyptians than the Nile,

They also that at Heliopolis (Sun-town) wait upon the sun never bring wine into his temple, they looking upon it as a thing indecent and unfitting to drink by daylight, while their lord and king looks on. The rest of them do indeed use it, but very sparingly. They have likewise many purgations, wherein they prohibit the use of wine, in which they study philosophy, and pass their time in learning and teaching things divine. Moreover their kings, being priests also themselves, were wont to drink it by a certain measure prescribed them in the sacred books, as Hecataeus informs us. And they began first to drink it in the reign of Psammetichus; but before that time they were not used to drink wine at all, no, nor to pour it forth in sacrifice as a thing they thought any way grateful to the Gods, but as the blood of those who in ancient times waged war against the Gods, from whom, falling down from heaven and mixing with the earth, they conceived vines to have first sprung; which is the reason (say they) that drunkenness renders men besides themselves and mad; they being, as it were, gorged with the blood of their ancestors. These things (as Eudoxus tells us in the second book of his Travels) are thus related by the priests.

As to sea-fish, they do not all of them abstain from all, but some from one sort, and some from another. As for example, the Oxyrynchites abstain from such as are catched with the angle and hook; for, having the fish called oxyrynchus (the pike) in great veneration, they are

For nothing hath been ranked among their sacred and religious rites that savored of folly, romance, or superstition, as some do suppose; but some of them were such as contained some signification of morality and utility, and others such as were not without a fineness either in history or natural philosophy. As, for instance, in what refers to the onions; for that Dictys, the foster-father of Isis, as he was reaching at a handful of onions, fell into the river and was there drowned, is extremely improbable. But the true reason why the priests abhor, detest, and avoid the onion is because it is the only plant whose nature

But their kings (you must know) were always chosen either out of the priesthood or soldiery, the latter having the right of succession by reason of their military valor,

This is also confirmed by the most learned of the Greeks (such as Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and as some say, even Lycurgus) going to Egypt and conversing with the priests; of whom they say Eudoxus was a hearer of Chonuphis of Memphis, Solon of Sonchis of Sais, and Pythagoras of Oenuphis of Heliopolis. Whereof the last named, being (as is probable) more than ordinarily admired by the men, and they also by him, imitated their symbolical and mysterious way of talking, obscuring his sentiments with dark riddles. For the greatest

When therefore you hear the tales which the Egyptians relate about the Gods, such as their wanderings, discerptions, and such like disasters that befell them, you are still to remember that none of these things have been really so acted and done as they are told. For they do not call the dog Hermes properly, but only attribute the warding, vigilancy, and philosophic acuteness of that animal, which by knowing or not knowing distinguishes between its friend and its foe (as Plato speaks), to the most knowing and ingenious of the Gods. Nor do they believe that the sun springs up a little boy from the top of the lotus, but

The story is thus told after the most concise manner, the most useless and unnecessary parts being cut off. They tell us how that once on a time, Rhea having accompanied with Saturn by stealth, the Sun found them out, and pronounced a solemn curse against her, containing that she should not be delivered in any month or year; but that Hermes, afterwards making his court to the goddess, obtained her favor, in requital of which he went and played at dice with the Moon, and won of her the seventieth part from each day, and out of all these made five new days, which he added to the three hundred and sixty other days of the year; and these the Egyptians therefore to this day call the Epagomenae (or the superadded days), and they observe them as the birthdays of their Gods. Upon the first of these, as they say, Osiris was born, and a voice came into the world with him, saying, The Lord of all things is now born. There are others that affirm that one Pamyles, as he was fetching water at Thebes, heard a voice

And they say that Osiris, when he was king of Egypt, drew them off from a beggarly and bestial way of living, by showing them the use of grain, and by making them laws, and teaching them to honor the Gods; and that afterwards he travelled all the world over, and made it civil, having but little need of arms, for he drew the most to him, alluring them by persuasion and oratory, intermixed with all sorts of poetry and music; whence it is that the Greeks look upon him as the very same with Bacchus. They further add that Typhon, while he was from home,

And because the Pans and Satyrs that inhabited the region about Chemmis were the first that knew of this disaster and raised the report of it among the people, all sudden frights and discomposures among the people have been ever since called panics. But when Isis heard of it, she cut off in that very place a lock of her hair, and put on a mourning weed, where there is a town at this day named Kopto; others think that name signifies bereaving, for that some use the word for depriving. And as she

Of him she had tidings of the ark, how it had been thrown out by the sea upon the coasts of Byblos, and the flood had gently entangled it in a certain thicket of heath. And this heath had in a very small time run up into a most beauteous and large tree, and had wrought itself about it, clung to it, and quite enclosed it within its trunk. Upon which the king of that place, much admiring at the unusual bigness of the plant, and cropping off the bushy part that encompassed the now invisible chest, made of it a post to support the roof of his house. These things (as they tell us) Isis being informed of by the divine breath of rumor, went herself to Byblos; where when she was come, she sate her down hard by a well, very pensive and full of

Isis nursed the child by putting her finger into his mouth instead of the breast; and in the night-time she would by a kind of lambent fire singe away what was mortal about him. In the mean while, herself would be turned to a swallow, and in that form would fly round about the post, bemoaning her misfortune and sad fate; until at last, the queen, who stood watching hard by, cried out aloud as she saw her child all on a light flame, and so robbed him of immortality. Upon which the Goddess discovered herself, and begged the post that held up the roof; which when she had obtained and taken down, she very quickly cropped off the bushy heath from about it and wrapping the trunk in fine linen and pouring perfumed oil upon it, she put it into the hands of their kings; and therefore the Byblians to this very day worship that piece of wood, laying it up in the temple of Isis. Then she threw herself down upon the chest, and her lamentations were so loud, that the younger of the king’s two sons died for very fear; but she, having the elder in her own possession, took both him and the ark, and carried them on shipboard, and so took sail. But the river Phaedrus sending forth a very keen and chill air, it being the dawning

And in the first place where she could take rest, and found herself to be now at liberty and alone, she opened the ark, and laid her cheeks upon the cheeks of Osiris, and embraced him and wept bitterly. The little boy seeing her came silently behind her, and peeping saw what it was; which she perceiving cast a terrible look upon him in the height of her passion; the fright whereof the child could not endure, and immediately died. But there are some that say it was not so, but that in the forementioned manner he dropped into the sea, and was there drowned. And he hath divine honors given him to this very day upon the Goddess’s account; for they assure us that Maneros, whom the Egyptians so often mention in their carols at their banquets, is the very same. But others say that the boy was named Palaestinus or Pelusius, and that the city of that name was so called from him, it having been built by the Goddess. They also relate that this Maneros, so often spoken of in their songs, was the first that invented music. But some there are that would make us believe that Maneros was not the name of any person, but a certain form of speech, made use of to people in drinking and entertaining themselves at feasts, by way of wishing that all things might prove auspicious and agreeable to them; for that is the thing which the Egyptians would express by the word Maneros, when they so often roar it forth. In like manner they affirm that the likeness of a dead man, which is carried about in a little box and shown at feasts, is not to commemorate the disaster of Osiris, as some suppose, but was designed to encourage men to make use of and to enjoy the present things whilst they have them, since all men must quickly become such as they there see; for which reason they bring it into their revels and feasts.

But when Isis came to her son Horus, who was then at nurse at Buto, and had laid the chest out of the way, Typhon, as he was hunting by moonshine, by chance lighted upon it, and knowing the body again, tore it into fourteen parts, and threw them all about. Which when Isis had heard, she went to look for them again in a certain barge made of papyrus, in which she sailed over all the fens. Whence (they tell us) it comes to pass, that such as go in boats made of this rush are never injured by the crocodiles, they having either a fear or else a veneration for it upon the account of the goddess Isis. And this (they say) hath occasioned the report that there are many sepulchres of Osiris in Egypt, because she made a particular funeral for each member as she found them. There are others that tell us it was not so, but that she made several effigies of him and sent them to every city, taking on her as if she had sent them his body; so that the greater number of people might pay divine honors to him, and withal, if it should chance that Typhon should get the better of Horus, and thereupon search for the body of Osiris, many bodies being discoursed of and shown him, he might despair of ever finding the right one. But of all Osiris’s members, Isis could never find out his private part, for it had been presently flung into the river Nile, and the lepidotus, sea-bream, and pike eating of it, these were for that reason more scrupulously avoided by the Egyptians than any other fish. But Isis, in lieu of it, made its effigies, and so consecrated the phallus for which the Egyptians to this day observe a festival.

After this, Osiris coming out of hell to assist his son Horus, first labored and trained him up in the discipline of war, and then questioned him what he thought to be the gallantest thing a man could do; to which he soon replied, to avenge one’s father’s and mother’s quarrel when they suffer injury. He asked him a second time, what animal

These then are most of the heads of this fabular narration, the more harsh and coarse parts (such as the description of Horus and the beheading of Isis) being taken out. If therefore they say and believe such things as these of the blessed and incorruptible nature (which is